In the past, building an empire often meant expanding territory. Today, however, empires do not necessarily aim for horizontal territorial expansion or land-grabbing, but increasingly seek to control vertical spaces. This project analyzes how volumetric spaces, which were previously outside the scope of human intervention, can become crucial to a country’s global ambitions. Such spaces include the atmosphere, deep sea, polar regions, subterrain, and especially outer space. 

Against this backdrop, the current project examines China’s emergence as a volumetric empire. The empirical focus lies on Chinese space infrastructure exports—launching of foreign satellites from Chinese grounds, construction of satellites and ground stations abroad, provision of satellite data and services—to countries in Africa. We aim to contribute to a better understanding of how these exports increase the respective countries’ dependencies on China, and whether these practices facilitate China’s autonomy. 

Three specific objectives are addressed. First, we explore policy learning and ask how and when the Chinese leadership has incorporated volumetric dimensions into their foreign policy discourse and external relations. Second, the project analyzes the two imperial practices of control over economic structures and ideational binding. To this end, it provides an overview of the exports of the China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) to Africa, looking specifically at its space-related collaborations with Ethiopia and South Africa. In so doing, we aim to highlight the cross and path dependencies that emerge when countries rely on Chinese space infrastructure. The project then explores the extent to which the party-state is gaining discursive authority using international, regional, or bilateral mechanisms to foster the narrative of China as a key space power for African countries. We particularly focus on how the Chinese leadership has succeeded in embedding the discourse around its space-related practices into regional mechanisms, in this case the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and how it has acquired more influence over African countries in the process. Further, the project examines whether China gains more control through its space infrastructure exports—for instance, over specific systems of infrastructures.

Third, with regard to the outcomes of these practices, the project seeks to illustrate different peripheries that make up the Chinese volumetric empire. Here we concentrate on the emergence of different layers of peripheries as products of the imperial practices under scrutiny: a materially shaped periphery, a discursively shaped periphery, and a territorialized periphery. Methodologically, the project builds on lexicometric text analysis, interpretive documentary text analysis, information mapping, and semi-structured interviews. This project is part of the Research Unit “Learning Empire: Autonomy, Dependence, and China’s Emerging Imperial Practices”. 

The DFG Research Unit

The Research Unit “Learning Empire: Autonomy, Dependence, and China’s Emerging Imperial Practices”(FOR 5913/1), led by Tobias ten Brink of Constructor University, Bremen, is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It is organised into eight sub-projects centered on four main objectives:

• Understanding policy learning. We examine how and why Chinese decision-makers adapt their goals, policies, and implementation as China acts as a rising power shaping Sinocentric hierarchies. The projects analyze how domestic and international experiences shape learning within China’s bureaucracy and how the party-state seeks coherence across state and business actors, including the partial emergence of “imperial capital.”
• Investigating imperial practices. We explore how Chinese policymakers and state–business–science networks construct a novel form of empire. Projects study practices such as building centrality in transnational economic structures, creating intermediaries, divide-and-rule strategies, ideological binding, and the use or threat of force.
• Analyzing outcomes. We assess the results of these practices in terms of autonomy and dependence. It examines whether the party-state achieves greater autonomy and whether foreign actors become dependent on the PRC.
• Theorizing empire. We further develop the RU’s conceptual and theoretical framework for studying empire. While this work will deepen in the second funding period, the first period already advances concepts such as peripheralization and typologies of imperial practices and peripheries.

Sub-Project (Project number: 550231771) of the Research Unit (FOR 5913/1) funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2026-2030)