Despite China's leading role in the construction of infrastructure over the past decades, the most influential paradigms for the study of infrastructure in the social sciences originate from research conducted elsewhere. This introduction to the special section “Chinese Infrastructure: Techno-politics, Materialities, Legacies” seeks to address this apparent gap, and contributes to building an innovative research agenda for an infrastructural approach in the China studies field. To do so, it pushes forward an understanding of infrastructure as both an empirically rich material object of research and an analytical strategy for framing research questions. We draw from two strands of inquiry: recent efforts to rethink the materiality of infrastructures not as an inert or stable basis upon which more dynamic social processes emerge, but rather as unstable assemblages of human and non-human agencies; and scholarship that explores the often hidden (techno-)political dimensions of infrastructures, through which certain intended and unintended outcomes emerge less from the realms of policy and implementation and more from the material dispositions and effects of infrastructural formations. These strands of inquiry are brought together as part of our effort to recognize that the infrastructural basis of China's approach to development and statecraft deserves a more concerted theorizing of infrastructure than we have seen thus far.

By analysing the development and operation of local government bonds (LGBs), a new tool fashioned by the Chinese government to finance infrastructure projects, this article improves the understanding of the political economy of China's local debt. We find that the central government uses LGBs to intervene in local debt and pursue policy objectives, and designs a quota system to decide the bond issuing amount and the project selection. When calculating quotas, the central government prioritizes limiting financial risk and achieving national development goals. Local debt should match the fiscal capacity of local governments, and the projects should contribute to the sectors emphasized by the central government as important for national development, reflecting the centralization of central–local relations. However, LGBs hardly fix the problem of local debt, and the pressure to maintain economic growth by expanding infrastructure investment has pushed local debt to an alarming level.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a global health and political crisis like no other in recent history. As ground zero of the virus outbreak, significant criticism and blame have been directed at China for covering up the outbreak. Yet a systematic assessment of China's responses to international opprobrium of its pandemic measures has been largely lacking in the literature. Drawing on the concept of “blame” from public administration, this article seeks to fill this gap by investigating China's COVID-19 crisis and blame (mis)management practices. We make two key contributions in this article. First, we highlight how Beijing engaged in the politics of blame and outline three modes (defensive, aggressive and proactive benevolence) of its blame management practices. Second, we suggest that China sought to articulate and refine its identity during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing insights into a China that is increasingly assertive yet vulnerable to reputational damage. We contend that China's efforts to counter international opprobrium and shift strategic narratives speak directly to issues of autocratic legitimation and its conceived “responsible great power” identity, with greater success among domestic rather than global audiences.

This article investigates the role of foreign technical experts in developing China's aviation infrastructure from the 1980s to the present. Focusing on a series of training and technical aid programmes, it traces the influx of critical know-how from Europe, Japan and North America during the period of reform and opening up. Through fieldwork conducted at airports in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai – and expert interviews with architects, planners and engineers – the article sheds light on the instrumental role played by foreign technical experts. By establishing a leading-edge set of airport planning practices, these aviation professionals accelerated the modernization of China's transport infrastructure and its reintegration into the world economy. Moreover, by positioning China as a global leader in infrastructure development, they laid the technical foundations for Chinese foreign policy endeavours that seek to export an infrastructure-led model of economic development to Africa, Asia and the former Soviet sphere.

Economic development of a remote, mountainous region poses a challenge anywhere. Based on field research and documentary evidence, this article examines how such a development challenge has been addressed in Daocheng county, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. In doing so, it investigates the different forms of economic development, how such development comes about, and the role played by government in economic development. The article also probes the broader socioeconomic consequences of economic development. The fact that Daocheng is a predominantly Tibetan county adds a nationality dimension to the issue of economic development.

In China's one-party bureaucracy, central directives issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council are the most important instrument of formal policy communication, yet their language has rarely been studied. This study highlights three politically salient varieties of directives: grey (ambiguous about what can or cannot be done), black (clearly states what can be done) and red (clearly states what cannot be done). Grey directives encourage flexible policy implementation and experimentation, black ones strongly endorse and thereby scale up selected initiatives, while red ones forbid certain actions. Together, this mixture of ambiguous and clear directives forms a system of adaptive policy communication. Using automated text analysis, I classify nearly 5,000 central directives issued from 1978 through 2017 into the categories of grey, black and red. This first-of-its-kind measurement effort yields new insights into the patterns and evolution of central commands from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mobilizes Chinese construction and investment in developing countries. Ethiopia is Africa's “model” BRI country, due to China's elaborate infrastructure financing and building and its many manufacturing enterprises. Based on field and documentary research, we examine the BRI's meaning, as understood from the perspective of Ethiopia, in comparison to many China-oriented studies. We find that it is an informal Chinese state promise that even when capital flows from China to non-BRI states are curbed, flows to BRI states will be encouraged, and that Ethiopia exercises agency in leveraging the BRI for its development agenda. Using a comprehensive data set, we show that Chinese investment has become even more important in Ethiopia with the BRI and that neither COVID-19 nor Ethiopia's civil war has reversed that trend. We also discuss local criticisms of Chinese activities, which challenge the wholly positive view of the BRI, but do not affirm the US-generated negative narrative.

This paper proposes an infrastructure analytic for exploring the urbanizing landscapes of China's “national new areas.” In an effort to develop a less city-centred approach to the transformations underway in these spaces, I consider the new area as an “infrastructure space” in which the conventional distinctions between rural and urban have become increasingly meaningless. Such an approach draws our attention to the ways large-scale infrastructures of connectivity are driving a decentred form of urban development in which the livelihoods of residents are shaped by access to networks more than proximity to city centres. Based on case-study research of urbanizing villages and the rapid transformation of rural livelihoods in Gui'an New Area in Guizhou province, I suggest that an infrastructure analytic sheds light on the ways national new areas can be understood as particular events in an unfolding regime of circulation that has come to dominate urban forms worldwide.