TY - JOUR
AU - Ho,, Selina
AB - Abstract China's increasing material capabilities stand at the heart of the US–China power transition debate. The focus on material power reflects a realist definition of power based on the possession of resources. However, material capabilities do not necessarily translate into influence and do not always determine outcomes. Non-material power matters at least as much as material capabilities. This article argues that China under President Xi Jinping views power differently from previous generations of Chinese leaders. While material power remains important, Xi has paid greater attention to strengthening Chinese non-material power, in particular structural power and discursive power. This article examines Chinese structural and discursive power, the third and fourth faces of power, through the lens of Xi's mega-infrastructure vision, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It argues that power, both material and non-material, is embedded in infrastructure. Specifically, the article uses case-studies of Chinese construction of high-speed railways in Laos and Indonesia to illustrate the effects of Chinese structural and discursive power. Based on field work and in-depth interviews, the cases show that China is relatively successful in wielding structural and discursive power in Laos and Indonesia, despite the differences in the two countries’ political systems, and economic and population sizes. Chinese domination, however, does not mean that subordinate states do not have agency. For instance, there is resistance against the narrative of a pre-eminent Chinese civilization in Chinese discourse, as the Indonesia case demonstrates. Exploring the different facets of Chinese power is critical for a proper understanding of how China strives to shape the structure and discourse of the global order. The rise in China's material capabilities, primarily economic, technological and military, stands at the heart of the US–China power transition debate. The focus on material capabilities typically reflects the realist definition of power based on the possession of resources. However, material capabilities do not necessarily translate into influence and do not always determine outcomes.1 Non-material power matters as much as material capabilities. As Michael Barnett and Robert Duvall pointed out, ‘scholars of international relations must work with multiple conceptions of power … and demonstrate how a consideration of power's polymorphous character will enhance and deepen theoretic understanding of international politics’.2 Focusing on material capabilities alone would cause scholars to overlook how Chinese power has evolved and how the current leadership wields the various dimensions of power. While material power remains important to the Chinese, non-material power in President Xi Jinping's ‘New Era’ has gained greater salience as China strives to become a normative power that is able to shape the structure and discourse of the global order.3 How should we understand Chinese power? How does China wield non-material power, and what effects has Chinese power produced? As David M. Lampton observes: ‘The first generation [Mao Zedong] paid more attention to military power; the second generation [Deng Xiaoping] placed more emphasis on comprehensive national strength. The third generation [Jiang Zemin], in the late 1990s, began to pay more attention to soft power.’4 I would add to this list that the fourth generation under Hu Jintao followed both Deng and Jiang in enhancing China's soft power and economic power. Under its current leader, Xi Jinping, China continues to emphasize building its comprehensive national strength (typically defined in political, economic and military terms). However, Xi departs from his predecessors in the extent to which he believes in the critical significance of non-material power, specifically structural power and discursive power, in rejuvenating the Chinese nation, cementing China's rise, and constructing a world order that reflects the country's preferences. Structural power essentially means domination: that is, A exercises power over B such that B accepts its asymmetric disadvantages in relation to A.5 It stresses the respective positions of actors in social structures and the unequal privileges conferred by these positions. Where A is dominant, B is likely to take into account A's preferences and interests, and to subordinate its own to A's, even when A does not act to exercise control over B.6 David Shambaugh indirectly referred to Chinese structural power when he wrote: China's regional rise and these changing perceptions have prompted countries along China's periphery to readjust their relations with Beijing, as well as with one another. As China's influence continues to grow, many of these countries are looking to Beijing for regional leadership or, at a minimum, are increasingly taking into account China's interests and concerns in their decisionmaking.7 Shambaugh's observation suggests that China's smaller neighbours are making decisions with an eye on Chinese interests, without Beijing necessarily exercising coercion. By dominating its smaller neighbours, China can establish its preferences with minimal effort. Discursive power is the use of discourse to create meaning, and constitute identity and interest.8 Narrative or storytelling is a significant part of discourse. Master narratives constrain or enable lower-order narratives. Strengthening China's discursive power is very much on Xi's agenda. During the Central Conference on Foreign Affairs in November 2014, Xi told Chinese leaders and diplomats: ‘We should increase China's soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China's message to the world.’9 As this article will show, Chinese use of structural power and discursive power is clearly demonstrated in Xi's mega-infrastructure vision, the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI).10 The article aims to examine how infrastructure is used by the Chinese government to wield structural and discursive power in south-east Asia. There is significant evidence that its use of such power is relatively successful there. Two case-studies are chosen to illustrate the extent and effects of Chinese power: the Vientiane–Boten high-speed railway (HSR) in Laos and the Jakarta–Bandung HSR in Indonesia.11 Indonesia represents the least likely case for the successful Chinese exercise of structural and discursive power, being the leading state in south-east Asia and having traditionally resisted China's (or any other external power's) domination in the region. Evidence of Chinese structural and discursive power in Indonesia will indicate a relatively high level of success in wielding both types of power through infrastructure projects in south-east Asia. A key task of this article is to measure the extent to which China is able to wield structural and discursive power. We know that Beijing is successful in establishing dominance through structural power when a weaker state accepts its asymmetric disadvantages and subordinates its interest to China's. In other words, there has to be evidence that the weaker state decides on a course of action that aligns with China's preferences but that, rationally, it should reject because the course of action could damage its own interest. Theoretically, I make a novel addition to the concept of structural power, arguing that such power is evident not only from the foreign policy decisions of the weaker state but also in its domestic politics; this will be discussed in greater detail later in the article. To show that China has discursive power, the cases must demonstrate that the country's master narrative on infrastructure has sufficient resonance and some level of institutionalization, such that it constrains or enables the formulation and acceptance of other narratives.12 Counter-narratives will not be able to take root in this context. South-east Asia is chosen as the locus for a study of Chinese power as it sits at the confluence of two strategic thrusts: the BRI and ‘peripheral diplomacy’, both announced by Xi in 2013. The two are intricately linked, as they share a focus on strengthening China's influence over its immediate neighbours. The aim is to provide a form of public good so as to legitimize China's leadership role in the region and convince neighbouring countries of its goodwill.13 South-east Asian countries are infrastructure-starved, a condition that facilitates China's role as technological provider and financier, thus paving the way for it to extend its power over and into these countries. The decision to focus on railways is based on three considerations. First, regional connectivity through a network of transport infrastructure is a critical component of the BRI. In Chinese thinking, which resonates in many parts of the region, railways, particularly HSRs, are seen as preconditions for economic take-off and prosperity.14 China's overseas railway projects thus offer significant case-studies because they constitute a cornerstone of the BRI. Second, China itself recognizes the strategic value of railway projects, being prepared to allow economic considerations of profitability to take a back seat behind political considerations. Railways are high-risk initiatives, on which returns can be expected only after several decades. While Chinese companies have agency and are not merely taking orders from the government, it is necessary to distinguish between the various types of infrastructure projects, as they entail different combinations of government and commercial interests and input. Such projects fall into three different types—strategic, policy and commercial; only the last category is profit-driven, while the first two ‘are not necessarily profitable as they need to serve the bigger picture’.15 The HSRs discussed in this article are strategic and policy projects; they are government-directed, they involve government-to-government negotiations, and state banks play a critical role in financing the projects and underwriting losses. Third, an in-depth examination of the negotiating processes between China and south-east Asian states on railway projects will illuminate in great detail the intricacies of the power relationship between them. The HSRs in Laos and Indonesia are chosen because they have undergone long periods of negotiation and are in the process of being built. The empirical richness of these interactions is mined via documentary evidence, fieldwork and interviews to illustrate the effects of Chinese power. The article proceeds as follows. In the next section, I examine the evolution of Chinese power and how Xi Jinping perceives it. I then discuss the definitions of power and infrastructure, and show how the latter carries structural and discursive power as demonstrated through the BRI. This is followed by a discussion of the two case-studies to demonstrate the extent of Chinese structural and discursive power. Chinese power In post-Mao China, leaders and policy-makers have traditionally focused on power defined in quantitative terms. The emphasis has been on building