GUEST LECTURE
DR. LENA KAUFMANN
CHINA’S DIGITAL SILK ROAD TO EUROPE: CONNECTING SWITZERLAND

Date & Time
17.11. 2021 3 PM, CET
Location
Trainee Centre Online: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/92494385252
Abstract
This talk provides ethnographic and historical insights on one important, though commonly overlooked, aspect of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the so-called Digital Silk Road (DSR). The latter refers to the massive investments in fiber-optic cables, data centers and smart cities built alongside the BRI energy and transport projects. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted since 2019 and focusing on digital infrastructures—namely, fiber-optic networks—I trace China’s DSR to Europe through the example of Switzerland. Switzerland was among the first countries worldwide to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1950 and among the first western European countries to sign a Belt and Road Memorandum of Understanding in April 2019. I argue that in Switzerland (as in many other countries), digitalization and its effects cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration the Chinese engagement in the field of digital infrastructure. Although discursive references linking Switzerland to the DSR are rather recent, I show that what is now framed as part of the DSR actually began long before the official announcement of the BRI. Moreover, I show that the Chinese–Swiss entanglements in digital infrastructures are not as unidirectional as is often assumed.
Bio
Lena Kaufmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History and a research associate at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, both at the University of Zurich. She studied anthropology and sinology in Rome, Berlin and Shanghai and holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Zurich. She is the author of Rural-Urban Migration and Agro-Technological Change in Post-Reform China (Amsterdam University Press 2021, open access) and a speaker of the Regional Group China at the German Association of Anthropology. Her current research project focuses on Swiss-Chinese entanglements in digital infrastructures.