Scalar tensions and the missing link crisis in China’s National Trunk Highway System

Studies of scalar politics have acknowledged the hierarchical nature of inter-scalar state agent relations as a source of tensions for infrastructural failure. Few scholarly inquiries have given equal emphasis to the vertical and horizontal power relations, as well as the interplay of scalar verticality and horizontality which frames the power topologies in the regulation of infrastructural development. Informed by a political assemblage approach, this article explores the entanglement of scalar tensions and missing link crisis in China by “blending” the verticality and horizontality of scalar power geometries into a relationalized analytical framework. Using a data set of missing links in China’s National Trunk Highway System (NTHS), this article estimates the relational effect of inter-scalar and intra-scalar intergovernmental linkages on the territorial pattern of missing links in the NTHS through a gravitational spatial interaction model, which contributes to the scholarship of missing links through the methodological crossover of spatial econometric modeling and scale theories. Results indicate the following: vertically, the involvement of provincial governments in the realization of the NTHS link increases the probability of a missing link; whereas horizontally, the presence of a (vice-)provincial city government heightens the risk of a missing link.