In this episode, we trace China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) into Western Europe. Dr. Lena Kaufmann unpacks the “downstream effects” of Chinese digital infrastructures in Switzerland—an often-overlooked BRI country. Drawing on her chapter in Seeing China’s Belt and Road (Schatz & Silvey, eds. 2025), she brings the buried materialities of fiber-optic networks into view and rethinks how to conceptualize the DSR—historically, discursively and materially—beyond broad geopolitical narratives. Drawing on ethnographic and archival insights, we discuss how Swiss and Chinese actors have long been entangled in the construction of digital infrastructures, why the DSR is less unidirectional and top-down than often assumed, and how current dynamics—including new U.S. tariffs—may shape its future.
Hosted by Dr. Richard Turcsányi, Assistant Professor at Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic; featuring Dr. Lena Kaufmann, SNSF Ambizione Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology University of Fribourg
The podcast can be found on Soundcloud and Spotify, including a link to the book “Seeing China’s Belt and Road”