Presentation short abstract

China’s expanding waste-to-energy sector has shifted from a domestic fix to a geopolitical instrument. This study examines how WTE became a state-selected regime and how its localization in the Global South reshapes financial logics, state spatial strategies, and infrastructural power.

Presentation long abstract

Over the past decade, China’s waste-to-energy (WTE) sector has emerged as a key frontier in the outward reach of its developmental state. Initially introduced in the 2000s to address the domestic waste crisis, WTE has since been reframed as a global project through national renewable-energy programs, policy-bank green financing, and diplomatic platforms such as the Green Belt and Road. Departing from the European model dominated by privatized operators such as Veolia and Suez, this study adopts a geopolitical ecology approach to argue that China-led waste-infrastructure frontiers are no longer merely profit-driven but function as instruments of state-building and geopolitical restructuring. Drawing on historical-institutional lens and spatial analysis of several Chinese WTE investment projects, the research asks: (1) why and how WTE has become a strategically selected technological regime of the Chinese state, from domestic municipal investment to global expansion; and (2) what new financial rationalities, state spatial strategies, and power relations emerge through its localization, especially across rapidly urbanizing regions in the Global South. The rise of WTE not only drives a shift from labor-intensive local waste disposal to capital-intensive mega-infrastructure implemented through more authoritarian, state-centered, and technocratic modalities, but also positions China’s infrastructural ideologies as active participants in global struggles over the definition of green technology. These controversies intensify as the EU questions WTE’s green classification, countries such as the UK and Australia revive WTE investment in strategic response to China, and anti-incineration movements in Southeast Asia mobilize against China-financed projects.