China's Global Infrastructure Ambitions

Roundtable Osteuropa

With Valentin Krüsmann, Lunting Wu und Julia Langbein

The G20 summits are a forum where global economic priorities and development agendas take shape. As a G20 member, China has pledged to promote more inclusive growth — and big infrastructure projects are a central part of that story. For China, the summit in Johannesburg is an opportunity to showcase its expanding development agenda in Africa and beyond, with infrastructure being one of its main tools. Lunting Wu and Valentin Krüsmann have researched how China’s Belt and Road Initiative is unfolding in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America and Southeast Asia. In this podcast episode, they discuss their insights with ZOiS researcher Julia Langbein.

Music: “Complete” by Modul is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0-License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Speakers:

Lunting Wu (NUPI and GIGA)

Valentin Krüsmann (ZOiS)

Chair: Julia Langbein (ZOiS):

Read more:

Article by Tanja A. Börzel, Julia Langbein, Lunting Wu, Valentin Krüsmann: ‘Collision, Competition or Cooperation? China's BRI and the EU's Development Policies Towards Eastern Europe’ In: Global Policy, 2025 (online first).https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.70086

Book by Lunting Wu: Belt and Road Initiative in South America. Explaining the Varying Responses, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-97-1545-9

The theme for South Africa’s G20 Presidency is Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability: https://g20.org/g20-south-africa/g20-logo-and-theme/.

Kapitel

1. G20 development goals and China's infrastructure projects (00:00:00)

2. How inclusive is the development promoted by China’s BRI? (00:04:19)

3. Are the EU or multilateral development banks better at promoting inclusive development? (00:12:54)

4. What bargaining power do host countries and their governments have? (00:19:05)

5. What drives China’s infrastructural agenda? (00:23:42)

6. Local Perceptions of China’s global infrastructure ambitions (00:30:06)