Author: Trissia Wijaya

This paper examines the uneven and contested trajectory of China’s Green Belt and Road Initiative (GBRI) through a D/d analytical lens, distinguishing between “big D” development as a state-led intervention project and “little d” development as the geographically uneven dynamics of capitalist accumulation. While GBRI is often framed as a coherent strategy for advancing green transformation and positioning China as a global environmental leader, this study argues that its outcomes are shaped by deeper, structurally embedded processes of capitalist development that generate uneven and often contradictory results across contexts.

Drawing on the case of Indonesia’s electric vehicle (EV) and nickel industry, the paper demonstrates how GBRI operates not only as a vehicle for exporting Chinese green technologies and finance, but also as a site of class formation, power struggles, and reconfiguration of transnational production networks. It introduces the concept of a “transnationalised battery class” to capture the alliances between Chinese firms, domestic elites, state actors, and global capital, which together shape investment patterns, policy directions, and distributional outcomes. These dynamics are reinforced by overlapping pressures, including China’s industrial overcapacity, host countries’ developmental aspirations, and broader geopolitical shifts in the global political economy.

The analysis shows that the green transition under GBRI is neither linear nor uniformly beneficial. Instead, it is characterised by uneven development, intensified extractivism, new forms of authoritarian governance, and persistent inequalities, even as it creates opportunities for industrial upgrading and integration into global value chains. By foregrounding the dialectical relationship between “big D” and “little d” development, this paper provides a more nuanced understanding of the political economy of green transition in the Global South. It highlights the need to move beyond state-centric or technocratic accounts and to incorporate class analysis into the study of global green development and China’s evolving role within it.