Mackinder’s Heartland Theory was predicated on the rise of railways during the early 20th century, and he that the technology would transform landmasses from obstacles to assets. To a point, China has taken this theory to heart, but rather than suggest that China has “chosen” to adopt the Heartland theory to cement its status as a land power, it is perhaps more adequate to say that in recognition of the geographical traits of its modern-day borders, China has no choice but to adopt aspects of the Heartland theory.
Much of dynastic imperial China may have been content with handling the inland regions with the strategy of “letting barbarians deal with barbarians”, as epitomized in the Book of the Later Han, but the People’s Republic of China now directly controls these hinterlands and must aim for legitimacy there.
The PRC’s primary instrument for this is to create a competitive economy and higher standards of living for China’s inland regions, especially as it needs to overcome ethnic tensions and cultural disputes, which are far too inland to solve through naval means, or at least through naval means alone. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor alleviates some of this burden by establishing a Chinese economic and naval presence in Gwadar, but is still dependent upon transportation infrastructure and oil pipelines to
46
move resources to Kashgar in Xinjiang Province more than two thousand kilometers away. If anything, projects like the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor seem designed to circumvent China’s shortcomings in terms of sea power where it might not be able to challenge potential obstacles in the Strait of Malacca. China must look towards a land-based strategy, and that means gazing towards the Heartland. More than just Pakistan and South Asia alone, China must also link with Central Asia and Russia, and also further west to the Middle East.
Using Pakistan once more as an example, China’s infrastructure projects under the BRI does indeed include Chinese investments into foreign projects such as power plants, water utilities infrastructure, educational institutes, and industrial complexes (CPEC Secretariat, 2017). However, as was pointed out in the “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road”
document released in March 2015, the BRI is primarily a connectivity project, a fact punctuated by the use of “connectivity” twice in the opening paragraph alone but
“development” only once (National Development and Reform Commission, 2015). The BRI is far more than just a project wherein China invests in the infrastructure development of its developing neighbors and expects returns on investments through loans via Chinese banks; rather, it is strongly reliant on the movement of goods across the Asian continent.
It is thus of no surprise that much of the attention paid to the infrastructure projects of the BRI, especially those of the Silk Road Economic Belt, has been towards
47
not only railways, as Mackinder initially envisioned at the dawn of the 20th century, but also oil and gas pipelines. It is also of no coincidence that when Xinhua presented a conceptual map of the BRI, the SREB began in China from Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province (Tiezzi, China's 'New Silk Road' Vision Revealed, 2014). Not only is Xi’an considered part of western China, but it was also one of the provinces targeted for investment in the Western Development Strategy, through which then-President Jiang Zemin hoped to alleviate social and economic inequality in the Chinese inland (Lai, 2002). As Shaanxi counts as one of the easternmost central Chinese provinces, an economic belt of railways and pipelines stretching westwards would inevitably run through inland China. The PRC’s claim to legitimacy in western China in general has been predicated on the purported improvement to quality of life and standards of living via economic revitalization, especially through connectivity projects. In fact, more so than any other mode of transportation, China has aggressively marketed its development of railways as a sign of its growing infrastructure development, especially in terms of connecting western China with coastal China (Lai, 2002). And beyond the time and reckoning of Mackinder, China has also been focusing on the development of oil and gas pipelines to secure its growing energy needs.
Putting aside sovereignty and territorial claims, China’s need for control over Xinjiang becomes obvious to explain when one looks at a map of China’s energy security.
The second largest land-based oil reserve in China is in the Tarim basin in Xinjiang.
However, China’s energy needs have not only surpassed its domestic supply since 1993, its domestic production of energy resources is gradually decreasing (Zha, 2005). The
48
transformation of China from a self-sustaining energy producer to a net importer simultaneously occurred with an aggressive Chinese diplomacy campaign to establish comprehensive relations with the international community and individual states (Li & Li, 2015). Domestic oil production fell ten percent to 3.87 million barrels a day in 2016, and oil imports have accounted for more than sixty percent of domestic consumption since 2013, and is only expected to rise (Daiss, 2016). Of the sixty percent of oil imports, sixty percent comes from the Middle East (Zhang W. , 2012). The East and South China Seas are potential sources of petroleum, but China’s maritime disputes with its neighbors make this a risky proposition, especially when China’s sea power and naval security has not yet been fully developed.
