CHINESE CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
6.1 IMPROVING THE CHINA-EU CULTURAL RELATIONS
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78 6. POLICY IMPLICATIONS FOR BRI AND EU-CHINA CULTURAL
RELATIONSHIP
This chapter is aimed at answering the four research questions: "what are the obstacles to a deeper EU-China partnership? How to overcome them and improve the overall relations?", "which role does BRI play in the China-EU cultural relations?", "what are the risks and benefits that BRI will bring to the EU?", and therefore "how should the European Union respond to OBOR?". In order to answer these questions in a structured and logical way, the chapter has been divided into two sections: the first one proposes how to overcome the obstacles to a deeper relationship and addresses the impact of the Chinese initiative on Brussels-Beijing cultural and people-to-people relations. The second section focuses on the last two research questions and attempts to provide some policy suggestions, especially for the EU, on how to deal with and respond to the New Silk Roads initiative. In order to provide useful advice, it is necessary to first have a better understanding of the role of OBOR as well as of the challenges and advantages of the Chinese initiative for Europe.
In other words, the answer of the last question depends on the response of the two previous questions.
6.1 IMPROVING THE CHINA-EU CULTURAL RELATIONS
This section addresses the first two research questions by providing an answer based on constructivism. The first question "which are the obstacles to a deeper EU-China partnership? How to overcome them and improve the overall relations?" was the focus of chapter 4, which provided the theoretical framework of this thesis, the description of the obstacles hindering Beijing-Brussels relations as well as the suggestions on how to overcome them. This section is aimed at further explaining the aforementioned suggestions by applying the constructivist theories that have been discussed in the fourth chapter; and consequently at analyzing the role of OBOR in the cultural and people-to-people relations between the two powers.
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79 6.1.1 THE SOLUTION TO THE OBSTACLES
As learnt in chapter 4, the real barrier to more stable and comprehensive China-EU relations are not the material, political and economic, competition or disagreements between the two sides, but actually the non-material differences in identities, interests, cultures and values. Another huge impediment is the dissimilarity in rules and regulations in force in each side, but these are also connected to their respective identities and interests. It is of paramount importance to understand that, as constructivism explains, identities are not fixed and stable, on the contrary they can vary, be shaped and influenced through the contact and interaction with other identities. This means that also interests, cultures and the perception of the other is subject to change. Therefore, this thesis argues that through more frequent exchanges and interactions, not only on the high-level meetings but especially on the bottom-level of people to people contacts, the two sides will be able to advance their dialogue. Indeed, if the two side's peoples, policy makers, researchers lack understanding of each other viewpoints, interests and identities, there is no solid basis for the progress and cooperation. On these grounds, cultural relations are the key: they boost the bilateral communication, understanding and trust, fundamental for a long-lasting relationship.
On the other hand, it is arguable that better understanding and closer exchanges not always lead to friendship and trust, but they can actually cause negative outcomes: by getting to know each other better it could happen that the two partners discover new behaviors, characteristics, values of the other part that they do not appreciate, leading to a even more negative opinion of the other side.
This situation can be identified as "reverse spill-over effect", which is the contrary of the "spill-over effect" theorized by neo-functionalism, the school of thought of the International Relations mainly focused on the regional integration process of the European Union. The spill-over effect is the dynamic process, that happens during integration, by which cooperation and integration in one sector create the incentives and the prerequisites for collaboration in related fields, leading to further integration (Evans & Newnham; 1998; Dunn, 2012). In the case of reverse spill-over, the
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80 two sides form negative opinions of each other, and therefore lose any motivation to develop their partnership.