up China's material capabilities, so as to fulfil the priority task of lifting the people out of poverty. The key concept that underlies the Chinese understanding of power is ‘comprehensive national power’ (CNP). While soft power and international influence are part of CNP, these tend to take a back seat, with relevant studies by Chinese scholars focusing on hard power and material resources. In 2002, Chinese scholars Hu Angang and Men Honghua published an influential study on China's CNP.16 They argued that the status or position of a country is dependent on the rise and fall of its national power, and on increases and decreases in its strategic resources, which comprise physical, human and knowledge resources, infrastructure and capital. Using indicators created on the basis of these categories, Hu and Men compared China to the United States, Japan, Russia and India. Their study was periodically updated, and in 2018 a controversy arose when Hu suggested that China had overtaken the United States in terms of economy and technology.17 Critics pointed out that China was still behind the United States in military and economic terms, even though, ‘compared to the US, China has fewer domestic problems. China's international influence has increased and more countries choose to work with China instead of worrying about US unpredictability.’18 While these quantitative and material understandings of power remain part of Chinese leaders’ calculations, there has been an increasing awareness of and sensitivity to the non-material dimensions of power, as the above statement by critics suggests. Hu Jintao had sought to present the idea of a ‘harmonious world’, essentially an extension of the domestically orientated ‘harmonious society’: this requires an interventionist state that seeks to rebalance China's economic and social polarization.19 Although it is unclear whether ‘harmonious world’ entails the global scaling up of this interventionist state, Chinese pundits have called for their country to ‘harmonize’ the world according to its own values.20 I would argue that in order to ‘harmonize’ the world, China would require substantial structural and discursive power, enabling it to achieve dominance over another state and from that position to intervene in that state. ‘Harmonizing’ would also require significant acceptance by other states of Chinese discourses, ideas, beliefs and values. The effort to boost China's non-material power has gained even greater salience under Xi Jinping. As many commenters have noted, Chinese foreign policy has taken a new and more aggressive direction under Xi, leaving behind Deng's ‘hide and bide’ slogan and seeking instead to ‘strive for achievement’ with the ultimate aim of seeking normative and institutional change so as to replace Pax Americana.21 China under Xi appears to be on ‘a moral mission to improve the world through its ideas, aspirations, and norms’.22 While Xi continues to develop Chinese hard power, particularly in the technological and military realms, he has paid more attention than any of his predecessors to developing the country's non-material power. During the Work Conference on Peripheral Diplomacy in October 2013, Xi underscored the need to move beyond hard power, proclaiming that China should expand from mutual benefit to ‘shared beliefs and norms of conduct for the whole region’.23 He further emphasized the building up of the intangible aspects of Chinese power: We should … do more beneficial things to make peripheral countries kinder and more intimate to China and meanwhile more recognize and support China, thereby increasing China's affinity and influence … We should accurately introduce China's domestic and foreign policies, and well speak China's story and propagate China's sounds. We should connect China's dreams with the wishes of peripheral countries, such as living a happy life and creating beautiful regional development prospect, thereby rooting the sense of common destiny in peripheral countries.24 The emphasis on telling ‘China's story’, propagating ‘China's sounds’ and ‘rooting the sense of common destiny’ to increase ‘China's affinity and influence’ is a call for Chinese diplomats to strengthen the country's structural and discursive power over its neighbours. It reappeared in Xi's urging to Chinese diplomats during the 2014 Central Conference on Foreign Affairs, quoted above.25 During the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress in October 2017, Xi recounted China's diplomatic successes: China champions the development of a community with a shared future for mankind, and has encouraged the evolution of the global governance system. With this we have seen a further rise in China's international influence, ability to inspire, and power to shape; and China has made great contributions to global peace and development.26 It is clear from these declarations that Xi believes in the efficacy of non-material power to boost China's international influence and reshape the global order. Scholars have noted the evolution in Chinese understanding and use of power. William Callahan argues that Beijing is combining new ideas, new policies, new institutions and new projects to build a ‘community of shared destiny’ in order to ‘weave neighboring countries into a Sinocentric network of economic, political, cultural, and security relations’.27 The aim is to make China a normative power that sets the rules of the game for global governance. The BRI and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank represent a ‘cultural and moral alternative’ to the US-led liberal international order.28 Chinese civilization and socialist model are also elements of the effort to change the norms and rules of global governance. Maximilian Mayer has explored China's use of ‘historical statecraft’ to reconstruct global history and global order.29 Mayer notes that under Hu and Xi, China's practice of reconstructing history has increasingly shaped and underpinned its foreign policy. The BRI, for instance, represents a spatial and temporal rescaling that links Africa, Europe, South Asia, south-east Asia and the Pacific into a ‘holistic economic and moral unit’.30 In a large-scale study of the activities of the CCP's International Department, Christine Hackenesch and Julie Bader found that the department's mission changed under Xi, such that it became a channel for advancing China's vision of global order.31 They found that Xi not only uses the party channel more, he also uses it differently. At the 2017 ‘CCP in Dialogue with the World’ forum, party leaders from more than 120 countries, mostly poor and developing states, endorsed the BRI in a document that largely expressed the vocabulary and vision of the CCP. By doing so, decision-makers at party level in these countries subscribed to and thereby legitimized a Chinese vision of domestic and international governance.32 Hackenesch and Bader's study in my view demonstrates Chinese structural and discursive power. The CCP is able to establish dominance over the political parties of the weaker countries by getting them to subscribe to China's vision, despite the lack of clarity about whether the Chinese model fits them; furthermore, the Chinese narrative of a global order is one step closer to being institutionalized when these countries sign up to a document that expresses the vocabulary and vision of the CCP. The studies considered above demonstrate that increasing scholarly attention is being paid to Chinese discursive power. However, while these studies reference the application of this power through the BRI, there is a lack of detailed examination of how China wields it through specific infrastructure projects and how successful it has been in doing so. The richness of the case-studies presented in this article will strengthen the validity of claims that China is exercising significant discursive power. Studies on Chinese structural power are less well developed. While scholars and commentators have noted that smaller countries often refrain from criticizing China, even when the latter's actions impinge on their interests, there is no direct articulation of these instances as a demonstration of Chinese structural power. Smaller south-east Asian governments rarely criticize Beijing in public, despite the social, economic and environmental problems that Chinese companies and workers create in their countries. This is acutely evident in Cambodia, where the government remains silent despite severe criticisms from non-governmental organizations and ordinary Cambodians on the impact of the Chinese presence in the country. Such instances demonstrate Chinese structural power, as the smaller states accept their own asymmetric disadvantages and constrain themselves without China needing to apply pressure directly. Chinese diplomacy under Xi has been aimed at achieving dominance over countries along its borders to ensure that Beijing's interests are protected. That this is indeed China's intention is clear from the fact that peripheral diplomacy, the ‘Asia Dream’ and the BRI are all subjugated to Beijing's domestic agenda of national rejuvenation, Xi himself declaring that ‘China's strategic objective for peripheral diplomacy is to abide by and serve the “Two Centuries” objective to realize great rejuvenation of Chinese nation’.33 While the idea of ensuring a peaceful external environment to enable China to develop dates back to Deng Xiaoping, Xi's vision differs from that of his predecessors in that it is grander and bolder, including shaping the identities and preferences of the country's smaller neighbours in such a manner that they consciously or unconsciously follow its lead without it needing to exert explicit control. Infrastructure and power As an instrument of the state, infrastructure serves political, economic and military purposes. Domestically, infrastructure projects are sites of political contestation,34 often used by politicians who promise roads, bridges and power plants to local communities to win votes. They are also used by central governments to consolidate control over vast territories.35 In foreign policy, infrastructure plays a significant role in power projection and war-making. In the late nineteenth century, the construction of a transcontinental railway connecting the east and west coasts of the United States not only revolutionized the country's economy, but also made it a Pacific power. Railways were also critical in Prussian/German and Russian war plans in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.36 Empire-building is dependent on infrastructure construction. Europe and North America were able to extend their influence in the late nineteenth century by building railways—‘the path of empire is along the railway track’.37 These examples, however, emphasize only the material power dimensions of infrastructure. Infrastructure is also imbued with non-material power. The Great Wall of China, for example, is a testament of the imperial Qin state's power to mobilize military, human and financial resources to keep its enemies at bay—but it is also much more than a demonstration of material