China's New Silk Road

An Emerging World Order

Carmen Amado Mendes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351134330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Much is being written about China's new 'One Belt, One Road' initiative, but much of the writing focuses on China itself, on the destinations of the road – Europe and the Middle East – or on the countries through which the road passes, such as Central Asia. This book takes a different approach, assessing the views of East Asian and other countries on the Belt and Road Initiative, both from a transnational and multidisciplinary perspective. The book considers international visions and limitations of the New Silk Road as a new paradigm, explores economic and trade aspects, including infrastructure networks, financial mechanisms, and the likely impact for other countries and regions, and analyses the likely implications for regional and trans-regional cooperation and competition. Western and Asian regional perspectives on the New Silk Road, including from India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia and Japan are considered throughout the book.

Part I

The general context

1 New paradigms for the New Silk Road

Sean Golden

The invention of paradigms in International Relations studies

The study of International Relations (IR) in the Euroamerican context is dominated by a limited number of paradigms – especially Realpolitik – which tend to become ‘paradogmas’ that reflect an unquestioned or unproblematised Euro-centric or Euroamericacentric or even NATO-centric bias. They lack intellectual and theoretical diversity. A geoeconomic power shift has occurred and a concomitant geopolitical power shift is occurring, but the paradigms that dominate Euroamerican political theory have not shifted.¹ Does the West run the risk of falling prey to the Maginot Line Syndrome, preparing obsolete defences of political systems and paradigms based on Westphalian nation-states for a post Bretton Woods world order that has moved the Rest into uncharted territory?

Realism, based on naked self-interest and (instrumental) rational choice theory, runs the risk of becoming an immune theory, a theory that is resistant to facts, in which any outcome must automatically confirm the theory, so that an allegedly altruistic decision must really be a selfish one because it affords some kind of benefit. An immune theory is not scientific by Karl Popper’s definition of the scientific method, because an immune theory cannot be falsified. North American Realism also tends to be ideologised and normative, while its European counterpart tends to rely on absolutism, essentialism and universalism. The amoral nature of Realpolitik makes it difficult to justify ‘Realist’ analyses or strategies on any other basis than pure naked national self-interest, and from that point of view, the Rest are equally justified in promoting their own self-interest.

If the United States (US) accuses China of hacking American businesses for the purposes of industrial espionage, at the same time that the US hacks the offices of European Union (EU) negotiators of a trans-Atlantic free trade treaty in order to find out what the EU strategy will be, on what basis can the Chinese be faulted? Is it simply ‘we are the good guys and they are the bad guys’? The fallacy of such an approach reaches its extreme in the ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA)’ or ‘America First’ philosophy of Donald Trump and those he seems to represent. From what objective point of view are US or EU self-interests inherently more justified or justifiable than Chinese or Russian or Iranian self-interests? Realists say that universal moral principles do not apply to IR (Morgenthau 1961: 10) but they also try to justify hegemonic dominance of the world order on the basis of providing (self-defined and self-serving) global public goods. When Vladimir Putin asks what the difference is between the Crimea and Kosovo, what is the objective reply? To put it more bluntly, when the Rest have enough weight to throw around, can the West maintain its pretence to superiority? And is the West’s confidence in the scientific objectivity and universality of its IR theories directly dependent upon the West’s ability to impose them on the Rest?

The ‘emergent’ economies of the BRIC countries are due in fact to the re-emergence of two of the economies that had dominated geoeconomics before the nineteenth century (China and India) and to the partial recovery of the ex-USSR. The G7 can no longer dictate to the G20. A geoeconomic and demographic power shift has already occurred, but the paradigms that dominate geopolitical thinking in the West seem not to have shifted. Of course there is a danger of exceptionalism in a more relativistic approach to IR Theory, whether it be Eurocentric or Sinocentric, but the West is not exempt from an accusation of reverse exceptionalism when it insists that its theories are the only acceptable theories, that is to say, when the West attributes the characteristic of ‘universal’ to its own historically, socially, economically, politically and culturally contingent theories.²

In this context emerging new and alternative paradigms that are contingent on a shifting world order must compete with the prevalent conventional theoretical frameworks and strategies in order to shift the paradigms that currently dominate geostrategic thinking. Paradigms can generate path dependent analyses, strategies and policies. If the paradigm employed for the analysis and interpretation of a geopolitical situation is flawed, can a strategy based on that analysis and that interpretation avoid being flawed as well? If the paradigm defines another country as a rival, then the theoretical framework will be based on zero-sum competition and will prepare a strategy for conflict, and perhaps provoke it. If the paradigm defines another country as a partner, then the theoretical framework will be based on win–win cooperation and will prepare a strategy for harmonious relations, and perhaps ensure them.

