R e s e a r c h

Link to C.V.

My research focuses on development, issues at the environment-society nexus, and China’s global engagements. A critical human geographer, I have conducted research on infrastructure, land and resource politics, disasters, rural livelihoods, critical minerals, special economic zones and labor, and US-China competition. I am committed to long-term fieldwork and seek to connect grounded cases with global processes. My research is informed by several years in China’s NGO and education sectors since 2008, and my interest in China’s borderlands motivated research and other work in Laos, Nepal, India, and Tibet. My current research is categorized into four streams:

Global China
and infrastructure

Political ecology and development in Asia

Geopolitics & geoeconomics
US-China competition

Energy transition policy,
materials, and minerals

DiCarlo, Jessica and Hilary Faxon. Articles and introduction under review. Power, Nature and Society: Political Ecology & Agrarian Studies in Southeast Asia. Journal of Asian Studies.

DiCarlo Jessica, Shahar Hameiri, Seth Schindler, Lee Jones. Under review. The Second Cold War and the Politics of Polyalignment. Third World Quarterly.

 DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. Forum: A Decade of the Belt and Road Initiative. Global China Pulse, 2(1): 117-146.

Seth Schindler and Jessica DiCarlo, editors. 2022. The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2021. Grounding Global China in Northern Laos: The Making of the Infrastructure Frontier. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Colorado Boulder.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. Review of June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989 by Jeremy Brown, 2021. Eurasian Geography and Economics.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. Review of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia by David Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, 2020. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Annah Lake Zhu. 2022. Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China: A Conversation with Annah Lake Zhu. Global China Pulse, vol. 2.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Review of Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China by Anna Lora-Wainwright, 2017. Environment and Society, 11. 

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Review of High-speed rail and China’s new economic geography, edited by Zhenhua Chen and Kingsley E. Haynes. The Pennsylvania Geographer.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2015. Review of Blindspot: How neoliberalism infiltrated global health, by Salmaan Keshavjee. UC Berkeley MDP Blog.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Ilias Alami, Steve Rolf, and Seth Schindler. 2025. Sinews of control: How state-capitalist geopolitics is reshaping global networks and power. The Monitor published by The Carter Center.

Deberdt, Raphael and Jessica DiCarlo. 2024. DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt – how control by local elites can shape the global battery industry. The Conversation.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2024. Bringing a Politics of Sight to the Belt and Road Initiative: In/visibility, Infrastructure, Global China. Transformations: Belt and Road in Global Perspective. Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.

Oakes, Tim, Jessica Clendenning, Jessica DiCarlo, Matthew S. Erie, Max Hirsh, Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, Hasan H. Karrar, Verena La Mela, Juliet Lu, Till Mostowlansky, Galen Murton, Huiying Ng, Roger Norum, Nadine Plachta, Björn Reichhardt, Alessandro Rippa, Jasnea Sarma, Emilia Sulek, Dorothy Tang, Zarina Urmanbetova and Thomas White. 2022. China’s global development model: Looking beyond the Belt and Road Initiative. Fribourg, Munich, and Boulder.

Joniak-Lüthi, Agnieszka, Alessandro Rippa, Jessica Clendenning, Jessica DiCarlo, Matthew S. Erie, Max Hirsh, Hasan H. Karrar, Verena La Mela, Juliet Lu, Till Mostowlansky, Galen Murton, Huiying Ng, Roger Norum, Tim Oakes, Nadine Plachta, Björn Reichhardt, Jasnea Sarma, Emilia Sulek, Dorothy Tang, Zarina Urmanbetova and Thomas White. 2022. Demystifying the Belt and Road Initiative. Fribourg, Munich and Boulder.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Timothy Oakes. 2022. From China Model to Global China (ChinaMade Brief #14). ChinaMade: Asian Infrastructures and the ‘China Model’ of Development.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2022. Boten: from Dawn till Dusk. Global China Pulse, 1(1): 141-144.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Courtney Wittekind. 2022. Infrastructures of Urban Life Yet-to-Come (ChinaMade Brief #12). ChinaMade: Asian Infrastructures and the ‘China Model’ of Development.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2022. Boten Special Economic Zone on The People’s Map of Global China.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Sam Williams, Aaditee Kudrimoti, Pakhi Das, Melissa Butynski, Amrita Neelakantan. 2022. FOCUS-BRI: Framing Opportunities for Conservation by Understanding Safeguards in the Belt and Road Initiative. Report for the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and the Hewlett Foundation.

