BY OLIVIA RUSSO ’25
STAFF WRITER
On Thursday, Feb. 13, the Mount Holyoke College community welcomed University of Utah Professor Jessica DiCarlo in presenting the College’s Annual Geography Lecture.
Motivated by several years of work in the non-governmental organization and education sectors of Tibet and China, DiCarlo’s research is focused on infrastructure, China’s global integration and socio-environmental issues, according to her website. As a human geographer, she has situated her research at the intersection of development studies, political ecology and Global China studies, with an emphasis on connecting ground-level cases observed from local communities to overarching global processes through ethnographic fieldwork.
At the beginning of her lecture, entitled “From the Ground to the Global: Conceptualizing Global China and How it is Transforming Development,” DiCarlo introduced a critical approach to thinking about the concept of Global China. Global China often encompasses different connotations and perceptions, which are sometimes contradictory but seemingly always dynamic and in flux. She emphasized the importance of analyzing the term’s historical roots: while the mention and usage of the term “Global China” sharply increased post-2013, the exact phrasing began to circulate in the 1970s. The discussion at that time primarily focused on whether China could become a global power and on Global China as a phenomenon happening to China rather than something China was doing to the rest of the world. However, it gradually transitioned to indicate China’s integration into global markets and its active shaping of global systems.
Using a genealogical approach, DiCarlo presented “six paths” of Global China: “other,” “integration,” “status,” “bridge,” “threat” and “alternative.” She notes that each path builds on particular lineages and understanding of both “China” and “global,” and while they are interlinked, tensions also exist within and between paths. For example, while “other” treats China as an external or alien force, and traces Western fear and anxiety about a rising China, “bridge” understands China as connections between people, cultures and ideas. While “status” frames China’s global rise as evidence of shifting power hierarchies, “threat” portrays China’s global footprint as a challenge to the existing order. Such conceptions of Global China have important implications for developmental thinking, as well as security measures, policies, development projects and more.
In contrast to the implications of Global China on an international scale, these paths simultaneously unfold in a different manner on a local scale. DiCarlo presented several projects indicative of this dissonance that she studied through fieldwork in Laos: the Laos-China Railway, Laos-China Economic Corridor and the Boten Special Economic Zone. These projects were part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global infrastructure development strategy adopted by China. She described that, on a larger scale, these projects have extravagant launch parties, dominate the land as massive structures, are showcased in headlines and supposedly represent economic development and modernity. However, the fanfare that surrounds these global infrastructure projects often obscures the local, everyday experiences of people actually on the ground.
For example, DiCarlo found that in the Boten Special Economic Zone, workers were tasked with long, tedious labor that was ultimately intended to market a certain vision of prosperity, fanfare and money in the zone. Once the guests left, the whole city shut down. Another example she presented was the Laos-China Railway, which physically dominated the landscape and presented many issues for people on the ground. DiCarlo highlighted that people on the ground often don’t talk about the BRI or understand the project as a Chinese initiative despite being affected by issues such as farmland loss, deforestation or being displaced from their homes. She described that local residents were more concerned with land appropriation and lack of compensation for the displaced. Thus, while the BRI may seem to be everywhere, it’s not always visible to those most affected by it.
In general, DiCarlo argues that such development projects display the need to pay attention to “politics of sight,” pertaining to how the projects themselves as well as people are seen, and “downstream effects and flows,” or how power flows downstream from China and encounters obstacles along the way. Infrastructure projects exist on a spectrum of visibility, and visible projects, such as gleaming highways or giant ports, often hide or distract from less visible issues, like labor disputes and environmental damage.
Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact-checking.