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47 initiative is announced by the majority of the Chinese writers: (Wang Y. , 2016c; Wang Y. , 2015;
Huang, 2016; Haggai, 2016; Zhu, 2015; Zhang F. , 2016 ; He, 2015); but only Zhang Feng explicitly refers to the theory of the International Relations, affirming that:
"According to the Action Plan, the overarching goal is to safeguard the global free trade system and an open world economy. This goal is rooted in a quintessentially Western liberal internationalist economic doctrine. The irony is that China, which has never had a liberal internationalist tradition in its intellectual history until modern times, is now claiming to be assuming the mantle of international economic liberalism." (Zhang F. , 2016:124).
EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES
The European approach is much less homogeneous than the Chinese one, which is a serious obstacle for the European Union to act as an unitary and influential actor. The point of view of European scholars is characterized by both optimism and uncertainty: commonly they describe the positive aspects and advantages of the initiative, but also express their concerns about it. Some scholars regard the New Silk Road project as a good opportunity for Europe and the world and they recognize the various economic benefits that it is supposed to bring to the Old Continent in particular, and to Eurasia in general. It is considered to have great economic and political potential for cooperation, and to be able to increase the opportunities of trade, growth and people-to-people exchange (Arduino, 2016; Arduino, 2014; Otero-Iglesias, 2015; Ederer, 2016; Escobar, 2014). This is the reason why the EU's involvement in the project is fundamental, and also because the Union would be able to harmonize the sustainable development, to promote integration and to control the Chinese activities from inside (Arduino, 2014; Verlare & van der Putten, 2015; Ederer, 2016;
Escobar, 2014; Godement, 2015a; Godement, 2015b; Arduino, 2016), or to quote the Spanish scholar Mario Esteban Miguel Otero-Iglesias, OBOR "embraces one of the founding principles of the EU: the positing of regional integration as a source of prosperity and stability. Europe needs to have a presence in a project it can help to mould, so as to ensure it becomes a source of prosperity
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48 and stability [..] to itself and its neighbors" (Otero-Iglesias, 2015). The Italian scholar Alessandro Arduino also agrees in the necessity of the EU to participate in the initiative, but for other reasons:
because "the Chinese OBOR initiative presents the EU with a unique opportunity to re-enter the 'great game' bringing together its own best practices with Chinese led economic growth, infrastructural development and capacity building"; also because Europe "could promote stakeholder participation, coordinate crisis prevention"; and more generally because "the EU involvement with the OBOR initiative is a defining moment for Sino-European relations" (Arduino, 2016:3). These scholars suggest us that the European Union should have a stronger and more united voice, put aside the individual egoism and finally plan a coherent and useful strategy to deal with the rise of China and its foreign politics actions, especially with the New Silk Roads. This behavior will make the EU as the strong international institution it is designed to be. This approach will be the basis of the policy suggestions that will be given in the end of this thesis.
Apart from acclaiming the positive impact of OBOR, many European scholars have also expressed their apprehensions about the Silk Roads. Some have affirmed that it is not an altruistic initiative; on the contrary it is just inspired by egoistic motives, or even that it is not a peaceful project, but a greedy strategy with hegemonic purposes. Scholars such as Jikkie Verlare and Frans Paul van der Putten (2015), Raffaello Pantucci (2015), Agatha Kratz and Dragan Pavlicevic (2016), Anna Bruce-Lockhart (2016), Enrico Fardella and Giorgio Prodi (2016), Jack Farchy (2016), Keith Johnson(2016), Michel De Grandi (2016), Nadège Rolland (2016), all interpret the various concerns raised by Europeans politicians and economists, and list the various risks connected to OBOR and those that the EU members will have to face in relation to it. Furthermore, they also explain how the New Silk Road will also have geopolitical implications (Pantucci & Chen, 2015; Verlare & van der Putten, 2015; Bruce-Lockhart, 2016; De Grandi, 2016; Farchy, 2016; Fardella & Giorgio, 2016;
Johnson, 2016; Kratz & Pavlicevic, 2016; Robert S. Strauss Center, 2016). Probably the severest criticism came from Michel De Grandi who affirmed that the Belt & the Road is just a plan to dominate the world (De Grandi, 2016), and from Keith Johnson who asserted that the final
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49 destination of this initiative is Europe, not only because it is a big and rich market, but also because
"Beijing's ambitions aren't purely commercial": "China is trying to parlay its economic heft into bigger diplomatic influence in Europe, especially in cash-strapped states in the east and southeast.