Nonetheless, it is very unlikely that this situation could happen between Chinese and Europeans, because the existing stereotypes and negative or wrong perceptions are already so widespread that it is hard to believe that they could get worst. Moreover, the bilateral relations at the top level have already improved since decades ago, thanks to closer and more frequent connections. This is proved by all the positive comments about the EU-China partnership provided by scholars and politicians that were analyzed in the beginning of the literature review. Therefore, it is believed that increased exchange will surely boost the opinions that the two peoples have of each other. The views of the population are very important for foreign policy because they constitute the public opinion, which can influence the decisions of the leaders. Therefore, if the public opinion towards one country is positive, it will be easier for the leaders to implement policies and initiatives with the other country, without having to deal with opposition from its people. This is the reason why cultural diplomacy is valued so much by a country like the PRC, that normally has to face the suspicion or even criticism of the foreign public. In other words, if the European public opinion toward China improves, it will be easier for the top level officials to carry out more collaborations in various fields. Finally, in order to achieve a deeper partnership in various fields, the first step would be to create mutual understanding and trust through connection between people, only in these circumstances will the two sides be able to discuss rules and regulations, cooperate in economic projects as well as on the security level, and find a common approach to tackle global challenges.
Cultural relations need to be addressed before the economic and political ones. Without trying to overcome fear of failure or fears of each other, it will not be possible to advance.
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81 6.1.2 ROLE OF BRI
What is the impact of BRI in the EU-China relations? How could OBOR help improve the cultural and people to people relations and consequently boost the overall relations? These are very challenging questions, especially because the current general trend is to describe the New Silk Road as a merely infrastructural and financial initiative, overlooking its cultural implications. But it is necessary to keep in mind that one of the five "connectivities" it aims at achieving is people-to-people. China has already implemented various cultural projects under the OBOR-brand. Therefore, it is considered very useful for the future development of the initiative itself and of the Brussels-Beijing relations, to research and analyze the impact of BRI on this underestimated aspect.
The Belt and Road initiative actually plays a crucial role in EU-China relations because it provides a brand-new, comprehensive and multifaceted framework in which the two partners, their institutions and companies, can collaborate, among other things, on cultural and people to people exchanges, such as tourists, students and researchers (interviews n°2 and 3, February 2017;
interview n°5, April 2017). BRI is ambitiously aimed at providing opportunities not only for infrastructure and trade development, but also for social growth and people to people interaction (Picciau, 2016). It is indeed considered by China as a mechanism for "cultural, academic and talent exchanges, training, media cooperation, and youth and women's dialogues" (Huang, 2016:316), which are among the areas covered in the High Level People-to-People Dialogue established in 2012. In the same domain, student exchange programs, joint research centers, joint disease control, political and diplomatic exchanges as well as cross-country tourism have all been promoted under the OBOR initiative (Huang, 2016), and the European Union pursues the same objectives.
Moreover, being a huge infrastructure project, BRI has the potential to become a network of routes and hubs for intercontinental tourist flows. In other words, it is clear that the impact of OBOR goes beyond trade, finance and infrastructures, being able to connect different continents and cultures, it is actually a means to promote Eurasia connectivity, not only between the old continent and China, but also between all the other countries interested or participating in the initiative. The New Silk
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82 Road provides both sides with new opportunities to enhance and intensify the bridges connecting their cultures, and they have to make sure to cooperate in a way to create a win-win model for all the countries and peoples along the road. Furthermore, the Belt and Road Initiative provides China with a great opportunity to "familiarize itself with the EU regulations in terms of competition, intellectual property, data protection, labor rights, health, food security, consumer protection and the environment". Therefore it would be doubly beneficial to the EU for promoting its values and standards and for China which could better understand the model of European integration, stability, and prosperity (Müller-Markus, 2016:6).
