2. A New China and a New Silk Road
2.5. Strategic Aspects
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to develop the use of the yuan in international markets, which can be seen as a step towards making it an international reserve currency (Ferdinand, 2016).
China desires access to new markets and to improve access to existing ones, and this is something the SREB can provide. The country’s main export markets are currently the United States and Europe and have been for many years (IMF, 2016). However, after the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, consumers in these markets began to buy less and this pushed China into seeking new sources of revenue (Ferdinand, 2016).
2.5. Strategic Aspects
Despite the pacifistic, almost altruistic rhetoric of the Chinese government’s official publications, and statements such as “The Chinese mind is never programmed around geopolitical or geoeconomic theory” from the Chinese ambassador to the UK
(Swaine, 2015, p. 10), the fact is that the strategic and geopolitical advantages of the SREB are undeniable. As Michael D. Swaine of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace observes, “It would be naive to think that China’s leaders do not contemplate such strategic issues in assessing the possible benefits and challenges of the One Belt, One Road concept, despite the general absence of such thinking in authoritative sources,” (2015, p. 15).
Numerous commentators argue that OBOR was in no small part a response to the Obama administration’s 2011/2012 pivot to Asia and the resultant issues it caused China on its eastern flank. Faced with what influential Chinese scholar Wang Jisi (王 缉思) called the threat of being dragged into a “zero-sum game” in East Asia, Wang argues that a “March West” was a “strategic necessity” for China that would increase the potential for US-China cooperation and create a situation in which “there will be almost no risk of military confrontation between the two,” (Wang, 2014). The strategy would also allow China to take advantage of the relative declining power of the US and Russia across its western border (Clarke, 2015).
A westward pivot also allows China to have greater presence in its restive, strategically important peripheral regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, and also Inner Mongolia (Rolland, 2015). Indigenous populations with cross-border cultural and
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linguistic ties in these regions are relatively economically deprived and, especially in Xinjiang, have shown strong resistance to being part of the Chinese nation; China, however, has made it very clear that it intends to keep firm control over these regions and the new Silk Road strategies assist it in achieving this goal (Chang, 2014).
China of course is not only concerned about potential unrest in these peripheral zones.
Social and political unrest has become much more prevalent right across the country in recent years, and in a country with such a huge population and where unrest has historically been so very destructive, stability is the No. 1 priority. The new OBOR plans potentially offer a stabilizing economic boost to the country overall, but the major focus is the inland provinces that have been at the back end of national development.
With security in mind, China has made moves to build stronger strategic relations with its continental neighbors for decades, especially since the mid-1990s and the creation of the Shanghai Five. In 1996, with the intention of solving the centuries-old border disputes between its members, China, along with Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan initiated the Shanghai Five and signed the Shanghai Agreement on Confidence Building in the Military Field in the Border Area; this was followed in 1997 by the Agreement on Mutual Reduction of Military Forces in the Border Areas (Global Security, 2013). The China-led grouping evolved into the more substantial Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001, which today has significant implications for politics, trade, finance and energy resources in Central Asia and beyond, and through which members conduct joint military exercises (ibid.).
Through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China has already secured multiple agreements and energy deals that alleviate considerable pressure on its western and northern edges. The planned SREB initiatives allow China to take advantage of, as well as deepen, these pre-existing agreements in a region with enormous potential and where China has demonstrated it desires greater influence. Areas to the west of China contain a substantial portion of the world’s energy reserves and, significantly, these reserves are accessible via land – something, it is argued, China desperately wishes to secure to allow it greater energy security in a world in which sea lanes are vulnerable to blockades by the US Navy (see below).
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Zhang Yunling, a leading expert on China’s regional cooperation from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argues that:
Through proposing new ideas and suggestions, China has attempted to move regional orders toward the direction that favors itself. In recent years, China has used all imaginable occasions, which include economic, political, security, and cultural ones, to advance new ideas and proposals. In fact, China has not only proposed new ideas but also supplied finance to support them (Zhang, 2010, p.
49).
The strategic partnerships China has built through the SCO have deepened and broadened considerably, and India and Pakistan are expected to become full members of the SCO next year (Ibragimova, 2016). The SREB continues and extends much of the work that has been done through the SCO (Fallon, 2015), and indeed the two can be expected to operate to some degree in unison: PLA Major General Ji Mingkui has pointed out that the SREB has created new momentum for the development of the SCO, and that the SCO’s 2014 heads of government summit “started the process of Silk Road Economic Belt security building,” (Fallon, 2015, p. 144).
Baohui Zhang of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University has stated that, “While China is seeking equality with the United States, it has also been more active in using strategic alliances with other major powers to improve its position in the world,” and he cites China’s relationship with Russia as the best example (2010, p. 45). Through the SCO and bilateral initiatives, the two countries have not only settled border disputes and held regular military exercises, but have also signed huge energy deals and negotiated cooperation in Central Asia (Paton, 2014).