DiCarlo, Jessica et al. (other authors to remain anonymous). 2022. Understanding Social and Environmental Impacts and Safeguards surrounding BRI projects in Laos for Navigating the Belt and Road Initiative Phase II. Asia Society Policy Institute, New York.

Chen, Wanjing (Kelly) and DiCarlo, Jessica. 2021. Laos-China Railway on The People’s Map of Global China.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2021. Lost in Translation: Environmental and Social Safeguards for the Laos-China Railway. Global Development Policy Center Blog, Boston University.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Seth Schindler. 2020. Will Biden pass the America LEADS Act and start a new Cold War with China? Global Policy Journal.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2019. Case studies on megaprojects in Vang Vieng: The railway, expressway, and new city. Report for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Poverty.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2017. Belt and Road Infrastructures: Modernist Dreams, Local Dilemmas? The Asia Dialogue of the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute.

Kathleen Epstein, Robin Marsh, Inger Måren, Isha Ray, Jessica DiCarlo, Dinesh Paudel and Bikash Adhikari. 2017. Research Summary: Adaptation after the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes: a smallholder perspective. Published by Forest Action.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2016. Post-disaster community resilience in Nepal. UC Berkeley’s Master of Development Practice Blog.

edited volume, special issues, dissertation

articles & book chapters

Book reviews

Policy & public scholarship

DiCarlo, Jessica and Meredith DeBoom. Forthcoming. Six paths of Global China: A genealogy of a contested geographical imaginary. Dialogues in Human Geography.

DiCarlo, Jessica and David Fernando Bachrach. 2025. The corridor as commodity: Enclosure, legibility, and uneven development in Southeast Asian railway projects. Antipode 57(3): 930-952.

Alami, Ilias, Jessica DiCarlo, Steve Rolf, Seth Schindler. 2025. The new frontline: The US-China battle for control of global networks. State of Power 2025: The Geopolitics of Capitalism. The Transnational Institute.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2025. Behind the Spectacle of the Belt and Road Initiative: Corridor Perspectives, In/visibility, and a Politics of Sight. In Seeing China’s Belt and Road, edited by Rachel Silvey and Edward Schatz. Oxford University Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2024. Speed, Suspension, and Stasis: Life in the Shadow of Infrastructure. In Infrastructural Times: Temporality and the Making of Global Urban Worlds, edited by Jean-Paul Addie, Michael Glass, and Jen Nelles. Bristol University Press.

Debert, Raphael and Jessica DiCarlo, Hyeyoon Park. 2024. Standardizing “green” extractivism: Chinese & Western environmental, social, and governance instruments in the critical mineral sector. Extractive Industries and Society, 19: 101516.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. The BRI, Grounded. Global China Pulse, 2(1): 143-146.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Kearrin Sims. 2023. Corridors of connectivity and the infrastructural land rush in Laos. The Routledge Handbook for Global Land and Resource Grabbing.

Schindler, Seth, Ilias Alami, Jessica DiCarlo, Nicholas Jepson, Steve Rolf, Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ, Louis Cyuzuzo, Meredith DeBoom, Alireza F. Farahani, Imogen T. Liu, Hannah McNicola, Julie T. Miao, Philip Nock, Gilead Teri, Maximiliano Facundo Vila Seoane, Kevin Ward, Tim Zajontz, and Yawei Zhao. 2023. The Second Cold War: US-China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks. Geopolitics.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2022. Eventuality and Rhythms of Life in a City Yet-to-Come. Global China Pulse, 1(1): 145-159.

Schindler, Seth & Jessica DiCarlo. 2022. Towards a critical geopolitics of China-US rivalry: Pericentricity, regional conflicts, and transnational connections. Area, 00, 1–8. Available from: https://doi. org/10.1111/area.12812.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Micah Ingalls. 2022. Multipolar infrastructures: Mosaic geopolitics and state restructuring in Laos. In The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

Schindler, Seth and Jessica DiCarlo. 2022. Twenty-first-century Third Worldism? In The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Seth Schindler. 2022. Introduction: Geopolitics, infrastructure, and the emergent geographies of US-China competition. In The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

Schindler, Seth, Jessica DiCarlo and Dinesh Paudel. 2021. The new Cold War and the rise of the 21st-century infrastructure state. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 00: 1-16.