prowess. It has the power to construct the identities of the Self, ‘the civilized Chinese nation’, and the Other, ‘the wild and nomadic barbarians’ to be kept outside China's walls. Anthropologist Brian Larkin points to infrastructure's circulatory nature by defining it as ‘material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space’.38 Geographers Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift define infrastructure as consisting of ‘all of those objects that allow human beings, cars and trucks and boats and planes, water, oil, electricity, radio signals, information and the like to flow from one place to another, to become mobile, to circulate’.39 From the field of sociology, Susan Leigh Star sees infrastructure as ‘both relational and ecological’, in that it means ‘different things to different groups and it is part of the balance of action, tools, and the built environment, inseparable from them’.40 James C. Scott describes infrastructure as ‘distance-demolishing’.41 These definitions go beyond the physical aspects of infrastructure to attribute to it spatial, temporal, social, ideational and circulatory power. The non-material dimensions of infrastructure are relatively well explored by the disciplines of geography, anthropology and sociology, but less so in international politics. This is perhaps unsurprising given the dominance of realism, which defines power as capabilities. However, it is increasingly clear that non-material power is at least as important as material power in international politics.42 Given the salience of infrastructure to international politics today, it is worthwhile investigating its non-material power dimensions. Infrastructure, having both material and non-material dimensions, cuts across the traditional division in how power is defined in international politics, as either tangible—as inherent in military forces, wealth, resources and institutions—or intangible, as inherent in social structures and relationships, and in social discourses and meaning.43 The ‘faces of power’ debate captures the multidimensional nature of power. The first and second faces rest on a material definition of power, which is the ability of an actor to alter the material incentives of compliance to get others to do what they otherwise would not do.44 This implies control over others. Power, in this conception, is concrete and measurable, resting on the possession of resources, such as demographics, territory, natural resources, gross domestic product, military forces and political stability.45 The first face stresses coercion or direct control over behaviour, while the second face emphasizes the indirect effects of material power through agenda-setting, and ensuring compliance and cooperation through institutions and rules. Distinct from the material basis of the first and second faces are the third and fourth faces of power, which rest on non-material grounds. I now discuss these in turn, and illustrate how infrastructure possesses both these forms of power. Structural power The third face, structural power, stresses the position of actors in social structures. It entails the power to structure the framework by which others interact, constituting social relations such that weaker states depend on and accept their asymmetric disadvantages vis-à-vis the dominant state. Power here is defined as domination: ‘A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests.’46 This involves persuading B to accept policies and norms at variance with its own interests. According to Steven Lukes, it is the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial.47 This form of power puts a spotlight on the position of weaker states, going beyond the traditional focus on Great Powers.48 The dominant–subordinate relationship highlights the relational approach of structural power. Barnett and Duvall point out that structures represent a direct constitutive relation, that is, structural position A exists only because of its relation to structural position B.49 These social positions determine the capacities, subjectivities and interests of actors in two ways. First, structural position entails inequality in social privileges and capacities, meaning one actor will be more powerful than the other. Second, structural positions also shape each actor's own identity and interest. As a result of these effects, in an asymmetric social structure actors accept their respective roles or positions in the existing order. A weaker actor in such a structure will self-identify itself as the weaker party and accept the pecking order, that is, the dominance of the more powerful actor and its own subordinate status. Structural power can be ‘non-intentional’, because the structural bias in the system affects power relations in such a way that unintended consequences may result.50 It is important to note here that the dominant–subordinate relationship does not mean weaker parties have no agency. Lukes has made it clear that domination is not absolute and does not mean the absence of resistance; one can consent to power and resent it at the same time—structural power is ‘never, except in fictional dystopias, more than partially effective’.51 Structural power can be exercised through infrastructure when cross-border infrastructure projects give rise to asymmetric relations between states. Dependence on another state's technology, technical standards, finance, skilled labour and construction materials, for instance, leads to an unequal relationship which makes possible the subordination of the dependent state's national interest to that of the dominant state. The greater the degree of dependence on the dominant state, the greater the likelihood that the subordinate state will accept its asymmetric disadvantages vis-à-vis the dominant state even when the latter is not intentionally acting to control the former. The dominant state may have an overwhelming influence on the foreign policy position of the subordinate state as a result. This explains the suspicions that surround Chinese control of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka; western observers in particular, as well as India, believe that Sri Lanka, as a result of its debt to China for the construction of the port, will increasingly align itself with Beijing's foreign policy position and even allow the Chinese to use the port for military purposes.52 This is possible even if China does not directly pressurize or coerce Sri Lanka. This conception of structural power, however, misses another layer of effect—the domestic layer. Not only could a dominant state exercise structural power over the foreign policy of a subordinate state; it may also appropriate the latter's internal politics. Mann has defined this form of influence as ‘infrastructural power’, that is, ‘the capacity to actually penetrate society and to implement logistically political decisions’.53 Mann's definition is, however, one of coercive and institutional power. I argue that the dominant state can non-intentionally and indirectly dominate and penetrate the society of the subordinate state as a result of infrastructure projects. Cross-border infrastructure projects that are highly dependent on a foreign government for technology and finance enable the foreign government to reconfigure spaces in other countries’ territories and, in doing so, to transform societies and economies. The effect of this domination, defined in this context as penetration, is not so much control but the constituting and reconstituting of social relations and identities within the subordinate state. Infrastructure is usually considered to have a unifying effect, and national elites build infrastructure as part of nation-building. The ability of infrastructure to reconstitute social relations, however, can be contentious. It can aggravate tensions between central and local governments, and within communities. When a road or railway passes through a village, communities are evicted and broken up. Relocation may result in the dispersal of such local communities, leading to dislocation and shifts in identities. Infrastructure can also deepen cleavages and inequalities between regions and peoples.54 Discursive power The fourth face of power entails the use of discourses to create meaning. Discourse operates simultaneously on several levels and comprises all the forms of discussion on a topic, but one important component is narratives with a chronological story structure that actors use to represent objects.55 Power, in this sense, is not agency, but rather master narratives that constitute and constrain other narratives.56 While narratives are used by the first three faces of power—to coerce (first face), restrict the agenda (second face) and constitute relations (third face), the fourth face emphasizes the narrative context in which actors operate, enabling and constraining their identities and course of action. In other words, ‘deeply institutionalized master narratives condition the formulation and acceptance of less institutionalized narratives, including situations where A seemingly exercises narrative power over B’.57 A narrative is dominant when it is accepted by most of the target audience, such that alternative narratives are relegated to obscurity: ‘If the dominant narrative makes sense to and therefore resonates with most of a target audience, the exercise of power can be so effective that it goes largely unnoticed.’58 Narratives are performative. By ascribing qualities, dispositions and intentions to actors, narratives construct their identities and, by extension, their interests. Identities are created through ‘a collective of discursive practices, including a language with a vocabulary, written or verbal, and characteristic of physical behaviors, such as gestures, dress, customs, and habits’.59 Through narratives, the Self and the Other are constructed. This is a mutually constitutive relationship, in which identities are understood relationally.60 The identity of Self emerges through juxtaposition with the Other. Infrastructure has discursive power. According to Larkin, infrastructures ‘release different meanings and structure politics in various ways: through the aesthetic and the sensorial, desire and promise’.61 Through speech acts, infrastructure is no longer confined to physical and technical forms but has symbolic and emotive meanings. Star sees master narratives as being encoded in infrastructure.62 One of the most powerful master narratives that has been created around the subject is that infrastructure brings about civilization, progress, growth, prosperity and modernity. Electricity, railways and running water define civilization as they are integral to the functioning of the market economy. In this sense, infrastructure and the aspirations that it evokes operate on the level of fantasy and desire, which scholars have described as ‘enthusiasms of the imagination’ and ‘enchantments’.63 In the civilizational narrative surrounding the BRI, the emphasis is on reconfiguring civilization from a US-led world order to a world order that is based on Chinese civilization in accordance with its traditional