Dr Majed Akhter (KCL), Strand Building S-3.20.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a major plank of the Chinese infrastructural vision for Eurasian inter-connectivity known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Within Pakistan, attitudes towards CPEC are highly polarized: either celebrated as a godsend for an economy in tatters, or condemned as a neo-imperialist intervention that will seize Pakistani assets for Chinese development. My paper eschews the dichotomy of celebration/condemnation to develop a structural and socio-spatial analysis of the politics of Chinese infrastructural investment in Pakistan. By analyzing infrastructure politics through the concepts of the “spatial fix”, "social space", and "state space", the chapter illustrates the value of spatial theory for analyzing the politics and historical geography of uneven development, infrastructure politics, and state power in and across Asia.

 

The Seminar in Contemporary Marxist Theory is a speaker series organised by King’s College London (Departments of European and International Studies, Geography and French; School of Management & Business), Queen Mary University of London (Law), and Loughborough University London (Institute for International Management). All seminars are open to the public. No registration is required. 

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