Internationalizing Chinese standards through infrastructure experimentation: Engineering a pumped storage hydropower project in Israel

Abstract

This ethnographic study examines the implementation of Chinese engineering standards in a multinational pumped storage hydropower project in Israel. Using an ethnographic approach, the study investigates how Chinese standards are negotiated, accepted or rejected within local engineering practice and how Chinese engineers experience the international adoption of their knowledge. We find that although the adoption of Chinese practice-based standards lags behind Western principle-based knowledge in institutional spheres, the gap between the two has started to narrow on an individual level. We also show how the personal lives of Chinese engineers are affected by, and, in turn, have an impact on the standard practices of Belt and Road Initiative projects. The international adoption of Chinese standards is a multi-layered process of infrastructure experimentation on the ground rather than a top–down slogan. Our research broadens the discussion of engineering standards in energy transition and highlights how knowledge and practice flow, or fail to flow, from the infrastructure periphery to its centre, potentially reshaping global energy construction paradigms.