In 2013, China proposed the establishment of a Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The Silk Road Economic Belt was focused on promoting the development of China’s Western territories and would span a region from Central Asia to Europe, while the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road would promote economic cooperation would promote economic cooperation through Southeast Asia, South Asia to Europe, including fostering links between the coastal regions. Originally termed One Belt One Road (OBOR), it was renamed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2016.The proposal was framed as an initiative by which China could strengthen relations with countries around the world while also shouldering greater responsibilities and obligations on the international stage.
China wants to promote a favorable national image of itself to the outside world, which would help encourage others to accept its political worldview. The Belt and Road Initiative represents a key centerpiece of China’s international outreach strategy, especially the articulation of its desired global order. This is vividly demonstrated by the speeches made by Chinese leaders – led by President Xi Jinping – touting the benefits and opportunities that the Belt and Road Initiative would bring to not just China, but also the countries throughout the world that are economically connected to China. Scores of Chinese scholars and com-mentators have also attempted to articulate the initiative’s finer aspects. For example, a simple search on the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database – currently the largest and most comprehensive database hosting Chinese journals and periodicals – of liberal arts/history/philosophy, politics/military affairs/law, and education/comprehensive social sciences publications from January 1 to December 31, 2014 returned 984 papers featuring the phrase yidaiyilu (“one belt one road”) in their title. The same search for subsequent years (i.e., 2015-2019 saw a tremendous increase in discussion of the Belt and Road Initiative. While not all these papers or newspaper articles are directly relevant to China’s international politics or had to do with its foreign relations, the frequent mention of the Belt and Road Initiative within Chinese intellectual circles suggests the extent of interest amongst Chinese observers and schol-arly interlocutors. Another indication of the importance of the Belt and Road Initiative in Chinese political circles is the Belt Road Forum held in Beijing in May 2017, which saw 28 other heads of state and representatives from more than 130 countries and 70 international organizations meet with the stated purpose of building “a more open and eff icient international cooperation platform, a closer, stronger partnership network, and to push for a more just, reasonable and balanced international governance system.”What do all these developments mean, and how should we understand the Belt and Road Initiative from an international relations perspective? How does the Belt and Road Initiative ref lect China’s vision concerning international order 2State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “Full text: Action plan.”
China as a good and different power compared to the West. Through studying the discourse about the Belt and Road Initiative in Chinese scholarly circles, this chapter hopes to uncover important clues about how China – in its quest for global greatness – seeks to challenge the existing international system and what ideas China wants to promulgate within its own theatres of influence.
According to existing studies of Chinese economic statecraft, Chinese leaders have been highly adept in perusing economic tools for the promotion of their own national objectives, particularly those they consider core national interests. This is certainly not unique to China; countries all over the world have utilized economic statecraft to pursue their political objectives to varying degrees. According to Baldwin, economic measures are particularly useful for helping states gain political inf luence, for they are “likely to exert more pressure than either diplomacy or propaganda, and are less likely to evoke a violent response than military instruments.”
Similarly, Huntington has posited “that economic activity is probably the most important source of power [...] in a world in which military conf lict between major states is unlikely [so] economic power will be increasingly important in determining the primacy or subordination of states.”8 Put simply, economic relations between states ought to be viewed as a derivative of existing geopolitical interests and calculations; to understand the reasons behind economic decisions, we need to look at the political factors at work.
I therefore argue that China’s Belt and Road Initiative represents a grand strategy through economic means:economic power is seen as way to generate greater political inf luence in the countries Beijing wants to win over into its camp. Economic initiatives like the BRI are linked to how Chinese leaders seek to present and project Beijing’s worldview to others, and ultimately to how they wish to achieve China’s foreign policy and domestic goals. This “selling” of Beijing’s worldview is closely linked to the conceptualization and operation of Chinese soft power. While Western discussions of soft power tend to emphasize non-coercive aspects, and thus stress the importance of culture and values as instruments of soft power, whether economics should be seen as “hard” or “soft power” is less clear cut in China. According to one study, in Chinese discourse soft power is frequently applied in its own domestic context and towards domestic objectives, and also involves touting the economic success of China’s development model on the global stage.
This suggests that, in the Chinese mind, economic resources can be used as a source of soft power because they allow China to demonstrate its political model and worldview to the outside world, thereby rendering Beijing a model for others to emulate. For instance, it is observed that the “success story of China’s own economy make[s] China[‘s] cultural merits self-evident [... and] a prime opportunity to expand its cultural influence.”12 The highly f luid nature of soft power and its relevance to the economic sphere in China was also a common point made by Chinese scholars during my interviews.13Studies in Chinese business f ields have also noted the pervasive inf luence of politics in the economic sphere,14 while the practice of Chinese politics, as one Chinese scholar recounted, is also very much linked with economic interests.
