Chinese infrastructure diplomacy in Russia: the geopolitics of project type, location, and scale

Abstract

The Chinese government actively engages in infrastructure diplomacy, with the state financing and constructing capital goods multilaterally under the Belt and Road Initiative and bilaterally in countries like Russia. There, Chinese infrastructure diplomacy is making inroads, especially in Russia's transportation and energy sectors. New bridges and pipelines will soon link the two countries across the Amur River border. While some scholars see infrastructure diplomacy as dependent on bilateral relations, we argue that the type, location and scale of a project also affect its implementation. By analyzing government documents and media reports, we consider Chinese infrastructure projects in Russia across two categories–energy and transportation–and two locations–cross-border and interior–to answer three questions. First, what distinguishes bilateral cooperation in transportation infrastructure from bilateral cooperation in energy infrastructure? Second, how does cooperation on cross-border projects differ from projects located wholly within the recipient country’s territory? Third, what is the significance of the imagined scale of a project for its realization? We conclude that energy projects in a country’s interior are more likely to succeed than cross-border transportation projects. This finding suggests Chinese efforts to enhance infrastructural and “people-to-people” ties in cross-border locations may prove problematic.