cultural values and that repudiates western models of development.64 Chinese official and academic discourses invoke a host of spatial metaphors, of ‘corridors’, ‘bridgeheads’ and ‘gateways’, to ‘conjure up imageries of flows, connectivity, linkages, and mobilities’, presenting a view of modernity and civilization at odds with the West's emphasis on ‘pivots’, ‘areas’ and ‘territories’.65 As noted earlier, infrastructure transforms space; and, through discourse and language, identities can be defined and constructed by spatial location. The Self is created through geographical location and in relation to the Other, for instance the migrant in relation to the citizen, the urban in relation to the rural. Diversities and differences can be exaggerated.66 So can similarities and a sense of community. Infrastructure projects can be used to create narratives that discriminate as well as narratives that enhance a sense of common identity and destiny; the discourse is one of either being part of the march towards a great civilization or being left behind. An example of how the narrative of inclusion and exclusion is employed in the BRI is the idea that participating countries are part of a ‘community of shared destiny’: that is, a group of people bonded by common interests and fate based on equality and egalitarianism.67 Implied in this narrative is the principle that members of the community would have access to territory, power and resources, while those who are not part of it will have such access limited. This narrative of exclusion has been applied to India, which has refused to join the BRI: India's stubbornness in staying away from the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is nothing but a continuation of missing out on valuable growth opportunities that are right in front of the South Asian nation … New Delhi has yet to clear its mind … and keeps turning a blind eye to a vast variety of BRI-enabled opportunities that matter a lot to India's growth ambitions … These indicate India's deep-rooted skepticism about inclusive growth … India's economy will suffer as a consequence of New Delhi's narrow-mindedness, while embracing the BRI will be one of the best remedies for the narrow mind.68 This Chinese narrative of inclusion and exclusion resonates with countries in south-east Asia, even Vietnam, whose relations with China are probably the most strained among states in the region. Members of Vietnam's policy community articulated this view: ‘If you want inclusive development, connectivity is the key. The US is more about rules of the game; China is more about connectivity … What is connectivity in the region? Harmonization … Vietnam could benefit most from connectivity.’69 There is, however, a caveat in the south-east Asian response to Chinese civilizational discourse. While there is admiration for the Chinese model of growth and broad agreement with the idea that infrastructure brings progress, development and modernization, south-east Asian leaders and policy-makers are hesitant about appearing to acquiesce to a Sinocentric world order.70 Take for example the discourse of a ‘community of shared destiny’. Smaller countries such as Laos and Cambodia have signed agreements with China to build ‘a community of shared destiny’.71 However, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole has been ambivalent about the Chinese proposal for ‘an ASEAN–China community of shared destiny’.72 This is because there is much ambiguity surrounding the idea. There appear to be two layers to it: first, the narrative of progress, inclusiveness and ‘win–win’; and second, the pre-eminence of Chinese civilization and the creation of a Sinocentric network of relations.73 The latter is implied rather than explicit. While the master narrative of development, progress and inclusiveness finds local support, south-east Asian states continue to pursue regionalism and multipolarity.74 In other words, south-east Asian states embrace Chinese civilizational discourse in so far as it accords with their economic interests, while resisting discourses that suggest a Sinocentric world order and an exclusive partnership with China. The next two sections of this article explore the effects of Chinese structural and discursive power through two case-studies: the Vientiane–Boten and Jakarta–Bandung HSRs. In the case of the latter, this caveat is particularly applicable to the Indonesian response to Chinese discursive power. The Vientiane–Boten railway The Lao People's Revolutionary Party has governed Laos since 1975. Its top priority is to lift the Lao people out of poverty through two key strategies: (1) exporting its rich hydropower resources to its wealthier and bigger neighbours, namely Thailand, China and Vietnam; and (2) transforming Laos from a land-locked to a land-linked country by building roads and railways to connect it with its neighbours. In both strategies, China plays a key role. Lao dams are built by Chinese companies and investments. China is also building the 442-kilometre China–Laos HSR that stretches from Vientiane to Boten, a small town bordering China's Yunnan province. The Vientiane–Boten HSR is the first portion of a planned pan-Asia railway that China aims to build from Kunming in Yunnan province to Singapore. Construction started in 2016 and is on schedule to be completed by December 2021. Chinese structural power is clearly demonstrated in Laos's decision to construct the Vientiane–Boten HSR. Laos willingly accepts its asymmetric position vis-à-vis its bigger neighbours, in particular China, and could not imagine an alternative to identifying its interest with China's with respect to the HSR. Laos chose to go ahead to build the HSR despite the attendant risks to its sovereignty and national security. With little capacity to conduct a feasibility study for the HSR, the Lao government relied on the Chinese to conduct it. However, the feasibility study has been criticized for not making ‘realistic assumptions’,75 and for making forecasts of passenger and cargo figures that are too ‘bullish’.76 Ticket prices are likely to make the HSR inaccessible to most of Laos's 6.8 million people. A World Bank interlocutor intimated that while the World Bank was not involved in the study, it did informally receive a copy of it and the opinion of the team in Laos was that the project was ‘not feasible in terms of cost–benefit analysis’ because the Lao market is much too small for an investment of this scale.77 The HSR would require more substantial amounts of goods and people to yield returns. In a 2019 report, the World Bank officially sounded an optimistic note on the project, but cautioned that the HSR would ‘bring significant economic benefits to Lao PDR if important complementary economic reforms are undertaken in tandem’.78 It warned that the project presents risks and that the ‘success of the railway will depend on attracting enough cargo and passenger traffic, which will require a shift of transit flows between China and ASEAN toward rail’.79 The cost of the HSR, at US$6 billion, is equal to more than a third of Laos's GDP.80 The joint venture that has been set up to construct the railway is 70 per cent Chinese-owned, with Laos taking the remaining 30 per cent. To make up the Lao share, Vientiane has had to borrow US$500 million from China's Export–Import Bank. It is widely believed that the loan was collateralized by putting up the railway's future income and two mining concessions.81 The loan terms are reported to be 35 years, with a five-year grace period, and a 2.3 per cent interest rate.82 The remaining cost of the project is to be paid through land concessions. The joint venture will get development rights to the land surrounding the stations. Should the railway fail to generate sufficient revenue, Laos might be compelled to accept repaying the loan by trading land and/or railway assets, and/or selling commodities such as potassium and bauxite, all of which will impinge on its sovereignty. The IMF warned in a 2017 report that the risk of Laos facing external debt distress had risen from moderate to high.83 Likewise, the Australian-based Lowy Institute noted that the total debt Laos owed to China stood at approximately 45 per cent of Laos's GDP.84 In an indication of how financial reliance on China could compromise its national security, in September 2020 Laos ceded majority control of its national power grid to a Chinese company as it was unable to repay its debt to the company.85 The project also carries significant social risks for Laos. There has been public discontent from the outset.86 The stickiest issue was compensation to villagers forced to leave their homes. One senior Lao official explained: ‘Many owners of land and properties will be affected. Many hospitals, many schools will have to be relocated. Government will pay compensation to those who are affected … This will be a painful process.’87 Villagers felt that the Lao government's offers of compensation were inadequate, as they took into account only the cost of the basic building structures but not the cost of land, fences, crops and trees. The compensation issue was finally resolved, but the significant societal frictions it generated were noteworthy for a country whose population is normally politically quiescent. Another social concern is how the presence of large numbers of Chinese labourers may affect Lao society. Lao scholar Vatthana Pholsena refers to ‘hiccups in the decision-making process’ that took place behind closed doors concerning a party decision in 2011 to halt the initiation of the HSR project.88 The project was put on hold, allegedly because of concerns at the highest levels of the ruling party ‘over the terms of the contract, which included the hiring of a massive number of Chinese laborers’.89 In the face of the significant costs, uncertainties, risks and warnings from multilateral organizations, it makes little sense for Laos to go ahead with the project. I argue that Laos's decision to push forward with it, and acceptance of its asymmetrical disadvantages, are a demonstration of Chinese structural power. Recalling Lukes's description of structural power as ‘most insidious’, Laos could not imagine an alternative to its position as a subordinate state. This self-identity and the disadvantages it is willing to accept for trade-offs are reflected in a view expressed by a senior official from the Lao Public Works and Transport Ministry: Laos is lucky it has China, and other big countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand surrounding it. It is also not far from Malaysia and Singapore which are financial and logistical hubs. When we talk about regional development, we think about China, whose most remote and poor province next to Laos is Yunnan. China wants to develop Yunnan. So the question Laos asked itself—why don't we also benefit from it and be part of it? The logistics plan in this region goes from Singapore to China. China also has to use land transportation from east to west. If Laos can be part of this logistics plan, and secure just 5 percent of this movement of goods, Laos can benefit tremendously: 