Expansion of China's sphere of influence in Iran reflects a small episode of a larger picture on the global scale, a process by which China is rapidly devouring the world's natural resources to feed its growing domestic economy and, conversely, is pumping huge amounts of goods and capital out into the world economy. By focusing on the historical evolution process of Chinese investments in plenty
... [Show full abstract] of projects and its interests in expanding infrastructure networks in Iran, this thesis inquiry into the economic and political implications of Chinese investments in Iran. The objective is to explore and analyze how this process will be accompanied by two distinct but intertwined geoeconomic and geopolitical consequences: (a) intensify the integration of Iran's economy in China's global and regional economic projects in accordance with maximizing the process of its domestic capital accumulation and, simultaneously, (b) preserving the configuration of uneven development of Iran's capitalism through becoming a subordinated economy to meet the requirements of China's economic development, which leads to the strengthening and consolidation of China's hegemony and influence as a superior power, however. Criticizing the mainstream state-centric approach and applying the dialectical method, the thesis deal with the process of internal contradictions, expansion-oriented, and the accumulation-driven tendency of capital as the innermost driving force of the capitalist production and the associated power relations and ongoing competitions between the states and enterprises in the capitalist world-system.