According to one study, the biggest Chinese enterprises – which account for most of the Chinese companies on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies – also dominate the strategic sectors such as aerospace, telecommunications, power generation – of the Chinese economy. The leaders of the 53 largest companies, “national champions” as they are called, are not appointed by the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), but instead by the Party’s own Organization Department. “They are part of the Party’s nomenklatura system and are cadres ranked at vice ministerial level. This means many business executives are subject to cadre rotation and are moved to take up government or Party positions [...] The renewed emphasis on cross appointment and on the role of Party organizations in SOEs (state-owned enterprises) indicates that the CCP’s current policy is to strengthen rather than weaken its control over SOEs.”
In other words, as far as the major strategic decisions of these SOEs are concerned, these are subjected to the CCP’s political prerogatives, and are made with the goal of amplifying the par t y ’s power.From these examples, it is possible to surmise the following: Chinese economic power and its geopolitical objectives go hand-in-hand with the former providing a means to achieve the objectives of the latter, such as political inf luence and expanding its power globally, be it soft or hard power. In other words, China perceives economic statecraft as a legitimate means for substantiating its claims to exceptionalism, and its economic inf luence allows Beijing to claim that its approach to global economic governance is good and different compared to Western economic practice and norms.
Notwithstanding the variety of topics permeating discussions of the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese international relations scholars tend to focus on three areas: (I) the rules of the international system; (II) the competition for regional inf luence; and (III) China’s own domestic affairs and responsibility towards its own people. Taken together, these three themes indicate how Chinese thinkers conceptualize the Belt and Road Initiative as a platform for China to highlight its sense of exceptionalism.
The need to question the existing rules of the international system represents a key starting point for Chinese thinkers’ conceptualization of the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang has explained his current understanding of the rules of the existing international system. In an article entitled “New Game Expects New System”. Zhao states that globalization has ushered in new political conditions and political that require states to fundamentally alter how they approach the practice of international relations. In Zhao’s mind, the pursuit of national interests and modern political thinking according to the Western paradigm is a zero-sum game in which countries struggle to establish their domination and hegemony, in turn resulting in “suspicious and irrational plans, which are, ironically, based upon the modern rational analysis.” Instead, he writes, the countries of the world should forge closer “reciprocal interrelations” with one another, creating, as his all-under-heaven (Tianxia) system is described, “an all-inclusive and all-compatible system for the world.”
In Zhao’s thinking, the rules of the existing international system do not match the changed reality of the world (brought about by globalization) and thus a new system of political arrangements is needed. While Zhao’s worldview is highly problematic, his writings ref lect a common ideological thread that permeates the thinking of Chinese IR scholars: the perception that the norms and governing principles of the post-World War 2 international system are deeply f lawed, and thus in need of a change.To this end, other Chinese scholars have also proposed the need for deepened interaction between China and the world, and perceive the Belt and Road Initiative as a means to achieve that end. For instance, Xing argues that the Silk Road was traditionally an icon of Chinese history and culture, and thus possesses much signif icance and value. Given economic globalization, it is said that “China will reshape cultural and economic exchange in a civilized, modern, and convenient manner to create a friendly atmosphere in Eurasia as a whole.”20 The Belt and Road Initiative is also perceived as allowing China to actively shape its external environment and further integrate itself with the wider world through deepened coopera-tion with other countries. Other scholars also speak of the Belt and Road Initiative as an initiative that “will create a new situation, an all-around opening up, that will further the global interaction and exchange of China and the entire Asia-Europe-Africa region.”
Zheng Yongnian has written that the Belt and Road Initiative was primarily designed to allow China to play a leading role in international development and to promote a global economy with the participation of other countries. Hence, both China and international society are seen to be in need of deeper globalization, so the objectives pursued by China and the wider world are seen as synonymous with one another. Zhao Kejin, the deputy director of Tsinghua University’s Center for US-China relations has observed that the Belt and Road Initiative is China’s response to “international anarchy” that at its core seeks to transcend “the international system and international order” and forge a more just and equitable world order.23 Similarly, another Beijing-based scholar Zhong Feiteng has argued that the Belt and Road Initiative will allow China to “transcend Western centralism” and thus provide a novel model of development that is not dependent on a “limited Western posture of fixed thinking”.
Thus it seems that in the eyes of Chinese political scientists the Belt and Road Initiative is not simply an economic endeavor, but more importantly presents a form of grand strategy through which the Chinese state can achieve its strategic interests. According to one study of Chinese economic statecraft, economic tools of national power present a particularly attractive lever for China’s pursuit of its foreign policy strategic objectives for several reasons: first, the use of economic initiatives need not be as obvious, threatening, or dislocating as military or diplomatic power tends to be; second, relying on economic power limits inf luence of military-related political interests in the domestic bureaucracy; third, it offers the possibility of attracting partners with a win-win mentality, thus assuaging regional concerns over a growing China; and last, to the extent that the two are complementary, China can realize its economic growth objectives while also pursuing its foreign policy goals.