5 per cent for Laos will be a huge amount—its population is low, and the 5 per cent share will create jobs and other development opportunities for Laos. Laos can tie itself to this regional system and so be part of this logistical system … We ask China to think about Laos and not to turn away from Laos or to divert from Laos to Myanmar and Vietnam. We ask them not to forget Laos.90 Such sentiments point to Laos accepting its status as the weaker party and its dependence on its bigger and more powerful neighbours, in particular China. As a result of its identity being constituted by Chinese dominance, it has taken on Chinese interest in calculations of its own interest. Laos has little alternative to China, as the latter was the only game in town; none of the other major powers, including Japan, was willing to take on the challenges of the project. China's master narrative of progress, wealth and inclusion constrains all other narratives that warn of the costs, risks and challenges to Laos entailed in building the HSR. Counter-narratives from international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and others, that costs are likely to outweigh benefits, and that Laos will incur crippling debt,91 are ignored. Exhortations of western best practices, according to which building should be undertaken only when there is demand, fell on deaf ears: the Chinese saying ‘to get rich, first build roads’ is often repeated in Laos. Members of the Lao national assembly who have voiced concerns about the ecological impact and sustainability of the project have been unable to overcome the master narrative of lifting the Lao people out of poverty through the HSR project.92 Interviews with Lao officials reveal the deep resonance within the country of the modernity narrative, and the narrative of exclusion and inclusion. A senior Lao official expressed this view of progress and development, and the urgent necessity of being included: Connectivity is very challenging for Laos—we lack the know-how and physical infrastructures. We have nothing but ideas. We don't want to be left behind … Laos's idea is based on integrated planning, which means connecting regionally. Laos's plan has to be part of the regional plan, otherwise Laos would not be connected to anything.93 A member of Laos's national assembly expressed the same sentiment: As you know we are in the middle, a landlocked country. Others have better opportunity. Cambodia has the sea; they have railways. Thailand also has good infrastructure. But for us, we don't have good infrastructure. For us, if we don't take steps we will lose the opportunity to connect to China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. The research indicates that the closest route from China to south-east Asia is through Laos; but if we are not ready, then we will lose the opportunity. We need to take the decision, whether we will accept or not to accept. The government thinks if we don't accept, then we will lose the opportunity … we will be poor like this.94 In sum, the China–Laos HSR demonstrates China's significant structural and discursive power over Laos. One may argue that it is not surprising that China is able to wield such power over Laos, given the wide gap between their respective physical attributes. But it is not a foregone conclusion that China should wield such dominance: possession of material resources does not automatically translate into influence over others. A state's influence over another is greatly enhanced when it is also able to effectively wield structural and discursive power over the other. The Jakarta–Bandung railway The case for Chinese structural and discursive power will be strengthened if similar effects are produced in Indonesia, south-east Asia's largest power and de facto leader. Although the Jakarta–Bandung HSR is less central to Indonesia's national development than the Vientiane–Boten HSR is to Laos's, it is nevertheless regarded by the Joko Widodo (Jokowi) administration as significant on several levels. Economically, it is Indonesia's first HSR project and billed as a game-changer, with promises to create economic hubs, bring about transfers of skills and technologies to Indonesia, and reduce severe traffic congestion. It is also significant for Indonesia's domestic politics and foreign policy; the project is high profile and politically charged, was closely tied to Jokowi's 2019 electoral campaign, and was the site of heightened geopolitical and geo-economic competition between China and Japan.95 For China, the Jakarta–Bandung railway in Indonesia is a flagship enterprise. It was to be the first Chinese HSR project in the region; Xi Jinping chose to launch the Maritime Silk Road in Indonesia in October 2013, precisely because of Indonesia's role as the regional leader. Should China succeed in this project, it would go some way into persuading others to jump onto the Chinese HSR bandwagon. However, as the Chinese venture into Indonesia, they have to work with a much more complicated and challenging environment than in Laos. The Indonesians were able to push back against Chinese demands, negotiate for loans at lower interest rates, and get Beijing to agree to no sovereign guarantees for the HSR.96 These better terms from the Chinese were probably the result of the leverage Indonesia was able to exercise because in the negotiations for the project, China was facing fierce competition from Japan, originally the front-runner. Although Indonesia has been successful in securing better terms, there is nevertheless significant evidence that China is able to exercise structural and discursive power in Indonesia via the HSR project. As in the case of Laos, construction of the US$5.5 billion Jakarta–Bandung railway moved ahead in 2017 even though questions were raised over whether high-speed technology was necessary for the 142-kilometre track from Jakarta to Bandung. A prominent Indonesian politician pointed out during a private conversation that high-speed technology was seen as extremely unsuitable for the relatively short stretch from Jakarta to Bandung, as HSR moved too fast to stop within city limits to allow sufficient passenger and cargo flows.97 The Chinese proposal was also criticized by the Japanese ‘as unrealistic, especially without government funding and likely to end up making losses as it has to deal with a complex and corrupt bureaucracy in Indonesia’.98 Other analysts have questioned the project's likely return on investment, judging the forecast passenger numbers to be improbable. Studies have shown that Indonesia does not have the large urban population densities or land-use regulations to support the development of HSR.99 Indonesia also needed to borrow 75 per cent of the US$5.5 billion cost of the project from the China Development Bank. The belief is that the four Indonesian state-owned enterprises in the consortium set up with China to develop the project will eventually bear the lion's share of the cost. One other aspect of structural power that was mentioned in the Laos case-study but does not loom so large in it, given Laos's sparse population and one-party system, is the penetrative effects of Chinese structural power. While there are similarities with Mann's concept of infrastructural power, the ontological basis differs in that it is not coercive or institutional power that China exercises in the domestic politics of host countries; rather, power here is exercised through China's indirect domination over Indonesian society and internal politics via infrastructure projects. The Jakarta–Bandung railway has the effect of heightening political contestation and power struggles within Indonesia, in particular by aggravating and intensifying central–local tensions. Processes of democratization and decentralization after 1998, during which the regencies regained power while the centre became weaker, generated an environment open to the effects produced by Chinese structural power in the domestic politics of Indonesia. That the Jakarta–Bandung railway became a contentious issue in the political struggles between the central government and the regencies is not surprising. Jamie Davidson has described in detail how infrastructure projects are plagued by rent-seeking networks, conflicts between central and local governments, and struggles over land between the state and, since 1998, the newly empowered society.100 However, what has been different during Jokowi's term, from 2014, in contrast to previous administrations, is the increasingly prominent role that Chinese investments, financing, technology and labour are playing in his mega-infrastructure vision. Prior to 2016, China was not among the top five foreign investors in Indonesia.101 In 2017, China overtook Japan to become the second highest source of foreign direct investment after Singapore. Chinese indirect dominance and penetration through investments in infrastructure projects have exacerbated central–local and communal tensions in Indonesian politics. The Chinese government's overseas railway projects are mostly government-backed, involving negotiations between national governments and minimal consultation with provinces, non-governmental organizations and local stakeholders. Chinese officials and experts tend to view established national governments as the only legitimate partners in any negotiations. Like the Vientiane–Boten and Bangkok–Nong–Khai (Thailand) projects, which were first raised during the Lao and Thai leaders’ respective visits to Beijing, the Jakarta–Bandung HSR was agreed during Jokowi's visit to Beijing in March 2015. However, the effects of a lack of consultation below the national level are greater in Indonesia than in Laos or Thailand because of the highly diffused power structure in Indonesia. Construction of the Jakarta–Bandung HSR was stalled for more than a year after a ground-breaking ceremony was held in January 2016. A key reason for the hiatus was the continual delays in acquiring land because of resistance from regional governments. In Indonesia, strong land tenure laws favour individuals and local governments. Jokowi's decision to push through the project and revise the national spatial plan in April 2017 to accommodate the HSR elicited strong criticism from Indonesia's powerful regencies, which complained that they were not consulted. Five regencies and cities along the 142-kilometre route were affected, and Jokowi had expected them to revise their spatial plans to accommodate the HSR in accordance with the national spatial plan.102 Predictably, this has not happened as smoothly as Jokowi expected. The Bandung Legislative Council in West Java publicly expressed concerns that the project had not been formally recognized in the Bandung regency spatial plan for 2007–27.103 Local officials in West Java also complained that the Ministry of Transport went ahead with approval of land clearance without giving them documents detailing the operation.104 Such criticisms were also repeated in private: one very senior local leader intimated that he was opposed to the project but would wait for bureaucratic actors to lead the protest.105 Societal