In the framework of BRI some initiatives have been already implemented, in the domain of cultural and interpersonal exchanges, which represents the demonstration of the importance of the initiative for the bilateral relations of the PRC and the EU. From the point of view of tourist relations, OBOR is definitely beneficial for both sides. In 2015 Beijing launched a program titled
"Beautiful China, Silk Road", with the purpose to promote all around Eurasia not only its new initiative, but also China as a tourist destination. In Europe it has already been organized in Italy and Hungary, the latter being the hosting country of the China–Central and Eastern European Countries’ Tourism Coordination Centre (TCC) since 2014, which allows Hungary to play a strategic role in tourist cooperation (van der Putten, Seaman, Huotari, Ekman & Otero-Iglesias, 2016). In the field of culture and tourism, BRI also led to the establishment of new organizations and mechanisms, for instance the OBOR Committee (Europe-China OBOR Culture & Tourism Development Committee), already described in chapter 5, was launched in Brussels in April 2016 as a platform for tourist and cultural initiatives. Moreover, in September 2016, during the Silk Road International Expo, focused on cultural cooperation, the representatives from the BRI countries signed the Dunhuang Declaration. By stressing "cultural diversity, equality and inclusiveness", the signatories engaged in the protection of historical and cultural heritage as well as in the promotion of cultural dialogues. During the Expo, the representative of Gansu Province, the province of Northwest China where the event took place, signed a collaboration agreement with a cultural
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83 institution of the EU (PR Newswire, 2016). Under the BRI-branding many other initiatives have been developed, such as new TV and radio programs, tourist itineraries along the BRI routes, thematic associations. Moreover, in Chongqing, a huge city in the Southwest area, one of the main hubs from which trains directed to Europe leave every week, a UN association titled United Nations Maritime and Continental Silk Road Cities Alliance" was established to organize cultural projects linking the cities along the OBOR corridors (interview n° 7, April 2017). Furthermore, China established a series of government scholarships to nations crossed by the Silk Road, and carried out the "Silk Road Film Bridge Project" and the "Silk Road Book Translation Project" (Cameron, 2017:
8).
In the field of academic cooperation, Beijing has launched a new international alliance of universities, with the objective to "promote close cooperation and exchange among universities and contribute to economic and social development along the Silk Road" (Ma L., 2016), as well as to provide research, engineering and legal support to the OBOR. This higher education platform, called "University Alliance of the New Silk Road" (acronym UANSR), was established during the opening ceremony of Educational Cooperation and Exchanges Fair between Countries on Silk Road on the 22nd of May, 2015 at the Xi'an Jiaotong University, in Xi'an, the "eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road in China", following the announcement of Xi’an Declaration (Xian Jiaotong University, 2015). In particular:
"UANSR is a non-governmental and non-profitable organization aimed at openness and international cooperation in higher education. UANSR adopts the theme of building a platform in higher education cooperation and promoting regional openness and development and vows to step up exchanges and collaboration among universities from countries and regions along the Silk Road in institutional exchanges, talent training, joint research, cultural communication, policy studies and medical service etc, enhance understanding and friendship between the young people, foster quality and all-round talents with international
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84 visions, and facilitate the economic growth of countries on the New Silk Road
Economic Belt and the Eurasian region" (Xian Jiaotong University, 2015).
The alliance oversees the participation of approximately 100 Universities from 22 countries and regions, of all four continents. CentraleSupélec (France), Politecnico di Milano and University of Torino (Italy), University of Liverpool (United Kingdom), Technische Universität Berlin (Germany), and Tampere University of Technology (Finland), are some of the European universities that have joined the alliance (Martin, 2016).