Suhardiman, Diana, Jessica DiCarlo, Oulavanh Keovilignavong, Jonathan Rigg, and Alan Nicol. 2021. (Re)constructing state power through the Laos-China Railway project. Geoforum, 124(2): 79-88.

Song Zhouying and Jessica DiCarlo. 2021. Socio-environmental implications of the Laos-China Railway. In Understanding the Belt and Road Initiative: Case Study Perspectives, edited by Liu Weidong. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Mind the Gap: Grounding Development Finance and Safeguards through Land Compensation on the Laos-China Belt and Road Corridor. Global China Initiative Working Paper 013. Boston University, Global Development Policy Center.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Katie Epstein, Robin Marsh & Inger Måren. 2018. Post-disaster agricultural transitions in Nepal. Ambio, 1–12.

Epstein, Katie, Jessica DiCarlo, Robin Marsh, Bikash Adhikari, Dinesh Paudel, Isha Ray & Inger Måren. 2018. Recovery and adaptation after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: A smallholder household perspective. Ecology and Society, 23(1).

Epstein, Katie, Jessica DiCarlo, Robin Marsh, Isha Ray & Inger Måren. 2017. Coping Strategies of Smallholder Farming Communities after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake: Insights into Post-Disaster Resilience and Social–Ecological Change. Case Studies in the Environment.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Sri Gopakumar, Suneeta Krishnan & Preet K. Dhillan. 2016. Adoption of information and communication technologies for early detection of breast and cervical cancers in low- and middle-income countries. The Journal of Global Oncology and the Annals of Global Health. 

Abstract | ‘Global China’ has emerged as a shorthand for China’s relationship to the global, but its axiomatic uses disguise considerable complexity. This article troubles self-evident uses and tidy categorizations of Global China by approaching it as an emergent, pluralistic geographical imaginary warranting critical geographic analysis. Employing a genealogical approach that privileges indeterminacy and inconsistency over linearity and singularity, we draw on wide-ranging sources to reveal the contested, contextual, and contested uses of Global China in the contemporary moment. Our analysis identifies six ‘paths’ of Global China: other, integration, bridge, status, threat, and alternative. Each path facilitates distinct yet interlinked claims about the relationship between China and the global, creating a rich web of interrelations that enables ‘Global China’ to encompass a range of world-making and meaning-making projects—from south-south solidarity and people-to-people connections to superpower rivalry and geoeconomic competition. The fluidity and open-endedness of Global China make it a site of contestation where competing visions clash and coalesce—but also a site of possibility. We conclude by discussing how scholars can use and build on the identified paths to engage Global Chinas in practice—and perhaps to envision and enact additional paths of Global China as well.

Abstract | Corridors are promoted as seamless solutions for economic development, integrating production and consumption networks. However, they often fall short, fail, and operate as tools of accumulation for some while unevenly and, at times, violently reshaping the lives of others. This paper examines how corridors are constructed through dialectical processes of enclosure and opening, involving the enclosure of land, livelihoods, and social relations alongside the opening of spaces for speculation and accumulation, which we argue constitute corridorisation. Central to this process is abstraction, which transforms corridors into commodities, obscuring inherent contradictions and violence. Drawing on Marx's concept of commodity fetishism, we analyse corridors in Indonesia and Laos to trace the processes and effects of corridorisation. By exposing the fetishisation of corridors, this paper unmasks the hidden social relations and uneven impacts underpinning their development, shedding light on who and what is excluded from these visions of progress.

Abstract | Current geopolitical competition has deepened into a Second Cold War between US and China, but this is no longer a fight over territory but rather control of global networks – with increased state-led attempts to control semiconductor supply chains and electric vehicle (EV) production to digital platforms, transport infrastructure, and financial payment systems. How can the global South and social movements navigate this new geopolitical terrain?

Abstract | This chapter examines infrastructure development in northern Laos through a politics of sight. Drawing on the viewpoints of residents, workers, and officials, I ask how people see (or do not see) the BRI; for whom is the BRI hyper-visible or invisible; and what might certain measures of visibility obscure or omit? This chapter extends conceptual and theoretical engagements with infrastructure to theorize infrastructural visibility on a spectrum. I explore how projects are seen and the ramifications of different ways of seeing. Through a follow-the-corridor approach, I ethnographically illuminate the downstream experiences of infrastructure development for Chinese and Lao communities. By challenging prevailing narratives and emphasizing localized experiences, this chapter contributes valuable insights to understanding the BRI and China's global role. It underscores the importance of considering diverse contexts in which the BRI unfolds, emphasizing its contingent nature and the influence of local dynamics on projects’ meanings and effects.

