While many IR/IPE scholars focus on physical infrastructures, this article analyses the construction of Chinese financial infrastructures along the BRI as an exercise of economic statecraft within the context of the liberal, US-dominated global financial order 2/8
I trace activities of Chinese exchanges as crucial actors that facilitate financial connectivity by enabling investment into BRI projects (investment opportunities), bringing 🇨🇳investors into BRI markets (investor structure) & shaping how these markets work (investment rules) 3/8
After illustrating the emergence of financial infrastructure connectivity as important foreign economic policy within BRI, the empirical analysis 1) analyses 🇨🇳 exchanges' activities in Pakistan, Kazakhstan & Bangladesh as instances of ‘bilateral’ & ‘offensive’ statecraft 4/8
2) I analyse an emerging 🇨🇳-centred global network of financial infrastructures as ‘systemic’ & ‘defensive’ statecraft that shields Chinese foreign policy objectives from global pressures, potentially creating a parallel system of capital markets with Chinese characteristics 5/8
While, like much of BRI, China’s construction of BRI financial infrastructures is still in its formative stages, this development potentially adds another dimension to China’s growing challenge to the rules, norms and procedures that underpin the liberal global order. 6/8