Mapping Global China

Short description

This lecture examines the Belt and Road Initiative as both a material programme and a flexible political narrative. Students explore its principal corridors, infrastructure projects, controversies, and changing priorities. The lecture explains why there is no definitive list or authoritative map of BRI projects and how mapping can reveal stalled projects, local resistance, renegotiation, and uneven outcomes.

Questions for students

1. Is the BRI a coherent strategy, a collection of projects, or a narrative umbrella?

2. Why might the Chinese government prefer not to publish a definitive BRI map?

3. What does the debate over “debt-trap diplomacy” reveal about the way evidence is used in geopolitical narratives?

Think about

Select one BRI project. Identify the Chinese actors, host-country institutions, financiers, affected communities, and environmental setting. Does this change how you understand responsibility for its outcomes?

Suggested materials

• Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century?

• Deborah Brautigam, “A Critical Look at Chinese ‘Debt-Trap Diplomacy.’”

• Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, Debunking the Myth of “Debt-Trap Diplomacy.”

• Use an independent BRI database to compare official narratives with project-level evidence.

Short description

This lecture introduces soft power and examines China’s efforts to generate international attraction through culture, education, media, diplomacy, development, and economic opportunity. It distinguishes soft power from sharp power and asks whether attraction can be produced by governments. The lecture emphasises that China’s influence depends not only on Beijing’s intentions but also on how different audiences interpret China’s rise.

Questions for students

1. Can a government deliberately manufacture soft power?

2. When does public diplomacy become sharp power?

3. Why might people admire China’s economic achievements without embracing its political system?

4. Does economic dependence necessarily produce political attraction?

Think about

Identify a Chinese cultural or educational initiative in your country. Who created it, who participates in it, and how is it perceived locally?

Suggested materials

• Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power.

• Maria Repnikova, Chinese Soft Power.

• Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive.

• Compare one CGTN report with coverage of the same event by a local or international news organisation.

Short description

This lecture moves beyond the question of whether China is “good” or “bad” for Africa. Through cases from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Ghana, it examines how African governments, courts, communities, workers, activists, and businesses negotiate or resist Chinese engagement. The central argument is that China–Africa relations are co-produced and that local institutions strongly influence their outcomes.

Questions for students

1. What forms can African agency take beyond national government decisions?

2. Why do similar Chinese projects generate different outcomes in different countries?

3. Does focusing on African agency risk overlooking asymmetries of power?

4. What role do courts, journalists, and civil society play in infrastructure governance?

Think about

Choose one Chinese-supported project in Africa. Map one benefit, one cost, one local beneficiary, and one group that bears the risks.

Suggested materials

• Ching Kwan Lee, The Specter of Global China.

• Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon’s Gift.

• Chris Alden, China in Africa.

• Examine research and project data from the China–Africa Research Initiative.

Short description

This lecture examines China’s growing role in Latin America through Brazilian soy, Peruvian copper and port infrastructure, Ecuadorian oil, and Argentine lithium. These cases show how global demand and investment reshape particular territories. Students consider how Chinese engagement intersects with local ecologies, Indigenous rights, national development strategies, and community mobilisation.

Questions for students

1. Who should be held responsible for the environmental consequences of a global supply chain?

2. Why is the local level often decisive in determining project outcomes?

3. Can minerals required for the green transition be extracted in environmentally and socially sustainable ways?

4. How might the Chancay port reshape regional trade and political relations?

Think about

Select one commodity exported from Latin America to China. Trace its journey from extraction or production to its final market. Where are its social and environmental costs concentrated?

Suggested materials

• Rebecca Ray et al., China in Latin America: Lessons for South–South Cooperation and Sustainable Development.

• Margaret Myers and Carol Wise, eds., The Political Economy of China–Latin America Relations in the New Millennium.

• Explore satellite imagery of Chancay, Las Bambas, or the lithium fields of northern Argentina.

Short description

This lecture explores China’s expanding digital presence through telecommunications networks, fibre-optic cables, satellites, data centres, e-commerce platforms, cloud services, and surveillance technologies. It examines the Digital Silk Road and the international growth of Chinese technology companies, asking how privately delivered infrastructure can carry geopolitical, regulatory, and security consequences.

Questions for students

1. Is the Digital Silk Road a defined initiative or a label applied to many different activities?

2. When a company builds digital infrastructure abroad, who controls the resulting data?

3. Should Chinese technology companies be treated primarily as businesses or as geopolitical actors?

4. Can countries benefit from Chinese digital infrastructure while protecting their regulatory autonomy?

Think about

Find out which companies provide your country’s telecommunications equipment, cloud services, payment systems, or surveillance technologies. What forms of dependence does this create?

Suggested materials

• Jonathan E. Hillman, The Digital Silk Road.

• Rogier Creemers, writings on Chinese cyber governance and cyber sovereignty.

• International Telecommunication Union resources on digital infrastructure and technical standards.