Abstract | Infrastructure engenders temporalities that ripple with different implications across a range of landscapes and lives. This chapter unpacks the lived experiences of waiting, delay, and suspension for people living in the shadow of the construction of the Laos–China Railway. It identifies variations of waiting, suspension, and stasis as modalities of infrastructure time and contrasts them with notions of speed, progress, and promise. This disrupts linear notions of ‘China speed’ and planning or project time. Through an examination of this uneven temporal terrain across the villages and homes affected by construction between 2018 and 2020, the chapter finds that people living in the shadow of infrastructure have a particular temporal orientation that is organized around waiting, the unevenness of which exposes and further entrenches ethnic and class differences. For Lao residents directly affected by the railroad, waiting and uncertainty are coupled with hope, which bleeds into a sort of ‘cruel optimism’ as they anticipate benefits from the object responsible for their dispossession and await a promised future from which they are likely to be excluded.

Abstract | Through the case of cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we examine the role of local politics in critical mineral sourcing and its implications for the lead processing and battery manufacturing industry in China. We propose a pericentric and multiscalar analysis of cobalt extraction to understand the connections and contingencies within the cobalt supply chain and DRC’s place within it. Pericentricity acknowledges geopolitics while emphasizing localized power dynamics that shape cobalt supply, as seemingly peripheral actors in the DRC influence core extractors, processors, and traders. Our analysis contributes to scholarship on African agency amid resource extractivism, highlighting Chinese dependency on foreign extractive political economies. While Chinese firms remain central in cobalt mining, processing, and battery manufacturing, the complex dependencies on local, provincial, and national systems must be understood in their intricacy and flux.

Abstract | As societies attempt to transition to low-carbon energy and reduce fossil fuel dependencies, mineral extractivism is reaching new heights globally. This trend is accompanied by a surge of Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) standards used to justify a perceived just transition. Through an analysis of 13 widely used international instruments and the ways mining companies adopt them, this article develops a comparative examination of Western and Chinese ESG practices, with a focus on guidelines and standards aimed at mitigating the socio-environmental impacts of extractivism. Despite conventional portrayals of Western and Chinese governance standards as disparate or in competition, we find their standards evolve in tandem and conversation in the context of the rush for critical minerals, underscoring the need to move beyond a Western-Chinese binary. This research also challenges the notion of China attempting to set global standards. Chinese companies increasingly embrace ESG principles due to reputational risks, national standardization efforts, and international partnerships. They, however, focus more on downstream stakeholders, while Western counterparts lean towards upstream considerations. Notably, guidelines are employed similarly by Western and Chinese companies, albeit influenced by geographical, material, and political considerations. We conclude with future directions for critical and social science research on climate-related extraction.

Abstract | Reflecting on the first decade of the BRI, this contribution underscores the significance and insights of grounded research on China’s global integration to ask: what have we learned from grounded BRI research 10 years into the initiative? Specifically, I focus on literature that grounds Global China through the examination of specific projects and resources, spanning infrastructure like roads, dams, railways, and economic zones, as well as land-based and energy investments in agriculture, mining, and plantations. Across this literature, scholars approach grounded analyses in various ways—as method, orientation, theoretical framework, and political commitment—resulting in fresh, nuanced, and multifaceted viewpoints that extend beyond the confines of the BRI itself. Drawing insights from my study of this research and ethnographic exploration in China and Southeast Asia, I forward several critiques and advocate a more multifaceted conceptualisation of Global China in the wake of Ching Kwan Lee’s pioneering work.

Abstract | In this chapter, we argue that megaprojects are a critical feature and technology of the global land rush within the current infrastructure boom. We contribute a land-oriented perspective to the turn towards infrastructure within the social sciences by studying the role of large infrastructure and special economic zones in land grabbing. We suggest that the extant land grab literature can benefit from theoretical, methodological, and empirical attention to the effects of infrastructure on land, land governance, and dispossession. The chapter looks to the Laos-China Economic Corridor (LCEC) as a case to consider how the corridor model and related megaprojects of capital accumulation are designed to territorialize. By examining specific cases within the LCEC, we discuss and illustrate how megaprojects contribute to land grabbing and to what effect. We conclude with suggestions on how to expand this research agenda.

