Actors on the Ground: A Missing Dimension in China’s Belt and Road Initiative

China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) – a global infrastructure and development geostrategy – is often seen as a centralised, coherent, and top-down project. The on-the-ground actors, however, are largely missing from the related literature and policymaking. Building on 10 months of ethnographic research, taking China’s Zhanatas 100 MW Wind Power Plant in Southern Kazakhstan as a case, this article presents novel evidence of how non-state and quasi-state actors can substantially specify and operationalise China’s BRI in Central Asia’s green energy transition context. Biographical accounts reveal a missing picture of the everyday work of the fragmented and decentralised agencies and individuals underneath the powerful Chinese state. Even when they have different and sometimes conflicting interests, they can still consolidate China’s geostrategy on the ground. Theoretically, the article extends our understandings of development brokerage, especially in the context of large-scale development projects. Conceptually, the on-the-ground actors allow a shift away from the state-centric analysis and look at China’s BRI from below.