[...] One of the unstated purposes of China's Silk Road is to buy political goodwill from countries along the way", as it happened already in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Johnson, 2016).
These visions can be explained by applying the principles of the motivational realism, and they are shared with other scholars from countries that feel Beijing is a threat or that are historical or new enemies of the PRC, such as the US, Japan, Russia (even though Russian position is not always against its Communist neighbor) and India. They argue that the OBOR will actually be used to assert international leadership in Asia and beyond, as an attempt to reshape the global order (Clover & Hornby, 2015), because it is a greedy strategy aimed at obtaining more power and eventually to realize its plans of expansion. By applying the motivational realist assumptions it is possible to infer that no matter how secure or insecure it feels, China is a greedy state: its claims to the South China Sea, which will be realized through the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, as well as the enormous implications of the OBOR as a whole, are the evidences of China's real intentions.
To quote Ikenberry, "we’re witnessing, a global power shift" (Ikenberry, 2014:2). For realists, Chinese liberal diplomacy and economic engagement advertized through the OBOR is just "way of building regional trust while treading a path toward hegemony" (Chanda, 2015; Minnick, 2015;
Durani, 2016). For example, according to many authors the New Silk Roads is not only an economic initiative, but it has serious political and geopolitical implications, which are the "cause of great worry for China's Asian neighbors"; especially for the big powers in the Asian continent, namely Russia, India, Japan and the US., which consider OBOR as a security threat (Chanda, 2015;
Dasgupta, 2016; Pop, 2016). In particular, Washington can "blame the Chinese leadership for being disloyal, adverse to reform, and an enemy of the liberalization of their own economy.
The usual suspects carp that upstart China is upsetting the international order, will doom peace and prosperity in Asia for all eternity, and maybe creating a new kind of Cold War in the region",
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50 which means that from the American perspective, a rising China is the major threat not only regionally, but also globally (Atzori, 2016). Indeed, observers around the world are comparing the Beijing's initiative to the Marshall plan, because like the American project it "looks designed to use economic treats as a way to address other vulnerabilities" (Clover & Hornby, 2015) (Curran, 2016; Overholt, 2015; Holland, 2016; Hornby, 2015; Israely, 2015; Clover & Hornby, 2015;
Maverick, 2016). In other words, China has been criticized for using this huge plan to promote its own foreign policy principles (Johnson, P. 2015), or even to dominate the world, as argued by a French scholar, Michel De Grandi (2016), as previously mentioned.
3.3 RESEARCH PURPOSES AND UNIQUENESS
In the literature analyzed in this chapter it is possible to find some weaknesses: given that the realist and liberalist schools of IR are the approaches that best interpret the perspectives of the two parties examined, namely the PRC and the EU, it is necessary to take a further step and choose an external point of view to understand the implications of the OBOR on the Sino European relations. Indeed, the two rationalist schools are too biased and superficial; they can only describe the situation from the viewpoint of either one of the two actors. Moreover, they also only take into consideration the superficial aspects of interstate, economic relations, not being able to understand the deepest interactions of different cultures and the way they can shape the interstate relations.
Therefore, for a deeper understanding of the diversities in the European and Chinese values and cultures, and how these aspects modify the way the actors respond to each other's policies, it is suggested to apply the theories of the constructivism, which will be described in the next chapter.
Moreover, this research's uniqueness is its ambitious purpose of providing a different approach to OBOR based on a theoretical framework, which is supposed to fill the gap in the current literature:
none of the sources explicitly applies or bases its argument on any IR theory. Not only will this thesis provide a theoretical approach to answer the research questions, but it will also propose some policy suggestions to the main actors involved in the initiative by interpreting the final responses.
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51 Another problem of the existing literature is that all the sources analyzed in this chapter are focused mostly on the economic impact and results of the One Belt One Road initiative, but they only mention the implications on the political-diplomatic relations between China and the European Union, and they do not address at all the effects on the people-to-people or cultural relations. This is a serious shortcoming in the existing literature about Beijing's initiative, because the political and cultural "connectivities" are two of the five major objectives of OBOR, as well as two pillars of the China-EU strategic partnership. Therefore, this research is aimed at focusing on the cultural dimension of the Brussels-Beijing relations, and it will apply the constructivist assumptions to attempt to answer the four research questions in the following chapters.
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52 4. CONSTRUCTIVISM AND THE OBSTACLES TO DEEPENING THE