Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
On March 9, 2022, UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs co-hosted a virtual event with the Centre for Chinese Research at the Institute of Asian Research. This talk explored the logics of Chinese capital through the financing of the Laos-China Railway. Railways often do not generate significant revenue, nor enough capital to repay project debt. It is no surprise that debt relations remain one of the most prominent concerns circulating around the Laos–China Railway. The project has attracted intense scrutiny from observers around the world due to its cost, and has been criticized as an example of predatory lending and debt-trap diplomacy—in which China uses loans to ensnare countries for political or ideological reasons. However, it is overly simplistic to assume that capital always operates under a singular profit motive or as geopolitically predatory. Instead, many of the risks and financing challenges of the railway have fallen and will fall on Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
In this talk, Jessica DiCarlo, Chevalier Postdoctoral Fellow in Transportation and Development in China, Institute of Asian Research, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA), pushed back on narratives of debt-trapping and suggested that Chinese capital operates with additional logics of what C.K. Lee terms “encompassing accumulation.” She showed that rather than solely profit-seeking or debt-trapping, there are additional logics of capital at play. First, debt provides an outlet for over-accumulation by delaying devaluation of domestic Chinese capital. Theoretically, she built on Lee’s theory of encompassing accumulation by adding a temporal argument on delay of railway capital. Second, this deferral is possible due to the involvement of Chinese SOEs and the use of public-private partnerships and joint ventures, which able to either take on long-term risk or transfer risk to lower-level actors. She argued that Chinese capital operates with a set of imperatives that are driven by domestic economic considerations and by the dual character of SOEs and joint ventures as simultaneously commercial and embedded in the state. This affords SOEs more tolerance for risk and more power to offload it.
Moderator: Associate Professor Kristen Hopewell, Canada Research Chair in Global Policy, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA)
Discussants:
Edi Qereshniku, Student, Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs
Jemimah Ogundele, Student, Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs
On March 9, 2022, UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs co-hosted a virtual event with the Centre for Chinese Research at the Institute of Asian Research. This talk explored the logics of Chinese capital through the financing of the Laos-China Railway. Railways often do not generate significant revenue, nor enough capital to repay project debt. It is no surprise that debt relations remain one of the most prominent concerns circulating around the Laos–China Railway. The project has attracted intense scrutiny from observers around the world due to its cost, and has been criticized as an example of predatory lending and debt-trap diplomacy—in which China uses loans to ensnare countries for political or ideological reasons. However, it is overly simplistic to assume that capital always operates under a singular profit motive or as geopolitically predatory. Instead, many of the risks and financing challenges of the railway have fallen and will fall on Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
In this talk, Jessica DiCarlo, Chevalier Postdoctoral Fellow in Transportation and Development in China, Institute of Asian Research, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA), pushed back on narratives of debt-trapping and suggested that Chinese capital operates with additional logics of what C.K. Lee terms “encompassing accumulation.” She showed that rather than solely profit-seeking or debt-trapping, there are additional logics of capital at play. First, debt provides an outlet for over-accumulation by delaying devaluation of domestic Chinese capital. Theoretically, she built on Lee’s theory of encompassing accumulation by adding a temporal argument on delay of railway capital. Second, this deferral is possible due to the involvement of Chinese SOEs and the use of public-private partnerships and joint ventures, which able to either take on long-term risk or transfer risk to lower-level actors. She argued that Chinese capital operates with a set of imperatives that are driven by domestic economic considerations and by the dual character of SOEs and joint ventures as simultaneously commercial and embedded in the state. This affords SOEs more tolerance for risk and more power to offload it.
Moderator: Associate Professor Kristen Hopewell, Canada Research Chair in Global Policy, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA)
Discussants:
Edi Qereshniku, Student, Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs
Jemimah Ogundele, Student, Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs
