Beyond the Binary: US-China Tension and the Future of Global Infrastructure Diplomacy

The article argues that the US-China trade war, BRI adaptation, Western-led connectivity initiatives, regional platforms, and host-state bargaining constitute an infrastructure order in which strategic competition coexists with limited operational compatibility. This study theorizes selective convergence to explain such compatibility. It occurs when rival infrastructure agendas alter project operation, regulatory compliance, fiscal governance, or institutional oversight without strategic trust or ideological alignment. The concept fills a gap between hedging scholarship and regime complexity theory by specifying how rival initiatives interact operationally. A two-level qualitative design links macro-contextual analysis to case probes of Piraeus, Kenya, and Southeast Asia and to institutional analysis of regional mediation, distinguishing project-level, normative, and institutional forms, demonstrating accommodative and demand-driven pathways, and identifying structural convergence as a pathway requiring further empirical testing. Selective convergence is real, causal, and traceable through observable sequences, while remaining partial, conditional, and distinct from strategic partnership.