In the name of the nation: Authoritarian practices, capital accumulation, and the radical simplification of development in China’s global vision

Abstract

This article explores how the nationalist, business-centric, elite-led and labour-subsuming logics of development in contemporary China are mirrored in contingent and locally-mediated ways in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In China’s present ‘de-revolutionary’ moment [Wang, 2006], non-elite populations are conceived as labour inputs to be used and moulded in the pursuit of national development through market means. This same developmental ethos, mediated by a plethora of Chinese and non-Chinese actors, underpins the authoritarian tendencies of BRI-branded projects across the world. While authoritarian practices in China have both Leninist and capitalist genealogies and drivers, I argue here that Global China’s most tangible and remarkable impacts on international authoritarianism are found in the practices required to secure capital accumulation along the BRI.