Abstract | Relations between the US and China have deteriorated to their lowest point since their rapprochement in the 1970s. To make sense of contemporary geopolitics, our objective in this article is two-fold. First, we historically situate contemporary US-China rivalry to conceptualise the Second Cold War (SCW). We argue that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, both the US and China launched ‘restorative’ political projects that harked back to imagined pasts. These projects are mutually exclusive and animate contemporary geopolitics. Second, we conceptualise the spatial logic of great power rivalry in the Second Cold War. In contrast to the first Cold War, when great powers sought to incorporate territory into blocs, the US and China currently compete on a global scale for centrality in four interrelated networks that they anticipate will underpin hegemony in the 21st century: infrastructure (e.g. logistics and energy), digital, production and finance. We review the state of competition in each network and draw two broad conclusions: (1) this mode of competition makes it difficult for either side to conclusively ‘win’ the Second Cold War, and (2) many countries are likely to remain integrated with both the US and China.

Abstract | This essay details the emerging everyday rhythms of Boten, a Laotian border town transformed by Chinese-led development into a Special Economic Zone poised to become a “global city.” Drawing on ethnographic vignettes, it highlights the stark contrasts between ambitious plans—vividly displayed in model cityscapes and marketing campaigns—and the mundane experiences of workers, migrants, and residents navigating the dusty streets under perpetual construction. The text illuminates how lofty urban visions coexist with precarious labor conditions, shifting social relations, and repeated cycles of hectic VIP visits followed by lulls. Yet amid this tension between promise and reality, a sense of eventuality persists: despite disappointments, many cling to the possibility that Boten will someday fulfill its grandiose aspirations. By centering on everyday life, the essay reveals how the prosaic acts of commuting, construction, and collective hope produce a city forever “in-the-making.”

Abstract | The deterioration of bilateral relations between the US and China heralds a new chapter in geopolitics increasingly characterized by competition and confrontation. We introduce insights from contemporary Cold War historiography, which we suggest can help deepen our understanding of the present. Historians have largely rejected the notion that the Cold War was a bipolar struggle between great powers. Instead, the Global Cold War is increasingly interpreted as an era, order, or context whose diverse localized manifestations necessitate multi‐lingual research around the world. This scholarship draws attention to the conflict’s ‘pericentric’ nature, its diverse regional manifestations, and the transnational connections it enabled. We demonstrate that these concepts can inform research on contemporary China‐US rivalry and suggest a multi‐scalar and multi‐sited research agenda in line with approaches of feminist political geography and critical geopolitics.

Abstract | This chapter first problematizes new Cold War narratives and, second, suggests focusing on the ways in which infrastructure investments align with host state interests and prompt internal restructuring. Contextualizing the processes discussed in faraway offices in Washington and Beijing shows that bipolar geopolitical rhetoric does not aptly capture the Lao infrastructural experience. Instead, it is characterized by various actors and interests, which the Lao government has balanced since well before the BRI. While geopolitical tension has intensified, a bipolar rivalry is scarcely visible despite recent US overtures. Instead, other bilateral relations, such as those with Vietnam, Japan, and Russia, are pivotal. They are not only investing in and building much of Laos’s infrastructure, but they also have deep relations, and their capital and projects have become tools for the Lao government to balance Chinese influence. With the BRI, national development goals do not kowtow to Chinese demands but rather incorporate problems and agendas that have been on the table much longer than the BRI. The key question that arises across Lao government ministries is how to juggle and benefit from a deluge of projects and investment capital, and the Lao government has demonstrated an aptitude for successfully maneuvering between various countries, donors, and international organizations who rush to offer aid or development finance and secure influence.

Abstract | The concluding chapter to the book "The Rise of the Infrastructure State" explores how today’s intensifying US–China rivalry shapes infrastructure development worldwide and raises the possibility of a renewed “Third Worldism.” Situating this debate in a historical arc—from mid-20th-century non-aligned movements at Bandung, through the Cold War and postcolonial struggles, to the unipolar era of the Washington Consensus—the authors show that many states currently resist pressure to choose sides, instead leveraging competition among major powers to advance their own developmental goals. While the Cold War once provided contexts in which smaller nations could extract benefits by playing rival superpowers off one another, the contemporary landscape—featuring shifting global production networks, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and counter-initiatives from the US and other regional powers—presents different opportunities and constraints. Ultimately, the authors suggest that the postcolonial ideal of a unified “Third World” front may not cleanly map onto 21st-century geopolitical realities, even as new forms of coalition-building and resistance emerge in response to renewed great power competition.

