Subterranean and orbital spaces of the Belt and Road

With some important exceptions, the Belt and Road Initiative is overwhelmingly represented and conceptualized as terrestrial, ground-based infrastructures: rails, roads, ports, and power plants. But subterranean and orbital spaces are fundamental and instrumental to this and other infrastructure development projects and are therefore also spaces of contestation.

The planning, construction, monitoring and operation of such infrastructures relies on satellite imagery and monitoring; navigation and connectivity among Belt and Road partner states is mediated through networks of satellite technologies, ground stations, and handheld devices. Minerals and other raw materials extracted from the substrata are not only essential to build the ground-based infrastructures, but immense volumes of them are transported in the form of fuels and commodities via new and existing infrastructural corridors.

The exercise of competing development visions through subterranean and orbital spaces draws diverse landscapes and lives into the vortices of large-scale development processes of the transnational state. That these processes are not unique to the Belt and Road, but rather are characteristic of large-scale infrastructure projects across the globe suggests that a revised theoretical framework that combats the ‘surface bias’ of mega-projects research is due.

This talk shares findings from fieldwork conducted in China from 2011 to 2013, in Brazil in 2017 and 2018, Nigeria and Algeria in 2019, and analysis of media and government documents from the United States, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan accessed with the help of translators between 2013 to 2021.