about

Supported by an Asian Responsive Grant from The Henry Luce Foundation, the China Made project began as a partnership between the Center for Asian Studies (CAS) at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong (HKIHSS). It ran from 2018 to 2023. The project also partnered with the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and the University of Toronto Asian Institute at the Munk School for Public Policy. China Made sought to provide a space of inquiry that brought together the interdisciplinary fields of China Studies and Infrastructure Studies. It also sought to address the disconnect between emerging interest in ‘global China’ and work on China’s domestic political economy by considering the role of infrastructure in both Chinese statecraft and in China’s global ambitions. The project thus hoped to shift the research focus on global China from broader geopolitical and international relations perspectives to a finer grained analysis of the infrastructures themselves and the on-the-ground social, cultural, and political dimensions of their construction. China Made hosted four academic conferences, in Boulder, Hong Kong, Singapore (held remotely), and Toronto. Three special journal issues have resulted from these workshops, and members of the China Made collective have published dozens of articles on related topics, along with two award-winning monographs and an edited book collection. The project also supported postdoctoral and graduate research positions, and the development of online scholarly resources for project participants and the broader academic community.