Abstract | This introduction to the book "The Rise of the Infrastructure State" situates the intensifying US-China competition in a new, multipolar global order by highlighting the central role of infrastructure development as a site of geopolitical competition. Rather than forming exclusive blocs, Beijing and Washington seek territorial integration via large-scale projects—roads, ports, rails, pipelines—to cement network centrality and influence. Yet, the chapters in this volume show that the impacts of this competition are far from monolithic: states worldwide exercise agency by using foreign funding and diplomatic overtures to pursue local developmental aims, often requiring institutional “state restructuring” to handle ambitious spatial projects. This edited volume thus explores how governments, elites, and civil society navigate and shape infrastructure-led development under US-China rivalry, complicating straightforward narratives of bipolar conflict and revealing the varied, context-specific politics and possibilities that emerge when global powers vie to build and connect.

Abstract | The unipolar international order led by the USA has given way to a multipolar order with the emergence of China as a great power competitor. According to many commentators, the deterioration of Sino–US relations in recent years heralds a “new Cold War.” The new Cold War differs from its namesake in many respects, and in this paper we focus on its novel territorial logic. Containing the USSR was the overriding objective of American foreign policy for nearly four decades, but in contrast, the USA and China are engaged in geopolitical-economic competition to integrate territory into value chains anchored by their domestic lead firms through the financing and construction of transnational infrastructure (e.g., transportation networks and regional energy grids). We show this competition poses risks as well as opportunities for small states to articulate and realise spatial objectives. We present cases from Nepal and Laos that demonstrate that by hedging between China and the USA and its partners, their governments are able to pursue spatial objectives. In order to achieve them, however, they must implement significant reforms or state restructuring. The result is the emergence of what we term the 21st-century infrastructure state, which seeks to mobilise foreign capital for infrastructure projects designed to enhance transnational connectivity.

Abstract | This paper examines the governance and implementation of land compensation for the Laos-China Railway. It brings to light the central government’s strategy to use compensation rules and procedures as its means to extend its spatial power across the provinces, districts, and villages that are affected by railway construction. We examine both the manifestations and effects of state power through the formulation and implementation of land compensation procedures. Taking Naxang village in Chomphet district, Luang Prabang province, in Laos as a case, the paper highlights: 1) how centralized compensation rules and procedures serve as a means for the central government to expand its power; 2) how power relations between central-provincial-district governments (re)shaped the actual project implementation especially pertaining to compensation valuation and payment; and 3) implications for smallholder livelihood options and strategies.

Abstract | The Laos–China Railway has transformed Laos’s transportation network and economic landscape by introducing new opportunities for trade, tourism, and urban expansion. At the same time, it has generated a variety of social and environmental outcomes. These include the displacement of local communities, changes in land use and livelihood patterns, and heightened pressures on sensitive ecosystems along the railway’s path. Understanding these multi-scalar socio-environmental impacts is vital for policymaking and future infrastructure development, both in Laos and across similarly situated economies.

Abstract | This article examines the Boten Special Economic Zone in northern Laos, revealing how its developers are not building on a blank slate but instead layering new construction over existing cultural, ecological, and material infrastructures. Treating the evolving urban landscape as a “palimpsest,” the piece highlights how former casino buildings, vernacular architectural forms, and imagined cultural tropes are repurposed to produce an investable city. These overlapping layers expose tensions between modern visions of progress and historically rooted elements of place, underscoring broader debates about authenticity, sovereignty, and the lived experiences of local communities in the face of rapid infrastructural change.

Abstract | This paper examines how large-scale Chinese infrastructure projects in Laos—exemplified by the Laos–China Railway—affect local communities through land compensation and displacement. While Chinese policy banks and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have pledged stronger social and environmental safeguards, this study finds that ongoing megaprojects often exacerbate existing social and environmental challenges. By analyzing policy frameworks, ethnographic data, and host-country regulations at multiple scales, the paper underscores the gap between formal guidelines and on-the-ground realities, highlighting the persistent reliance on host standards despite mounting pressure to improve safeguards for high-profile BRI projects.

