Autonomy and Dependence in Chinese Space Infrastructure Exports

As part of the Research Unit Learning Empire: Autonomy, Dependence, and China’s Emerging Imperial Practices, this project examines how China is emerging as a “volumetric empire” through the export of space infrastructure to African countries. Focusing on satellite launches for foreign entities from Chinese territory, the construction of satellites and ground stations abroad, and the provision of satellite data and services, it asks how these activities strengthen China’s autonomy while generating new dependencies for partner countries. By shifting attention from territorial expansion to the control of strategic vertical spaces, the project shows how imperial power today increasingly operates through infrastructure, technology, and access to outer space.

The first objective is to trace policy learning within the Chinese leadership. The project investigates when and how volumetric spaces – especially outer space – became part of China’s foreign policy discourse and external relations, and how these changing ideas were translated into concrete regional and bilateral practices. Combining lexicometric text analysis with interpretive document analysis, the project identifies moments of discursive change and links them to broader political and geopolitical developments in the Xi era.

At the center of the project is the analysis of imperial practices. It focuses in particular on two closely connected practices: control over infrastructures and ideational binding. On the one hand, the project maps Chinese space-related exports and collaborations in Africa – especially in Ethiopia and South Africa – to examine how satellites, ground stations, and navigation services can create long-term cross- and path-dependencies in areas such as transport, communications, and others. On the other hand, it studies how China seeks discursive authority by embedding its space agenda in bilateral, regional, and international mechanisms, including the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and by presenting itself as a key space and development partner for African countries.

By bringing together discourse analysis, information mapping, and interviews, the project also examines the outcomes of these imperial practices and the different peripheries they produce – material, discursive, and territorial. In this way, it contributes to the Research Unit’s broader effort to understand how China is learning to act as an empire. The project is closely linked to collaboration within the wider research group, especially with Maximilian Mayer’s project on digital peripheralization and Matthew D. Stephen’s project on ideational binding in global governance, in order to explore how infrastructure, dependency, China’s autonomy and discursive power intersect across different fields.

Project Leader: Nadine Godehardt, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik