Catching China-Europe trains: local agency and Global China in the Polish borderland

This article explores how Małaszewicze, a small locality in Eastern Poland, is deeply entangled with China’s global ambitions. Positioned at the European Union border, Małaszewicze is home to one of Europe’s largest dry transhipment ports. It is an obligatory stop for freight train connections labeled “China-Europe Railway Express” and an important node in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Drawing from material collected between 2021 and 2023, I anchor Małaszewicze in wider debates about China’s global expansion, contributing to the growing literature that localizes and provincializes Global China and explores local agency within the BRI. I outline various strategies that local actors in Małaszewicze employ to capture the global potential of the port infrastructure: amplifying the narrative that frames their locality as central to Europe-Asia trade, bringing symbolic evidence from interactions with Chinese actors, and putting pressure on national-level institutions through repeated visits to Warsaw. I demonstrate how the BRI empowers local actors to claim their community’s right to modernity by shifting it from Europe’s peripheries toward the center of the Global East. However, the strategy of aligning local development with the BRI comes with inherent vulnerabilities, increasing the exposure to geoeconomic dynamics that unfold far beyond local control.