The Belt and Road Initiative also represents a challenge to the rules and norms of the international system that are usually associated with the Western liberal order.26 In the eyes of Chinese scholars, then, political and economic order are interrelated: the success of the latter legitimizes (to some extent) the practice of the former. Seen this way, the Belt and Road Initiative is an opportunity to showcase Beijing’s vision of global governance and to put forth suggestions about what this new political order should entail.In the opinion of Chinese scholars, the domestic problems faced by the United States over the past decade present the ideal opportunity for China to stake a claim to global leadership and promote its worldview and its claims to exceptionalism.
As a result of its global war on terror and the 2008 economic crisis, the American international image is considered to have taken a battering, thereby presenting China with favorable circumstances in which to portray its leadership as good and different. As Zheng Yongnian writes, “the United States is currently undergoing a period of adjustment; once it readjusts, it will come out. From this vantage point, to the Chinese, this undoubtedly is an opportunity. However, it should be emphasized that this is not a simple case of American decline and thus an opportunity to write the rules, but rather a process to explore what a different set of rules might entail.” This articulation of the Chinese dif ference is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative’s positioning as an opportunit y to of fer the world an alternative source of global governance to which other nations can subscribe.
China’s national image is crucial to Beijing’s aspirations to be seen as good and different from the West, and consequently for its political worldview being accepted by others. Economic power remains a central instrument used by the Chinese government to wield international inf luence, because it is considered less direct than other methods and therefore allows Beijing to subvert off icial diplomatic channels while simultaneously applying political pressure to pursue of its national interests. China also considers the use of economic statecraft to be a legitimate means of wielding soft power. This is unlike the Western understanding of soft power, which tends to focus on aspects such as culture and values. Because of these conceptions by the Chinese state, the Belt and Road Initiative must be understood beyond mere economics: it is a state-backed attempt to generate political inf luence amongst the countries that fall upon the belt and road.
The Belt and Road Initiative can be interpreted as a geostrategic instrument for China to challenge the rules of the international system and shape it to better reflect its national interests and global objectives. This is supplemented by criticism of Western economic initiatives like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are said to be further entrenching Western interests while presenting developing countries – which Beijing claims to represent – with unfavorable terms. At a regional level, China uses the Belt and Road Initiative to cultivate inf lu-ence. Poorer countries like Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar in the Southeast Asia region are highly susceptible to Chinese economic inducements, as demonstrated by examples from recent years.
Given the territorial disputes between China and other Southeast Asian countries, the trust that Beijing receives from the region will be crucial to how the Belt and Road Initiative is perceived and received. Finally, domestic conditions continue to affect how the Belt and Road Initiative is conceptualized and put into practice. While some Chinese scholars read the Belt and Road Initiative as an opportunity for China to “go out” and demonstrate its credentials and “striving for achievement” to the world, others caution that China should not overstretch its resources and should instead focus on domestic development.
Any economic or political turbulence in China’s domestic conditions would affect Beijing’s ability to conduct foreign policy, including aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative.As part of the broader discussion of the Chinese worldview and its claims to exceptionalism, this also raises the question of how dif ferentand good the Belt and Road Initiative can be said to be in comparison with existing economic institutions and initiatives. While many Chinese scholars shun the term “exceptionalism,” instead preferring to frame their analysis of China’s geopolitical worldview with the phrase “with Chinese characteristics”, whether these characteristics are unique remains an issue of considerable debate, particularly in terms of China’s claims that its brand of global governance is superior to the West.
Almost eight years (as of writing) after President Xi’s high-prof ile proclamation of the Belt and Road Initiative, there is still a dearth of clear ideas about how the Belt and Road Initiative ought to progress, let alone actions. While some Chinese observers have attempted to recast the Belt and Road Initiative as not so much goals to be achieved, but instead an ongoing process underlying Beijing’s long-term direction, the fact that few substantive outcomes have been achieved suggests the need to reexamine the ideological foundations upon which the Belt and Road Initiative is built. It also remains to be seen whether China’s economic statecraft represents an utterly novel endeavor or instead merely rehashes the tenets of Western political norms which Chinese leaders often criticize. More crucially, whether these Chinese characteristics are universal enough that other countries will be attracted and attempt to emulate them will determine the extent to which China can be said to be a model for global governance and force for global goods and burdens. Paradoxically, this may require a de-emphasis of “Chinese characteristics” and the articulation of a vision of political governance that coheres with the realities of international society rather than that of the Chinese Communist Party
Taken from Benjamin Ho for De GruyterBrill (Netherlands).