(Priddle, 2000)
49
By contrast, Chinese relations with Central Asia have largely been amicable, helped in part by a recent diplomatic policy of settling territorial disputes with Central Asian Republics and Russia (Kaplan, 2010). While Central Asia is traditionally an area of Russian influence and thus of significant concern from Moscow, the Kremlin has warily but tactically accepted China’s increasing influence in Central Asia for now in an increasingly unequal relationship between the two states, especially as Russia pushes for its own Eurasian Economic Union in Central Asia (Singh, 2015). Using Kazakhstan as an example, China invested US$23.6 billion into thirty-three infrastructure deals in Kazakhstan in 2015, among them related to oil and steel production (Xinhua, 2015).
China has also been developing the border town of Khorgos in northwestern Xinjiang, which is meant to be a trade hub between China and Kazakhstan, although the Chinese calculus is perhaps set for Kazakhs to buy Chinese goods rather than the reciprocal promotion of Kazakh industry (Shepard, 2016). This theme will be further explored in Chapter 5.
It is also not just Central Asia oil that China is after; China has also been looking into purchasing Iranian oil, and a land-based route from China to the Middle East would also have Central Asia act as the springboard (Tata, 2017). To accomplish this and to secure China’s energy needs without such imports being predicated on resolutions for maritime tensions in the two China Seas and the Indian Ocean, China has chosen to overcome the age-old obstacles of landmasses by building oil pipelines through Central Asia and to the Middle East. It has further moved to secure the cooperation of these
50
Central Asian and Middle Eastern states through a combination of territorial dispute resolution and investments into infrastructure development projects.
But oil and pipelines are not the only goal China is aiming for. Railways are being built to transport goods between China and Central Asia. China’s domestic economy has been sustained through investment, but its foreign economic policy has primarily been that of a manufacturing- and export-based economy. As China moves towards a consumption- and services-based tertiary economy, it must also ease the production of primary and secondary industries while finding an outlet for an overcapacity of industrial materials such as steel, a problem that has been exacerbated by mismanagement on the part of state-owned enterprises and decreased Western demand for Chinese exports. The U.S. has imposed more anti-dumping duties on Chinese steel products as recently as January 2017 (Wu W. , 2017). Europe followed suit shortly afterwards in May 2017, adding to nearly twenty similar existing measures (Petroff, 2017). Just as China looks to westwards, Central Asia, cut off from maritime trade and skeptical of Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union, is the new market for Chinese manufacturing exports.
There are, of course, other reasons for the extending the BRI and Chinese investments into Central Asia and the Middle East. A stable and relatively prosperous Central Asia and the Middle East means increased reliability in regions where China attains much of its energy resources. This is especially relevant when considering the sectarian conflicts in the Middle East, for which China may not be able to find a
“business is business” approach when developing the BRI. But despite regional unrest,
51
including terrorism and the rise of the Islamic State, this has not necessarily cut into China’s energy security situation, only hampered its attempts to diversify it. These objectives seem to be secondary to China’s domestic and more pressing issue of economic reform and exports.
Using the aforementioned Khorgos as an example, it is entirely possible that railways will be used to facilitate Chinese exports to Central Asia far more than Central Asian exports to China, for which Kazakhstan, accounting for seventy percent of trade between China and Central Asia, is a good weather vane. While there is a diversification of Chinese exports to Central Asia, with eighty-five percent of Chinese exports to Central Asia being finished goods, eighty-five percent of Central Asian exports to China are comprised of raw materials, petrol, and metals in a trade relationship described as
“massively unequal” (Peyrouse, 2007). This unequal trade relationship is meant to be mitigated in part by China’s investments in Central Asian development programs, such as through the 2050 Strategy, the 100 Concrete Steps, and the Bright Road, an attempt to move the narrative away from Chinese exploitation of Central Asian resources (Frolovskiy, 2016). Ultimately, however, it is difficult to believe that China will have symmetrical trade relations with Central Asia, with Central Asia functioning as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for Chinese goods for years to come.
52