unhappiness over the influx of Chinese labour is also potentially destabilizing for a country that has a history of racial riots and persecution of its Chinese minority population. Under China's contracts with host countries for its overseas projects, the import of Chinese workers is mandatory. By allowing a large influx of Chinese work permit holders, the number of whom jumped by 30 per cent between 2015 and 2016 to a total of 21,271,106 the Indonesian government is giving Chinese interests priority over its own, especially given that Indonesia has a large pool of unemployed and underemployed workers. The number of illegal Chinese workers on tourism visas is believed to be even higher than the number of legal workers.107 By comparison, there were 12,490 Japanese and 2,812 American workers in Indonesia in 2016.108 Although it is claimed that the railway will provide another 20,000 jobs for Indonesian workers,109 it is uncertain whether these jobs have indeed been created. Meanwhile, the increased presence of Chinese workers is further straining Indonesia's social fabric and aggravating communal tensions. Since Xi Jinping came to power, the Chinese government has reversed Deng Xiaoping's non-interventionist policy towards ethnic Chinese abroad. In 2014, Xi defined ‘the sons and daughters of China’ as both the Chinese living on the mainland and those living overseas.110 This led to global consternation and anxiety, not least in Indonesia, where there has been historical suspicion and persecution of its Chinese population because of the latter's links to communist China. Fear of the large influx of Chinese workers was manifested in exaggerated and false rumours about the arrival of ‘10 million illegal Chinese workers’ on Indonesian social media.111 Chinese workers also made headlines when they entered the air force base at Halim, Jakarta, without permits.112 The risks and costs of the HSR project, as well as the added stress it imposes on Indonesia's domestic stability, suggest that the enterprise makes little sense for the Indonesian government. Its willing acceptance by Indonesia, irrespective of the disadvantages vis-à-vis China it entails, reflects Chinese structural power. This asymmetrical relationship was acknowledged and aptly described by the senior editor of the Jakarta Post: We, Indonesians, should realize that China is much more important to us than we are to them, although we often believe the opposite. China will soon become the world's largest Official Development Assistance (ODA) provider and there is almost no chance of reducing the flow of Chinese exports and investment. China appears threatening because its military expenditure continues to rise in line with its rapidly growing GDP … Again, we must realize that Indonesia needs China more than they need us. So behave yourself and accommodate yourself in accordance with your position. Our relationship with China is based on equality and mutual benefit, but please accept reality, at least for a while.113 Chinese discursive power is also evident in Indonesia, where the master narrative of development and inclusion is institutionalized. Jokowi made upgrading Indonesia's decrepit infrastructure a key plank of his re-election campaign in 2019. The Jakarta–Bandung HSR was one of the twelve national strategic projects that government agencies were told to prioritize under Presidential Regulation No. 3/2016.114 In his Twitter account, Jokowi expressed his commitment to the HSR project, which he called ‘the future of our mass transportation’.115 Indonesian narratives on the HSR emphasize the prosperity that it will bring to local economies by creating economic hubs, and upgrading skills and technology: The high-speed railway project connecting Jakarta and Bandung in West Java that will be integrated with four transit-oriented developments (TODs) along the rail line is expected to create a new economic center … economic potential would not only come from train ticket sales but also economic activities at the TODs, which will consist of urban settlements with business centers and recreation areas.116 An Indonesian transport expert underscored the technological benefits of the HSR: It [the Jakarta–Bandung HSR] has provided Indonesia with a golden opportunity to possess such a modern system of public transportation. It was an opportunity we had to seize as it might not have presented itself again in the future. The high-speed train will be a game-changer for the future of transportation in Indonesia … The project will also spur local economic growth along HSR train routes.117 As in the Laos case, this master narrative of progress has constrained alternative narratives. The narratives that criticized the HSR as impractical, risky and deepening Indonesian reliance on China were shunted aside—even though Jokowi was accused by some of being a ‘communist’ and ‘selling’ Indonesia's interest to China.118 Because the HSR line is relatively short and questions arose over whether high-speed technology was needed, it is often regarded as Jokowi's vanity project. In spite of these criticisms, Jokowi won re-election in 2019 against Prabowo Subianto, who campaigned on an anti-Chinese platform (among other issues) and promised to reduce Indonesia's reliance on Chinese projects. Narratives expressing concerns over the large influx of Chinese workers were countered with narratives of skill transfers and technological upgrading. The narrative of progress and development was dominant to the extent that despite alternative narratives expressing the costs to Indonesia, Jokowi was able subsequently to propose extending the Jakarta–Bandung railway to Surabaya in East Java. However, Chinese discursive power in Indonesia, while evident, has met with qualified success. Unlike Laos, Indonesia has not signed up to China's ‘community of shared destiny’. While the Chinese discourse of infrastructure as the source of development and progress is institutionalized in Indonesia because it resonates with Jokowi's domestic agenda, Indonesia has kept at arm's length any suggestion that Chinese civilization is pre-eminent. Indonesia concedes Chinese economic, military and technological superiority, but is resistant to the spread of Chinese culture. For instance, although various events and centres promoting Chinese culture have been set up in Indonesia as part of the agreements signed under the BRI, their effects have been limited and uneven.119 The prevalence of anti-Chinese sentiments in Indonesia, meanwhile, is not a topic of discussion between Jakarta and Beijing. Notwithstanding these limitations, there is sufficient evidence of Chinese structural and discursive power in Indonesia, the de facto leader of south-east Asia, to support my argument that China has been relatively successful in dominating the region, and that its master narrative of HSRs as conveyors of progress and development is institutionalized in south-east Asian countries. Conclusion: COVID-19 and beyond Under Xi Jinping, China has given greater prominence to the exercise of structural power and discursive power. The case-studies of Laos and Indonesia presented above were chosen to assess whether Chinese structural and discursive power were evenly applied across countries despite differences in size and capacity. Indonesia was the least likely case, given its leadership position in south-east Asia. The case-studies show that both the Lao and Indonesian governments, despite the differences in their political systems, population size and economic size, recognize their asymmetrical position vis-à-vis China and are willing to accept the disadvantages that come with this position for what they perceive to be longer-term benefits for their countries. The master narrative of progress and development embedded in HSRs deeply resonates with the beliefs of leaders in Laos and Indonesia, preventing counter-narratives from taking root. There are, however, greater reservations in ASEAN as a whole about the narrative of a pre-eminent Chinese civilization embedded in Chinese discourse. While China has demonstrated significant ability to wield structural and discursive power in south-east Asia, this does not mean that Chinese power is absolute and weaker states have no agency.120 As Lukes has pointed out, domination does not exclude the existence of resistance. Questions abound on whether COVID-19 will substantially slow down HSR construction in south-east Asia as cities go into lockdown and the construction industry is deeply affected. Perceptions of China's BRI may sour, and resistance to Chinese structural and discursive power may strengthen. While delays are inevitable and enthusiasm for Chinese BRI projects may dwindle, in the longer run south-east Asian states’ thirst for infrastructure is likely to prevail. Work on the Vientiane–Boten HSR, for instance, has gone ahead again after only 23 days of suspension due to COVID.121 China has also stepped up its aid to south-east Asian countries amid COVID-19, and its narratives portray south-east Asia as standing with it.122 Chinese aid and efforts at smoothening relations with south-east Asian countries are likely to mitigate some of the fallout. However, two longer-term trends may be exacerbated by the pandemic.123 First, the trend towards diversification from and reduced reliance on the Chinese economy, which started with the US–China trade war, is likely to intensify. This means that competitors, such as Japan, may stand a better chance of winning infrastructure projects in the region. Second, COVID-19, with its implications for public health and the global supply chain, is likely to exacerbate south-east Asians’ distrust of China. The rapid growth of Chinese structural and discursive power in south-east Asia, on top of its economic and military power, has led to an increasing sense of unease and distrust of China. The expansion of Chinese power was not accompanied by measures to sufficiently reassure and build trust among its neighbours. Worries about Chinese influence on leaders and society in south-east Asian countries have increased since Xi Jinping began implementing his vision of Chinese foreign policy. Aggressive Chinese actions in the South China Sea as the pandemic rages on have generated further anxiety among south-east Asian states. A survey conducted by the Singapore-based Institute of South-East Asian Studies in late 2019 shows that the level of confidence or trust in China is only 16.1 per cent, compared to 61.2 per cent and 30.3 per cent for Japan and the United States, respectively.124 This survey is conducted annually, and it will be interesting to see whether the one to be conducted at the end of 2020 will reveal a further erosion in regional confidence in China as a result of its handling of the pandemic. These two trends, which existed before COVID-19 but have been exacerbated by it, may galvanize south-east Asian countries, which are traditionally wary of overreliance on one major power, to put up stronger resistance towards Chinese domination in the region. This implies that there is room for other major powers, for example the United States, Japan and India, to strengthen their presence, and ensure diversity and balance in the region. Footnotes 1 See Rosemary Foot, ‘Remembering the past to secure the present: Versailles legacies in a resurgent China’, International Affairs 95: 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 143–60; Brantly Womack, ‘Asymmetry parity: US–China relations in a multimodal world’, International Affairs 92: 6, Nov. 2016, pp. 1463–80; Yuen Foong Khong, ‘Power as prestige in world politics’, International Affairs 95: 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 119–42; Kai Liao, ‘The future war studies community and the Chinese revolution in military affairs’, International Affairs 96: 5, Sept. 2020, pp. 1327–46. 