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Paper short abstract:

The study of Chinese-financed infrastructure failure is limited. In the Eurasian context, there have been manifold occasions of such failures. This paper provides a timely theoretical analysis of ‘infrastructure failure’ sympathetic to inter-disciplinary approaches, for multiple stakeholders.

Paper long abstract:

The study of infrastructure failure is limited. Contributions have tended to focus on extant physical infrastructure failures such as collapsed bridges or burst pipelines rather than when and why projects fail and their consequences. This issue has become more important following increases in Chinese-sourced investment in infrastructure projects across Eurasia whether through private or state capital, financing or funding initiatives, with the explicit aim to create a ‘new Silk Road’ linking China to Europe (Eurasia).

In the Eurasian context, there have been multiple occasions of infrastructure project failure such as the light railway transport initiative in Nur-Sultan, and the multiple power station project cancellations resulting from coal phase-out policies since 2014. These examples constitute ‘infrastructure failures’: projects that for various reasons did not deliver their original plan. Presently, too little is understood about when or why Chinese-sourced infrastructure investments fail in Eurasia with the ‘when’ here understood as the temporal/spatial ‘point-of-failure’ within the project: the pre-planning, pre-construction, construction phases or beyond.

To address this shortfall, this paper – part of a Special Issue (SI) for the journal Competition and Change – provides a theoretical analysis of ‘infrastructure failure’ sympathetic to inter-disciplinary approaches (development studies, human geography, political economy etc.). The paper raises questions on what infrastructure failures mean for, amongst other dimensions, Chinese capital variety, geopolitics, labour relations, regional (Eurasian) blocs, and sectoral politics. As a result, it makes a timely contribution to scholarly literature and will stimulate debate on the pressing issue of infrastructure failure across Eurasia and beyond.