Developmental Statecraft under Construction: China’s Global Projection and Domestic Constraints

BCCN Lecture Series #6: Developmental Statecraft under Construction: China’s Global Projection and Domestic Constraints

This lecture is part of this spring term's BCCN Lecture Series: China in the Global Political Economy.

Abstract:

Over the past decade, China has emerged as a major actor in global development through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), projecting economic and political influence via large-scale infrastructure development and diplomacy. Behind this expanding global footprint lies a complex and evolving domestic apparatus. This talk investigates the internal logic and institutional foundations of what I term China’s developmental statecraft—the strategic use of development engagements to advance geopolitical and economic objectives. Focusing on China’s development planning bureaucracy and state capital actors, I examine their roles in executing overseas projects, with particular attention to Pakistan as a pivotal BRI partner. Drawing on fieldwork and primary Chinese sources, I analyze the strengths and limitations of this apparatus. I argue that while China aspires to function as a coherent developmental state on the global stage, its efforts are constrained by bureaucratic fragmentation, commercial imperatives, and path-dependent governance practices. These tensions reveal the experimental nature of China’s developmental statecraft and underscore its uneven capacity to reshape the global development landscape. The talk contributes to debates on the political economy of development, the role of rising powers, and China’s evolving global engagement.

Bio:

Hong Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research examines how China is reshaping global development practices and norms by exporting structures and mechanisms rooted in its domestic development model, particularly its planning bureaucracy and state-owned enterprises in the infrastructure sector. She has conducted fieldwork in Pakistan, Nigeria, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Her work has been published in the Review of International Political Economy, China Perspectives, among other venues. She is a co-editor of the People’s Map of Global China and Global China Pulse, both of which support collective scholarship on China’s global presence. Prior to joining Indiana University, she was a China Public Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (2022–2024) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at both Johns Hopkins SAIS and the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program (2021–2022). She holds a PhD in Public Policy from George Mason University.

Online via Zoom. Please register here: https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/QzpUv0c8TH-RKVjEjk756w