The 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress made it clear that the New Silk Roads – aka, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – launched by President Xi Jinping just four years ago, provides the concept around which all Chinese foreign policy is to revolve for the foreseeable future. Up until the symbolic 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, in 2049, in fact.
Virtually every nook and cranny of the Chinese administration is invested in making the BRI Grand Strategy a success: economic actors, financial players, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the private sector, the diplomatic machine, think tanks, and – of course – the media, are all on board.
It’s under this long-term framework that sundry BRI projects should be examined. And their reach, let’s be clear, involves most of Eurasia – including everything from the Central Asian steppes to the Caucasus and the Western Balkans.
Representatives of no fewer than 50 nations are currently gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia, for yet another BRI-related summit. The BRI masterplan details six major economic “corridors,” and one of these is the Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor. That’s where Georgia fits in, alongside neighboring Azerbaijan: both are vying to position themselves as the key Caucasus transit hub between Western China and the European Union.
On the first day of the summit, Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili extolled the drive to “strengthen the economic and civilizational ties between Europe and Asia.” In practice, that translates into a push to build an economic free zone, in accordance with the memorandum of understanding signed by the Chinese and Georgian economic ministers.
Add in the recently inaugurated Baku-Tblisi-Kars railway and a new deep-sea port to be built in Anaklia, in the Black Sea, with Chinese investment, and we have Georgia as a key logistical hub in China-EU connectivity. It helps that, thanks to the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) gas pipeline out of the Caspian Sea, Georgia has already been positioned for years as an energy transportation hub.
Crucially, Georgia has signed free trade agreements with both the EU and China, with the latter coming into effect at the start of 2018. It is also maneuvering itself to profit from the interconnection of BRI with the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). Beijing and Moscow formally signed the BRI/EAEU partnership in June last year – although it will take time for that to translate into actual trade and economic cooperation projects, possibly starting in the Russian Far East.
Mao revisited
The action in the Caucasus was mirrored in Europe earlier in the week as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban opened the sixth “16+1” summit, involving China and 16 Central and Eastern European nations, in Budapest.
“16+1” is yet another of those trademark Chinese diplomatic “away wins.” Some of these nations are part of the EU, some part of NATO, some neither.
From Beijing’s point of view, what matters is the relentless BRI infrastructure and connectivity drive. Beijing may have invested as much as US$8 billion so far in Central and Eastern Europe.
China is having a ball in the Western Balkans – especially in Serbia, in Montenegro, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where EU financial muscle is absent. China has invested in multiple connectivity and energy projects in Serbia – including the much-debated Belgrade-Budapest high-speed rail link. Construction of the Serbian stretch started this week, with 85% of the total cost (roughly €2.4 billion) coming from the Export-Import Bank of China.
The European Commission (EC) in Brussels predictably objected – claiming the tender process might not have complied with EU rules.
The strategic trade importance of Belgrade-Budapest cannot be overestimated. Think container fleets of Chinese merchandise arriving in Piraeus in Greece – a key hub of the so-called Maritime Silk Road – and then being shipped to the EU via Serbia.
In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.
Think container fleets of Chinese merchandise arriving in Piraeus in Greece – a key hub of the so-called Maritime Silk Road – and then being shipped to the EU via Serbia
Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”
Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.
What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”
Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.
BRI is the strategy and vehicle for China to re-emerge as the world dominant society during its earlier millenia. For his vision and execution, Mr. Xi deserves a Nobel Peace prize, for having brought 700 million people out of poverty, and helping African and South American nations build up infrastructures then economic vitality, benefiting trillions of people.
My mother always told me when I was a young lad,—–"A jealous person is just BLIND." The problem with the Chinese HATERS is they refuse to look at the handwriting on the "Global Wall." The funny thing about the States (and I don’t have a objective answer presently) is they have lost there way——-maybe it is a Politicial leadership problem especially when one looks at Clinton, Bush and Obama BUT the U.S. have fumbled the ball and the Chinese have picked the ball up and already have won the game——–the problem is the U.S. and there Western Allies and some in Asia can’t figure out what to do next. The Chinese have already won the game BUT the other team are teams seem to be sore losers———–the Middle Kingdom continues to maech forward!!
Others would claim understanding of geo-strategies with the British McKinder when addressing the UK parliament or some other large body back in 1904. Perhaps Mao read McKinder.
No Money No Talk. Xi dude is the Real Pivot of Eurasia infrastructural connectivity by risking good money where his big mouth is.
Rowena Millis: Well aware. The new silk road, if it plays out as planned, will cast the US from its predatory perch. But things already seem to be fraying in the US, as it were. Not just public infrastructure but public discourse. The inanity of the the Russian witchhunt, to the extent of suggesting the Russians weaponised Pokemon Go, shows just how low you can go. And there’s a loong way to go yet. Even the police seem to have gone colonial on the American people, to whom they swore to serve and protect. It’s the price of empire.
Sour grapes. India should learn a thing or two from China, instead of cozying up to failing empire, the USA.
Lucio Pereira Mello north and south America are geoghrafically challenged in this world hence we’re heading back to the norms of the past many milleniums where Asia, africa and Europe are a single very well connected and served landmass hence the desperate moves by the USA to establish a disfunction in the greater middle east so as to put a final stop to this inevitable destination thankfully the USA had failed and the caravans are in full swing
Esby Toh: I would suggest you, please, understand the importance of China/ Russia: BRICS bypassing the $US hegemonic currency. Without that supremacy, the US will not be able to finance its military dominance and aggession around the world. ALL previous empires died by overextending themselves, being confronted by other powers who eat away at the empire’s financial stakes. A deeply corrupt and aggressive form of US capitalism, along with massive public ignorance about their government is eating the US alive. I’m here. I witness it everyday.
If you think China’s plan is to replace the US and creating its own unipolar workd, then you’re reading the game wrong. The new silk road proposes a win-win, and requires that Russia come on board. Importantly, China and Russia want to move away from the "democratic evengalism" that has destroyed many countries (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Sudan etc). Multipolarity and economic advancement is the name of the new game.
Re: Exploitation of the Chinese people? Surely you jest? Lifting more than 600 million lifted out of poverty is a very strange way to exploit them. And regarding India, in case you haven’t noticed, India is falling over herself playing flushing bride to muscular American overture, agreeing to military cooperation right at the point when American preemince is receding. Great timing, sure.
From a Brazilian Perspective, The Three World Theories, both western and chinese are frameworks in wich establised superpowers and emerging superpowers try to play their influence over marginalized countries in mode of production centralities.
The risk of the assumption of those frameworks as a definitive – form the USA and its allies and Chine and its new influence zone – is that there is always an alternative that latin america, africa and Inda can play much more effective way bargaing tettain for technologies or cash or suplies or militar support
Russia and India seems very interested in a multipolar world than a dualistic world game USA x China.
And then South Affrica, Brazil and India, will not oppose to join an third battle front (in Economics, let be clear) to bargain against finnancial superpower (the USA) and warehouse surplus one party machine (China) .
Chian and USA are in fact only disputing who is gonna be 21st Century central economic hub – Shangai or New York ( California, in fact)
From the perophery , we all want to see the game players get the more injured they can!!!