Most importantly, on the 28th of December, 2016 the Chinese Ministry of Culture launched the 2016-2020 Belt and Road Cultural Development Action Plan (“一帶一路”文化發展行動計 劃)15 (interview n°2, February 2017) to "deepen the mutual understanding between the many different countries and regions united by the proposed routes of the Belt and Road Initiative" (Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 2016). The action plan is also intended to effectively promote cultural trade, dissemination, exchanges and cooperation; enhancing cultural cooperative platforms and cultural trade under BRI; and promote the development of cultural and creative industries. In particular, the PRC is planning to support 800 think tanks, scholars, sinologists, translators to participate in interactive and research-based talent development programs in China. The plan also calls for the creation of a "Silk Road Cultural Envoys" (絲綢之路文化使者) as demonstration of the strategic role of youth exchanges in cultural promotion and public diplomacy (Ministry of Culture of the PRC, 2016). In addition, the plan proposes the establishment of various initiatives and frameworks in different fields:
such as the "Silk Road cultural tour, the Silk Road cultural ambassador scheme, as well as a BRI artistic creations initiative, a BRI cultural heritage corridor, a Silk Road cultural industries belt, a BRI international co-operation action plan for the
15 The plan is published on the website of the Ministry of Culture of the PRC:
http://zwgk.mcprc.gov.cn/auto255/201701/t20170113_477591.html
The text of the action plan has not been officially translated into English yet. The Chinese complete text is provided in Appendix 2.
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85 video game industry, a scheme for promoting the growth of the BRI cultural
industries and a BRI cultural trade development plan" (Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 2016).
There exist many projects and events that are not directly under the BRI framework, but they can be connected to the New Silk Roads for similarity of agendas and goals, or because the parties involved are already exploring synergies between the two initiatives. This is the case of the 2018 EU-China Tourism Year and of the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage (interviews n°2 and n°3, February 2017), these two projects will provide the perfect occasion for China and the EU to boost their cultural relations and to institutionalize their collaboration regarding BRI. Another example are the numerous meetings, conferences and seminars that in the last few years have been organized in Europe as well as China during which scholars, politicians and researches from both sides have met to better understand the potential of OBOR and discuss eventual collaborations. For instance, in June 2016 the European Institute for Asian Studies held the seminar "Visions and Actions on the New Silk Road The Examples of Culture and Tourism", during which Mr. István Ujhelyi, Member of the EP's delegation for relations with China and Vice-Chair of the Transport and Tourism Committee, shared the idea of establishing a system of "European Capital of Tourism16, which could be linked with a Chinese counterpart within OBOR's framework" (Teo &
Stec, 2016:2).
Being closely related to the old Silk Road, BRI contains the idea of connection of civilizations, and this is what the parties involved could play with while trying to boost their cultural relations. As Xi Jinping declared during the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in 2015, the PRC aims at promoting "inter-civilization exchanges to build bridges of friendship for our people, drive human development and safeguard peace of the world" (Xi, 2015), and BRI will be
16 The idea of European Capital of Tourism takes as a model the European Capital of Culture, an EU initiative born in 1985 to "highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe, celebrate the cultural features Europeans share, increase European citizens' sense of belonging to a common cultural area, foster the contribution of culture to the development of cities". This initiative proved to be useful also for the city itself, since it increases its international visibility and tourism (European Commission, 2017d).
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86 China's instrument to achieve this ambitious objective. Indeed, "by reviving the idea of the silk roads, on both land and sea", OBOR "gives vitality to histories of transnational, even transcontinental, trade and people-people encounters as a shared heritage" (Winter, 2016). The Silk Road holds a positive image in the minds of people around Eurasia, for being the symbol of peaceful trade and harmonious cultural and religious exchanges (Winter, 2016). Undeniably, along the ancient Silk Road "cultural interaction was a vital aspect of material exchange", merchants had to understand their trading partners' cultures and languages in order to be able to negotiate smoothly and profitably (UNESCO). Following these ideas, OBOR has the potential to act as the cultural bridge between the European and Chinese civilizations.
Finally, the narrative of the Silk Road's spirit of "peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit" (PR Newswire, 2016) provides the EU with an appealing branding to use for the enhancement of cultural and people to people relations with China, but also with the other countries along BRI. Beijing's initiative has a clear impact on the cultural as well as tourist exchanges between the old continent and the middle country. Mr. Ujhelyi also agrees with this position: "OBOR represents a great opportunity in this regard17, as it provides the framework for effective connection of Chinese and European initiatives" (Teo & Stec, 2016:2).