From Central Asia to the South and East China Seas and beyond, China’s approach to foreign policy has moved up a gear since Xi Jinping came to power, and his new approach has been characterized as “nothing less than rewriting the current geopolitical landscape,” (Fallon, 2015, p. 140).
Despite the position outlined in “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” and although Foreign Minister Wang Yi has stated that OBOR is “not a tool of geopolitics” (Fallon, 2015, p. 142), it is unlikely that economic cooperation will not turn into political influence and
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strategic maneuvering, especially as “the People’s Liberation Army has become an active participant in China’s internal debate over [OBOR’s] future shape and
implications,” (Beauchamp-Mustafaga, 2015). Major General Ji Mingkui has written that the SREB provides China with significant leverage it can use to address security problems it has with its neighbors; and Colonel Bao Shixui has said that through the SREB, Beijing can offer economic opportunities in exchange for security cooperation (ibid.). In point of fact, there are clear signs that Chinese policymakers think in geopolitical terms. Foreign Minister Wang Yi himself spoke of the “rejuvenation of the Eurasian continent,” as mentioned above.
China’s investments in Central Asia and beyond are expected to be effective in garnering support for the SREB. The US$46 billion deal with Pakistan is perhaps the best example to other countries of what they may be able to gain if they play their cards right. At a Beijing meeting in 2014, China signed agreements with Tajikistan, guaranteeing Chinese credit for the construction of a railway connecting the north and south of the country as well as a new power plant and several agricultural projects (Eurasianet, 2014). Deals like these are likely to whet the appetites of other countries potentially along the SREB route, all of which are in real need of infrastructural investment.
Several scholars point to China using what might be termed “investment diplomacy”
as a means through which to boost relationships along its strategically important continental periphery at a time when territorial disputes have impacted the country’s relations with its neighbors to its east and south, and also the US. The US presence to China’s west is not nearly as strong as it is to the east, where Washington is pursuing a policy of “rebalancing.” Wang Jisi (2014) has argued that the potential
opportunities for cooperation between China and the US in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran could also serve to relieve some of the tension between the two in the Asia-Pacific.
While many have expected that the SREB will create friction between China and Russia in Central Asia, an area Russia considers to be its own backyard, some are optimistic and see it as creating a sphere for increased cooperation between the two, especially at a time when relations between Russia and Europe and Russia and the US are strained and the country is seeking opportunities elsewhere. Prior to a 2014
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meeting in Sochi at the Winter Olympics, Russia had been wary of the SREB initiative (Tiezzi, 2014). China Central Television (CCTV) reported that at the meeting:
Putin pledged to support China’s proposal of ‘One Belt and One Road,’ and expressed his willingness to link the section of Eurasian Rail inside Russia with the initiatives to create greater benefits. Russia’s attitude toward ‘One Belt and One Road’ has changed dramatically (CCTV, 2014).
Whereas the SREB routes had gone around Russian territory prior to the meeting, after February 2014, a rail corridor from Beijing to Moscow was included (Fallon, 2015). How the SREB will affect the division of labor between China and Russia in Central Asia remains open to question, with some suggesting that Russia will perform a security role around China’s economic leadership (ECFR, 2016). It remains to be seen how relations between the two powers will play out as the SREB progresses.
What is often termed China’s “Malacca dilemma” is also said to be a critical strategic motivation for China wanting to improve transportation infrastructure overland to its west. The country is presently hugely dependent on sea routes for its energy needs, and 80 percent of its energy supplies from the Middle East and Africa currently pass through the Malacca Strait (Kelanic, 2013). By building pipelines, roadways and railways into Central Asia, the Middle East and Russia, China will be able to maintain access to precious resources in the event of a maritime blockade by the US or other crisis (ibid.).
China has historically been a land-based power rather than a maritime power and the SREB can be seen to as a reaffirmation of that fact.
2.6. Overseas Suspicion
In spite of China’s push to highlight the benefits of its increasingly multilateral approach through initiatives such as the SREB, many observers see underlying aspects to the project that give cause for suspicion. Christina Lin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argues that, “Conceptually, China’s New Silk Road is based on China’s resurging imperial role in the world,” (Anstee, 2013). Others argue that China’s sponsorship of railways and heavy investment could be seen as part of a
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defense strategy and power projection that protects supply lines and enables potential militarization (ibid.).
The Financial Times has called OBOR, “the largest program of economic diplomacy since the US-led Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction in Europe” (FT, 2015), and US scholar William Overholt (2015) sees OBOR as closely resembling the Marshall Plan in terms of its foreign policy and security aspects, as it contains not only huge geographic scope but also integrates economic, political and national security considerations. Chinese multilateralism in Central Asia has been criticized as an attempt to create a “club” of authoritarian regimes hoping to create legitimacy for their particular forms of governance and stand against the spread of liberal democracy (Carnegie Europe, 2011).