• Map one Chinese technology company’s international operations.

Short description

This lecture presents migration as the human infrastructure of Global China. It traces the history of Chinese labour migration, diaspora entrepreneurship, student mobility, BRI workers, and migration into China. From railway workers and engineers to restaurant owners and traders, migrants create connections that cannot be explained solely through state policy or investment statistics.

Questions for students

1. How do migrants create forms of connectivity that governments cannot fully control?

2. What is the difference between an established diaspora and temporary overseas contract labour?

3. When does government engagement with diaspora communities become politically sensitive?

4. How does migration challenge the idea that Global China radiates in only one direction?

Think about

Identify a Chinese diaspora community—or a community of foreign migrants in China. What economic, cultural, and political connections does it maintain across borders?

Suggested materials

• Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change.

• Min Zhou, research on the Chinese diaspora and transnationalism.

• Yoon Jung Park, research on Chinese migration in Africa.

• Compare official migration statistics with interviews or community-based accounts.

Short description

This lecture investigates China’s contradictory environmental role. China is simultaneously the world’s largest emitter and a leading producer, investor, and exporter of renewable-energy technologies. Students examine coal, hydropower, solar energy, electric vehicles, critical minerals, and the environmental effects of overseas projects to assess whether China’s global expansion is enabling or obstructing a green transition.

Questions for students

1. How can China be both a major source of emissions and a leader in green technology?

2. Should a project be considered “green” if it lowers emissions but harms local ecosystems or communities?

3. Who bears the environmental costs of producing solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles?

4. How should the Green BRI be evaluated: by promises, financing, or project-level outcomes?

Think about

Select one Chinese-supported energy project. Evaluate it using three criteria: emissions, local environmental effects, and distribution of benefits.

Suggested materials

• International Energy Agency materials on China and clean-energy supply chains.

• Boston University Global Development Policy Center datasets on China’s overseas energy finance.

• China’s official guidance on the Green Belt and Road Initiative.

• Compare a Chinese-supported coal project with a renewable-energy project in the same region.

Short description

This lecture examines China’s growing role in defining what is considered legitimate, fair, and desirable in international affairs. It explores sovereignty, non-interference, development, human rights, cyber governance, technical standards, and the idea of a “community of shared future for mankind.” Rather than presenting China as simply replacing a Western order, the lecture describes a negotiated and increasingly plural global normative system.

Questions for students

1. What is the difference between possessing material power and exercising normative power?

2. Why does China’s emphasis on sovereignty and non-interference appeal to some governments?

3. Can technical standards embed political values?

4. Is China creating new norms or changing the interpretation of existing ones?

Think about

Choose one international concept—sovereignty, development, security, human rights, or multilateralism. Compare how it is used in one Chinese policy document and one Western policy document.

Suggested materials

• Rosemary Foot, China, the UN, and Human Protection.

• Maria Adele Carrai, Sovereignty in China.

• Shaun Breslin, writings on China’s global normative influence.

• Examine Chinese resolutions or statements at the United Nations and compare their language across time.

Short description

This practical lecture introduces mapping as a method for studying Global China. It shows how researchers can combine project, investment, ecological, migration, trade, conflict, and cultural data to investigate relationships that may be hidden in official narratives. Students also learn that maps are interpretive arguments shaped by decisions about data, categories, scale, and visibility.

Questions for students

1. What does a map reveal that a written account might miss?

2. What kinds of people or experiences are difficult to represent spatially?

3. How do choices of colour, scale, categories, and boundaries influence interpretation?

4. What should researchers do when project data are incomplete or contested?

Think about

Create a simple map of one Chinese-linked project and add at least three layers—for example, investment, population, ecology, migration, or conflict. What new question emerges when the layers are combined?

Suggested materials

• Denis Wood, The Power of Maps.

• Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps.

• QGIS introductory tutorials.

• Explore the Mapping Global China platform and build a map focused on one country or sector.

Short description

The concluding lecture brings together the course’s central themes: infrastructure, finance, technology, migration, culture, environmental change, security, and international norms. It argues that Global China is not a uniform process directed entirely from Beijing. It is an uneven and contested system produced through interactions among governments, companies, communities, workers, consumers, and environments.

Questions for students

1. Has the course changed how you define Global China?

2. Which actors are most often missing from dominant narratives about China’s rise?

3. What can mapping reveal, and what can it conceal?

4. Is Global China transforming globalisation, or is it itself being transformed by globalisation?

Final reflection

Return to the Chinese-linked product, company, project, or institution you identified in Lecture 1. Using what you have learned, explain:

• Who participates in producing it;

• Who benefits and who bears the risks;

• How local actors reshape it;

• What larger economic, political, environmental, or cultural system it belongs to.

Suggested materials

• Revisit your notes and maps from the previous lectures.

• Select one Mapping Global China case study and evaluate it using at least three course themes.

• Develop a short map, visual essay, or research note presenting your own interpretation of Global China.