A new age of infrastructure development? An historical comparison of nested dependency in Pakistan and Egypt

US–China infrastructure competition is touted to enable greater autonomy for the Global South, but a more circumspect survey of the opportunities for southern states is needed. This article problematizes the asymmetry-based accounts prevalent in world order theorizing and offers an alternative, systemic account of inter-state rivalry. Recovering dependency theory and world-systems approaches, we draw on historical comparison between the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (2010–) and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt (1952–1965) as the key Chinese and Soviet transnational infrastructure initiatives amidst US–China rivalry and the Cold War respectively. We show how the Soviet Union and China successfully outcompeted the US by offering alternative, non-conditional modalities in infrastructure development, but that nevertheless resulted in what we conceive to be nested dependency, whereby southern strategies to deepen engagement with the ‘challenger’ power provided only limited insulation from a global system which remains centred around US hegemony.