This work focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure development strategy announced by the Chinese government in 2013. Thus far, the BRI has been analysed primarily through a geopolitical, political economic, cultural, and environmental lens, with strong attention paid to the role of nation-states and their institutions. Instead, I explore BRI as an inherently urban and local project. To unravel its contradictions, I focus on the particular locality on the BRI map: the village of Małaszewicze. Located in Eastern Poland, just a few kilometres from the Poland/Belarus border, Małaszewicze is the site of one Europe’s most important logistical hubs. An entry point to the European Union, and a connection between European-gauge and Soviet-gauge railway systems, Małaszewicze is an obligatory stop for many freight trains linking up Europe and China, dubbed the China-Europe Express. Relying on interviews with local actors, ethnographic observations, and photography as research method, I look at how the BRI materialises “on the ground”. I explore what local interests it represents and opposes, who advances and contests it, how it relates to local economy and urban development. Located in one of the EU’s poorest and “least developed” regions, supposedly suffering from an important “infrastructure gap”, Małaszewicze’s « bet » on the BRI is narrated as a glimpse of future modernity and prosperity — without considering the political geographies, stark power assymetries, unevenness and coloniality of the development this strategy heralds.

Wojciech Kębłowski
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université libre de Bruxelles

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ID Abstract: 226