Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8026-3908

Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Geology and Geography

Committee Chair

Karen Culcasi

Committee Co-Chair

Paolo Davide Farah

Committee Member

Cynthia Gorman

Committee Member

Hasan Karrar

Committee Member

James Sidaway

Abstract

This dissertation explores the discursive and material dimensions of China’s global rise through a case study of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Pakistan. As China becomes a leading provider of development finance, its infrastructure-led approach is reshaping geographies across the Global South. Focusing on the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—the BRI’s flagship project—I examine how Chinese and Pakistani actors co-produce development through discourses, infrastructures, and security regimes. Structured around three articles, the dissertation analyzes: (1) the official diplomatic discourses of Chinese state institutions and their reception by Pakistani media outlets; (2) the curated geopolitical discourses of Chinese social media users living in Pakistan on the poverty and lack of development there; and (3) the militarized infrastructures and security regimes embedded in development projects. Drawing on eight months of fieldwork in Pakistan, computational social science, geospatial analysis, and discourse analysis across text, video, and spatial data, I argue that the BRI in Pakistan is co-produced through discursive and material practices, fragmented actors, differentiated geographies, and entangled regimes of development and security.

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