2 Michael Barnett and Robert Duvall, ‘Power in international politics’, International Organization 59: 1, 2005, pp. 39–75 at p. 40. 3 Wu Xinbo, ‘China in search of a liberal partnership international order’, International Affairs 94: 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 995–1018. 4 David M. Lampton, The three faces of Chinese power: might, money, and minds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), p. 11. Soft power, as defined by Joseph Nye, is also dependent on material capabilities. See Karl Gustafsson, ‘Is China's discursive power increasing? The “power of the past” in Sino-Japanese relations’, Asian Perspective 38: 3, 2014, pp. 411–33 at p. 412; Jonas Gamso, ‘China's ivory bans: enhancing soft power through wildlife conservation’, International Affairs 95: 6, Nov. 2019, pp. 1389–402. 5 Steven Lukes, Power: a radical view, 2nd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 37. 6 Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power’, p. 53. 7 David Shambaugh, ‘China engages Asia: reshaping the regional order’, International Security 29: 3, 2004–2005, pp. 64–99 at p. 65 (emphasis added). 8 Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power’, p. 55. 9 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ‘The Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs was held in Beijing’, 29 Nov. 2014, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1215680.shtml. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 27 Sept. 2020.) 10 Astrid H. M. Nordin and Mikael Weissmann, ‘Will Trump make China great again? The Belt and Road Initiative and international order’, International Affairs 94: 2, March 2018, pp. 231–50. 11 These are referred to as high-speed railways but they are more accurately medium-speed. High-speed railways operate between 300 and 350 km/h while medium-speed railways operate between 200 and 250 km/h. 12 Linus Hagstrom and Karl Gustafsson, ‘Narrative power: how storytelling shapes east Asian international politics’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32: 4, 2019, pp. 387–406 at p. 392. 13 Zhao Weihua, ‘Xi Jinping shidai de zhongguo zhoubian waijiao: xin linian, xin gainian, xin cuoshi yantaohui zhongshu’ [Xi Jinping era's peripheral diplomacy: new ideas, new concept, new policies], Guoji wenti yanjiu, no. 1, 2015, pp. 3–7. 14 Du De and Ma Yahua, ‘Yidaiyilu: Zhonghua minzu de diyuan dazhanlue’ [One Belt One Road: the geographical strategy of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation], Dili Yanjiu 24: 6, 2015, pp. 1005–14. 15 ‘China's SOEs can aid B&R route countries in economic development’, Global Times, 14 April 2017. 16 Hu Angang and Men Honghua, ‘The rise of modern China (1980–2000): comprehensive national power and grand strategy’, Strategy and Management, no. 3, 2002, pp. 26–41. 17 Liu Xin, ‘China–US strength gap remains: experts’, Global Times, 7 Aug. 2018. 18 Liu, ‘China–US strength gap remains’. 19 William Callahan, ‘China's “Asia Dream”: the Belt Road Initiative and the new regional order’, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 1: 3, 2016, pp. 226–43 at p. 235. 20 Cited in Callahan, ‘Asia Dream’, p. 235; see also Xiaoyu Pu and Chengli Wang, ‘Rethinking China's rise: Chinese scholars debate strategic overstretch’, International Affairs 94: 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 1019–36. 21 See e.g. Christopher Layne, ‘The US–Chinese power shift and the end of Pax Americana’, International Affairs 94: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 89–111; Wu Xinbo, ‘China in search of a liberal partnership international order’, International Affairs 94: 5, 2018, pp. 995–1018; Nordin and Weissmann, ‘Will Trump make China great again?’. 22 Callahan, ‘Asia Dream’, p. 231. 23 Cited in Callahan, ‘Asia Dream’, p. 231. 24 China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, ‘Important speech of Xi Jinping at Peripheral Diplomatic Work Conference’, 30 Oct. 2013, http://www.cciced.net/cciceden/NEWSCENTER/LatestEnvironmentalandDevelopmentNews/201310/t20131030_82626.html (emphasis added). 25 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, ‘The Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs was Held in Beijing’. 26 Xi Jinping, ‘Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’, speech delivered at 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, 18 Oct. 2017 (emphasis added). 27 Callahan, ‘Asia Dream’, pp. 226–43. 28 Callahan, ‘Asia Dream’, p. 237. 29 Maximilian Mayer, ‘China's historical statecraft and the return of history’, International Affairs 94: 6, Nov. 2018, pp. 1217–35. 30 Mayer, ‘China's historical statecraft’, p. 1228. 31 Christine Hackenesch and Julie Bader, ‘The struggle for minds and influence: the Chinese Communist Party's global outreach’, International Studies Quarterly, publ. online June 2020, https://www.die-gdi.de/en/others-publications/article/the-struggle-for-minds-and-influence-the-chinese-communist-partys-global-outreach/, pp. 1–11 at p. 7. 32 Hackenesch and Bader, ‘The struggle for minds and influence’. 33 China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, ‘Important speech of Xi Jinping at Peripheral Diplomatic Work Conference’. 34 See e.g. Andrew Barry, Political machines: governing a technological society (London and New York: Athlone, 2011); Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, Seeing like a city (Cambridge: Polity, 2017). 35 Jo Guldi, Roads to power: Britain invents the infrastructure state (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2012). 36 T. G. Otte and Keith Nielson, eds, Railways and international politics: paths of empire, 1848–1945 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p. 2. 37 Otte and Nielson, eds, Railways and international politics, p. 10. 38 Brian Larkin, ‘The politics and poetics of infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 42, 2013, pp. 327–43 at p. 327. 39 Amin and Thrift, Seeing like a city, p. 47. 40 Susan Leigh Star, ‘The ethnography of infrastructure’, American Behavioral Scientist 42: 3, Nov.–Dec. 1999, pp. 377–91 at p. 377. 41 James C. Scott, Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), p. xii. 42 See Hagstrom and Gustafsson, ‘Narrative power’. 43 Janice Bially Mattern, ‘The concept of power and the (un)discipline of International Relations’, in Christian Reus-Smith and Duncan Snidal, eds, The Oxford handbook of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 44 Robert Dahl, Who governs? Democracy and power in an American city (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961). 45 Joseph S. Nye, ‘The changing nature of power’, Political Science Quarterly 105: 2, Summer 1990, pp. 177–92 at p. 178. 46 Lukes, Power, p. 37. 47 Lukes, Power, p. 28. 48 Mattern, ‘The concept of power’, p. 693. 49 Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power’, p. 53. 50 Stefano Guzzini, ‘Structural power: the limits of neorealist power analysis’, International Organization 47: 3, Summer 1993, pp. 443–78 at pp. 456–7. 51 Lukes, Power, p. 150. 52 Maria Abi-Habib, ‘How China got Sri Lanka to cough up a port’, New York Times, 25 June 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html. 53 Michael Mann, The sources of social power, vol. 1: A history of power from the beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 170. 54 Clayton Nall, The road to inequality: how the federal highway program polarized America and undermined cities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 55 Hagstrom and Gustafsson, ‘Narrative power’, p. 390. 56 Hagstrom and Gustafsson, ‘Narrative power’, p. 390. 57 Hagstrom and Gustafsson, ‘Narrative power’, p. 392. 58 Hagstrom and Gustafsson, ‘Narrative power’, p. 391. 59 Ted Hopf, Social construction of international politics: identities and foreign policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999 (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 1. 60 Hopf, Social construction of international politics, p. 7. 61 Larkin, ‘The politics and poetics of infrastructure’, p. 327. 62 Star, ‘The ethnography of infrastructure’, p. 384. 63 Larkin, ‘The politics and poetics of infrastructure’, p. 333; Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox, ‘The enchantments of infrastructure’, Mobilities 7: 4, 2012, pp. 521–36. 64 Shaun Lin, James D. Sidaway and Chih Yuan Woon, ‘Reordering China, respacing the world: Belt and Road Initiative as an emergent geopolitical culture’, Professional Geographer 71: 3, 2019, pp. 507–33 at p. 514. 65 James D. Sidaway and Chih Yuan Woon, ‘Chinese narratives on “One Belt, One Road” in geopolitical and imperial contexts’, Professional Geographer 69: 4, 2017, pp. 591–603 at p. 595. 66 Setha Low, Spatializing culture: the ethnography of space and place (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), p. 129. 67 Zhang Denghua, ‘The concept of “community of common destiny” in China's diplomacy: meaning, motives and implications’, Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies 5: 2, March 2019, pp. 196–207 at p. 197. 68 Xiao Xin, ‘India needs to change mindset on Belt and Road’, Global Times, 5 Aug. 2019, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1149058.shtml. 69 Selina Ho, David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, Meeting with scholars from the Vietnam Institute for Economic and Policy Research and University of Economic and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam, 5 Jan. 2017. 70 See Seng Tan, ‘Consigned to hedge: south-east Asia and America's “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy’, International Affairs 96: 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 131–48. 71 ‘China, Laos vow to build strong community of shared destiny’, China Daily, 9 Sept. 2017, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-11/09/content_34312876.htm; State Council of the PRC, ‘China, Cambodia to build community of common destiny’ (Beijing, 28 April 2019), http://english.www.gov.cn/premier/news/2019/04/28/content_281476633229064.htm. 72 Hoang Thi Ha, ‘Understanding China's proposal for an ASEAN–China community of common destiny and ASEAN's ambivalent response’, Contemporary South-East Asia 41: 2, 2019, pp. 223–54. 73 The author thanks one of the reviewers for pointing out that the Chinese civilizational discourse is ambiguous, and conceals the distinction between civilization in general and Chinese civilization. 74 Hoang, ‘Understanding China's proposal’. 75 ‘China starts controversial Lao rail project’, Asia Sentinel, 7 March 2017, https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/china-laos-railroad-project. 76 Nick Freeman, ‘Laos’ high-speed railway coming round the bend’, ThinkChina, 11 Dec. 2019, https://www.thinkchina.sg/laos-high-speed-railway-coming-round-bend. 77 Selina Ho, David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, interview with World Bank specialist in Vientiane, Laos, 7 June 2017. 78 World Bank, East Asia and Pacific economic update: weathering growing risks (Washington DC, Oct. 2019), p. 37, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/32482 (emphasis added). 79 World Bank, East Asia and Pacific economic update. 80 ‘The great rail dilemma’, Bangkok Post, 22 July 2018, https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/special-reports/1507722/the-great-rail-dilemma. 81 Marwaan Macan-Markar, ‘China's Belt and Road rail project stirs discontent in Laos’, Nikkei Asian Review, 15 March 2018, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/China-s-Belt-and-Road-rail-project-stirs-discontent-in-Laos2. 82 Freeman, ‘Laos’ high-speed railway’. 83 IMF, Lao People's Democratic Republic: debt sustainability analysis (Washington DC, 6 Jan. 2017), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/dsa/pdf/2017/dsacr1753.pdf. 84 Roland Rajah, Alexandre Dayant and Jonathan Pryke, Ocean of debt? Belt and Road and debt diplomacy in the Pacific (Sydney: Lowy Institute, 21 Oct. 2019), p. 5, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Rajah%2C%20Dayant%2C%20Pryke_Belt%20and%20Road%20and%20the%20debt%20diplomacy%20in%20the%20Pacific_WEB.pdf. 85 Sebastian Strangio, ‘Laos stumbles under rising Chinese debt burden’, The Diplomat, 7 Sept. 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/laos-stumbles-under-rising-chinese-debt-burden/. 86 Selina Ho, ‘Can the China–Laos railway keep on track?’, East Asia Forum, 12 July 2019, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/07/12/can-the-china-laos-railway-keep-on-track/. 87 Selina Ho, David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, interview with senior Lao official, Vientiane, Laos, 7 June 2017. 88 Vatthana Pholsena, ‘Laos’, Regional outlook: south-east Asia 2012–2013 (Singapore: Institute of South-East Asian Studies, 2012), p. 62. 89 Pholsena, ‘Laos’, p. 62. 90 Selina Ho, David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, interview with senior official from Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Vientiane, Laos, 6 June 2017 (emphasis added). 91 David Hutt, ‘Laos on a fast track to a China debt trap’, Asia Times, 28 March 2018, https://asiatimes.com/2018/03/laos-track-china-debt-trap/. See also Scott Morris, What a railway in Laos can tell us about China's Belt and Road (Washington DC: Center for Global Development, 17 May 2019), https://www.cgdev.org/blog/what-a-railway-laos-can-tell-us-about-chinas-belt-and-road?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0Mb3BRCaARIsAPSNGpUKveeGW63PVY-LEonHpWEcmxY61wLoYulK7K-uz7LFX0PehUuvQ-saApoHEALw_wcB. 92 ‘Chinese-owned cement factories pollute Lao villages’, Radio Free Asia, 30 Nov. 2018, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/chinese-owned-cement-factories-pollute-lao-villages-11302018123954.html. See also ‘Runoff from railway project pollutes river in Lao tourist destination’, Radio Free Asia, 12 Nov. 2018, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/runoff-from-railway-project-pollutes-river-11122018153416.html; Peter Janssen, ‘Land-locked Laos on track for controversial China rail link’, Nikkei Asian Review, 24 June 2017, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Land-locked-Laos-on-track-for-controversial-China-rail-link. 93 Selina Ho, David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, interview with senior official from Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Vientiane, Laos, 6 June 2017 (emphasis added). 94 Selina Ho, David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, interview with member of National Assembly of Lao PDR, Vientiane, Laos, 7 June 2017 (emphasis added). 95 Karlo Mikhail I. Mogaya, ‘Big power rivalry and domestic politics: media's portrayal of the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail deal’, Asian Politics and Policy 9: 1, 2017, pp. 169–74. 96 See Dragan Pavlicevic and Agatha Kratz, ‘Testing the China threat paradigm: China's high-speed railway diplomacy in south-east Asia’, Pacific Review 31: 2, 2018, pp. 151–68; David M. Lampton, Selina Ho and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, Rivers of iron: railroads and Chinese power in south-east Asia (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2020). Sovereign guarantees are loan guarantees by the government; that is, risks are transferred to the government should there be a default. 97 David M. Lampton, interview with senior Indonesian leader, Jakarta, 28 Jan. 2016. 98 Emirza Adi Syailendra, Indonesia's high speed rail: a China–Japan scramble for influence?, RSIS Commentary no. 269 (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 2 Dec. 2015), pp. 1–3 at p. 1, https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/CO15269.pdf. 99 See e.g. Aleksander Purba, Fumihiko Nakamura, Chatarina Niken DWSBU, Muhammad Jafri and Priyo Pratomo, ‘A current review of high speed railways experiences in Asia and Europe’, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Construction and Building Engineering, 14 Aug. 2017, Palembang, Indonesia, publ. online Nov. 2017, https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.5011558. 100 Jamie Davidson, Indonesia's changing political economy: governing the roads (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 101 Erwida Maulia, ‘China becomes Indonesia's no. 2 investor with infrastructure drive’, Nikkei Asian Review, 1 Feb. 2018, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/China-becomes-Indonesia-s-No.-2-investor-with-infrastructure-drive. 102 Arya Dipa, ‘Thousands of households to be evicted’, Jakarta Post, 15 Jan. 2016, www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/01/25/thousands-households-be-evicted.html. 103 Arya Dipa, ‘Rail project condemned for ignoring spatial plan’, Jakarta Post, 29 Jan. 2016, www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/01/29/rail-project-condemned-ignoring-spatial-plan.html. 104 Dipa, ‘Rail project condemned’. 105 David M. Lampton, interview with senior Indonesian leader, Jakarta, 28 Jan. 2016. 106 Eveline Danubrata and Gayatri Suroyo, ‘In Indonesia, labor friction and politics fan anti-Chinese sentiment’, Reuters, 18 April 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-election-china/in-indonesia-labor-friction-and-politics-fan-anti-chinese-sentiment-idUSKBN17K0YG. 107 Danubrata and Suroyo, ‘In Indonesia, labor friction’. 108 Danubrata and Suroyo, ‘In Indonesia, labor friction’. 109 ‘Indonesia kicks off first high-speed rail project,’ Today, 22 Jan. 2016, https://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/indonesia-starts-construction-high-speed-rail-line. 110 Leo Suryadinata, The rise of China and the Chinese overseas: a study of Beijing's changing policy in southeast Asia and beyond (Singapore: Institute of South-East Asian Studies Publishing, 2017), p. 15. 111 Danubrata and Suroyo, ‘In Indonesia, labor friction’. 112 Edo Karensa, ‘Manpower Ministry to intensify monitoring of foreign workers’, Jakarta Globe, 25 July 2016, https://jakartaglobe.id/context/manpower-ministry-intensify-monitoring-foreign-workers/. 113 Kornelius Purba, ‘Commentary: Indonesia needs China more than China needs Indonesia’, Jakarta Post, 7 May 2018 (emphasis added), https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2018/05/07/commentary-indonesia-needs-china-more-than-china-needs-indonesia.html. 114 Siwage Dharma Negara and Leo Suryadinata, ‘Jakarta–Bandung high speed rail project poses big challenge for Jokowi’, Today, 12 Jan. 2018, https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/Jakarta–Bandung-high-speed-rail-project-poses-big-challenge-jokowi. 115 Ina Parlina and Farida Susanty, ‘Jokowi gets behind rail project’, Jakarta Post, 30 Jan. 2016, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/01/30/jokowi-gets-behind-rail-project.html. 116 Riza Roidila Mufti, ‘High-speed train project can create economic hub’, Jakarta Post, 4 May 2019, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/05/04/high-speed-train-project-can-create-economic-hub.html. 117 ‘Interview: expert sees China-built high-speed rail transportation, economic game-changer for Indonesia’, Xinhua Silk Road Information Service, 29 March 2019 (emphasis added), https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/303852.html. 118 Negara and Suryadinata, ‘Jakarta–Bandung high speed rail’. 119 Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, ‘Chinese culture gradually penetrates Indonesia’, The Diplomat, 18 April 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/chinese-culture-gradually-penetrates-indonesia/. 120 See Lampton et al., Rivers of iron. 121 Skylar Lindsay, ‘Work resumes on China–Laos railway’, ASEAN Today, 17 May 2020, https://www.aseantoday.com/2020/05/work-resumes-on-china-laos-railway-full-steam-ahead-for-beijings-belt-and-road/. 122 Lye Liang Fook, The fight against COVID-19: China's shifting narrative and south-east Asia, ISEAS Perspective, no. 26 (Singapore: Institute for South-East Asian Studies/Yusof Ishak Institute, 7 April 2020), https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ISEAS_Perspective_2020_26.pdf. 123 ‘How is the coronavirus outbreak affecting China's relations with its Asian neighbors?’, ChinaFile, 26 April 2020, https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/how-coronavirus-outbreak-affecting-chinas-relations-its-asian-neighbors?fbclid=IwAR22fh7PunWGSqiPsz_vCyNEiA4u9YLKpsFzbz6b-UUtL3Nta--3A9E0q8k. 124 Tang Siew Mun, Hoang Thi Ha, Anuthida Saelaow Qian, Glenn Ong and Pham Thi Phuong Thao, The state of south-east Asia: 2020 survey report (Singapore: Institute for South-East Asian Studies/Yusof Ishak Institute, 2020), https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/TheStateofSEASurveyReport_2020.pdf. Author notes *The interviews cited in this article are drawn from fieldwork that was conducted for a book I co-wrote with David M. Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, Rivers of iron: railroads and Chinese power in southeast Asia (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2020). We had agreed that the interviews are our common property and can be used for any work that is subsequently published, individually or in collaboration. In this context, I thank the Smith Richardson Foundation for funding our fieldwork. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this article. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. 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TI - Infrastructure and Chinese power
JO - International Affairs
DO - 10.1093/ia/iiaa171
DA - 2020-11-09
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/infrastructure-and-chinese-power-J0jOc7UtZh
SP - 1461
EP - 1485
VL - 96
IS - 6
DP - DeepDyve
ER -