Abstract | In Spring 2015, a series of earthquakes and aftershocks struck Nepal. The earthquakes caused significant changes in labor and land availability, cash income needs, and land quality. We examine how these post-earthquake impacts converged with ongoing agricultural shifts. Earthquake-related socio-economic and landscape changes specifically motivate the adoption of cardamom, Amomum subulatum, a high-value ecologically beneficial, and low labor commercial crop. We investigate reasons for the increased interest in cardamom postearthquake, and challenges associated with it. We find that adopting cardamom serves as an important post-disaster adaptation. However, more broadly, unevenly distributed interventions coupled with the high capital costs of agricultural transition exacerbate social differentiation in communities after the disaster. Adoption is often limited to economically better off smallholder farmers. This paper extends previous research on disasters and smallholder farming by highlighting the specific potential of disasters to accelerate agricultural transitions and resulting inequality from the changes.

Abstract | Communities reliant on subsistence and small-scale production are typically more vulnerable than others to disasters such as earthquakes. We study the earthquakes that struck Nepal in the spring of 2015 to investigate their impacts on smallholder communities and the diverse trajectories of recovery at the household and community levels. We focus on the first year following the earthquakes because this is when households were still devastated, yet beginning to recover and adapt. Through survey questionnaires, focus group discussions, open-ended interviews, and observations at public meetings we analyze physical impacts to farming systems and cropping cycles. We investigate respondent reports of loss and recovery through a new social-ecological recovery assessment instrument and find that diversification of livelihoods and access to common resources, alongside robust community institutions, were critical components of coping and recovery. There was widespread damage to subsistence farming infrastructure, which potentially accelerated ongoing transitions to cash crop adoption. We also find that perceptions of recovery varied widely among and within the typical predictors of recovery, such as caste and farm size, in sometimes unexpected ways. Although postdisaster recovery has material and psychosocial dimensions, our work shows that these may not change in the same direction.

Abstract | Environmental disasters, such as hurricanes, landslides, and earthquakes, are pervasive and disproportionately affect rural and poor populations. The concept of resilience is typically used in disaster scenarios to describe how a community or person is able to “bounce back” from a disaster event. At the same time, resilience theory also contends that disasters, or environmental shocks, can produce or initiate profound changes in social and ecological systems. This case uses a post-disaster resilience assessment to examine how the series of earthquakes that hit central Nepal in 2015 impacted farming communities. Mid-montane smallholder farming communities near the epicenters of the earthquakes were the most affected and the associated damages impeded traditional and subsistence agricultural practices. Our results show how some aspects of the Nepali farming social–ecological system (SES) bounced back more quickly than others and how farmers used various types of coping strategies, including the adoption of labor-saving cash crops as part of their post-disaster recovery. The increased interest in cash crops after the earthquake accelerates an ongoing transition toward more market activities in subsistence communities and illustrates the potential of environmental shocks to transform and change SESs.

Abstract | In response to the growing burden of breast and cervical cancers, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are beginning to implement national cancer prevention programs. We reviewed the literature on information and communication technology (ICT) applications in the prevention of breast and cervical cancers in LMICs to examine their potential to enhance cancer prevention efforts. Ten databases of peer-reviewed and gray literature were searched using an automated strategy for English-language articles on the use of mobile health (mHealth) and telemedicine in breast and cervical cancer prevention (screening and early detection) published between 2005 and 2015. Articles that described the rationale for using these ICTs and/or implementation experiences (successes, challenges, and outcomes) were reviewed. Bibliographies of articles that matched the eligibility criteria were reviewed to identify additional relevant references. Of the initial 285 citations identified, eight met the inclusion criteria. Of these, four used primary data, two were overviews of ICT applications, and two were commentaries. Articles described the potential for mHealth and telemedicine to address both demand- and supply-side challenges to cancer prevention, such as awareness, access, and cost, in LMICs. However, there was a dearth of evidence to support these hypotheses. This review indicates that there are few publications that reflect specifically on the role of mHealth and telemedicine in cancer prevention and even fewer that describe or evaluate interventions. Although articles suggest that mHealth and telemedicine can enhance the implementation and use of cancer prevention interventions, more evidence is needed.