Semi-authoritative Chinese sources have done much to increase distrust as to China’s true intentions and the potential of OBOR projects. Wang Yiwei, a professor at Renmin University, has used the words of the father of modern geopolitics and geostrategy, Halford Mackinder, and called for a revival of Eurasia as a “world island” through OBOR, which would diminish the power of the United States (Fallon, 2015, p. 142). Mackinder’s most famous quote is, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; who rules the World Island commands the World.” Ruan Zongze, a prominent China commentator and executive vice president of the China Institute of International Studies in August 2013 said, “No one in the world will try to contain China, and no one in this world is capable of containing China,” (Callahan, 2013); which begs the question, what might China like to do that others might wish to contain?
Numerous Western scholars express concerns that China might use the SREB to create unwelcome spheres of influence, dominate its neighbors and upset the apple cart of the current international order. Nadege Rolland of the US’ National Bureau of Asian Research argues that the SREB is much more than just an infrastructural network; she sees it as something that opens profoundly transformative strategic opportunities for China:
Chinese authorities hope that it will lead eventually to a situation in which Europe becomes a mere peninsula at the end of the Asian continent,
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economically integrated with and dependent on the Chinese locomotive, while the United States is relegated to the position of a distant island, floating between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The birth of a transcontinental economic corridor, as envisioned by the Chinese authorities, could change the global landscape, shifting the focus of strategy and commerce to the Eurasian landmass from the waters surrounding it and reducing the significance of U.S. naval supremacy.
This corridor could further intensify intra-European divergences over Asia policy, cause deep differences between the United States and its European allies, and sharpen commercial rivalries (Rolland, 2015).
Tansen Sen, of Baruch College in New York, has written that China’s recent attempts to portray Chinese activity on the ancient Silk Road and Maritime Silk Route as peaceful endeavors in a utopian epoch are misrepresentations (2014). He states that Chinese activity on both the ancient Silk Road and Maritime Silk Route was warlike in intention and activity and part of an attempt to push a Sinocentric world order. Sen sees the current initiatives as a major step in China’s drive to recreate the world order in China’s image, with major geopolitical implications.
Others are not quite so foreboding in their predictions, but still see China as
developing alternatives that could come to challenge the US-led current global order.
UCLA scholar Randall Peerenboom argues that China’s now long-term achievements in modernization could lead to the establishment of alternative models of
development for other countries with similar political and socioeconomic arrangements (Zhang, 2010). And Joseph Nye has stated that:
In parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the so-called ‘Beijing consensus’ on authoritarian government has become more popular than the previously dominant ‘Washington consensus’ of market economics with democratic government (Zhang, 2010, p. 59).
In his book “When China Rules the World” (2009), Martin Jacques argues that rising powers transform the structure and interrelationships of international institutions of global governance, and that China will do the same as ascendant powers that have come before it. He forecasts that China will become the dominant world power and states that “the power of each new hegemonic nation or continent is invariably expressed in novel ways,” (Jacques, 2009, p. 270). He states that for Europe,
maritime expansion was the key to power and that the United States relied on airborne supremacy and global economic hegemony. He continues that the Chinese tradition is very different from that of the West, and that its power will take innovative forms. In
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the past, he states, China has relied on land-based expansion to build its power. The SREB can, in this understanding, be interpreted as an innovative move on China’s path to becoming a hegemonic power.
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3. Discussion
In the context of problematic relations with other powers to its east and south, the longest land border in the world (bordering 14 nations) and a desire for influential relationships with neighbors across that border, energy security concerns, restive outer regions, uneven national development, fear of widespread domestic political unrest, the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves, domestic economic transition, severe excess industrial production capacity and idle infrastructure production capacity, China’s new Silk Road initiatives creatively address a huge range of the challenges facing the country.
Just as the behavior of the US became more confident at the end of the 19th century, and again upon the collapse of the USSR, China’s new Silk Road strategies represent a country with increased power (that has overtaken its neighbor competitor Japan to become the world’s second-biggest economy and has overtaken the US in GDP per capita purchasing power parity terms) taking initiative that matches its status and also helps it fulfill its legitimate needs of providing for its population. China’s style of behavior is changing, but perhaps only insofar as it helps it achieve its core aims of defending its sovereignty and rejuvenating the nation. For the first time in its long history, China has become dependent on resources from across the world and it is now forever going to rely on external supplies for what it needs to grow
economically. It has so far had to accept that its supply and export lines are vulnerable to disruption by outside forces. With its greater power and wealth, China is taking perfectly understandable measures to attempt to increase its economic security, as any nation would, by securing its lifelines. At the same time, this has the potential to make it a peer competitor of the US and create a security dilemma in which the Chinese public expects the CCP to stand up to the US and protect its national interests and sensibilities.
Of course, it is not only the US that is concerned about China’s increasing power and assertiveness. In recent years, China has managed to feud simultaneously with a multitude of its neighbors who have then created alliances, trade deals and security efforts to balance against it.
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China has said that in formulating its new Silk Road initiatives, it had no intention of challenging the current international order. While it is true that OBOR can be
understood as a natural progression for a country seeking legitimate development strategies, it is also the case that China is aware of the possibly world-changing
understood as a natural progression for a country seeking legitimate development strategies, it is also the case that China is aware of the possibly world-changing