The working hypothesis here is that the existing Euroamerican IR Theory paradigms are not only path dependent, but also based on an obsolete vision of the world order that has rendered them obsolete as well, and they could lead to self-fulfilling prophecies that provoke unnecessary conflicts. The shift in geopolitical power that corresponds to a shift in geoeconomic and demographic power is evolving into a new world order that is still in flux, which is itself an example of emergent behaviour. Adequate responses to this emergent behaviour will require adequate paradigms, but these new paradigms are still emergent as well.³

This is the context for the geostrategic analysis and interpretation of the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt and Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road’ (丝绸之路经济带和21世纪海上丝绸之路 Sīchóu zhī lù jīngjì dài hé 21 shìjì hǎishàng sīchóu zhī lù) – known generally as ‘One Belt, One Road’ 一带一路 yị̄dài yị̄lù (OBOR), although the usage preferred by the Chinese government is now the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI).⁴ IR Theory and geostrategic practice are experiencing a paradigm shift. The problem to be faced now is how to bring about a paradigm shift in current thinking about IR Theory when the possible new paradigms are still emerging.

China has its own set of paradigms that may also be an impediment to a more accurate assessment of the changing world order, chief among these a belief in the primacy of the role of a Leninist revolutionary political organisation and structure in a post-revolutionary period of governance. Even so, there is also an IR debate under way in China, as well as the development of new forms of political and IR discourse. For the time being, China advocates a diverse and multipolar world as an alternative to US/NATO hegemony. A discursive strategy with Chinese characteristics is emerging that attributes to traditional Chinese wisdom the ability to have foreseen the problems of modernity and to have avoided them prior to the clash of the nineteenth century, while recognising at the same time its inability to compete with modernity successfully (Golden 2006, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015). This discursive strategy suggests that China has tested Western models and discovered that they are not valid for Chinese circumstances and that they have also been disastrous for the West. It proposes Chinese solutions based on the renewal of a Chinese model that would serve both China and the rest of the world, and as a corollary, that China will regain its preeminent role in the world order. The major questions to be answered in any projection of the future are what would or will a world order with China as the preeminent power be like, and how will today’s preeminent powers respond?

Depending on the paradigm employed, the approaches taken to Chinese territorial claims and activities in the South China Sea could exacerbate or reorient the situation. The total failure of attempts based on traditional security-based diplomacy to deal with non-state terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa is a further symptom of the obsolescence of the dominant paradigms in Euroamerican IR Theory. So too are the tendencies towards economic regionalisation and political regionalism that are emerging as a response to the inability of the individual nation-state to control the dynamics of a supranational market economy. The proliferation of Bretton Woods-style international organisations that legislate on a supranational basis is also a symptom of the obsolescence of the Westphalian world order. Strategy based on Cold War nostalgia that posits China as the inevitable rival in an inevitable conflict could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as could post-Cold War pragmatism that sees China as a partner in a new world order inclusive of the Rest. The same is true for Chinese strategists as they plot their course through a globalised capitalist market economy in which the Rest have begun an accumulation of capital at the cost of – or thanks to – the decline of the West.

New paradigms for the New Silk Road

Donald Rumsfeld famously spoke of ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ but warned of the dangers inherent in ‘unknown unknowns’ (Rumsfeld 2002). Both the emerging world order and the correspondingly emerging paradigms are examples of unknown unknowns. Slavoj Žižek added a fourth category, the ‘unknown knowns’. In this case, people refuse to recognise something that they do know. They are in denial. Žižek defined unknown knowns as ‘the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values’ (Žižek 2004). Strategies of response to the changing world order that are based on obsolete paradigms or on unacknowledged or unconfessable hidden agendas fall into this category. The analyses and interpretations that are being applied to China’s ‘Rise’ or the New Silk Road evidence the dynamics at play among obsolete and emerging paradigms through the diverse nature of the strategic policy proposals that they elaborate for the emergent behaviour of the changing world order.

The 2017 Global Trends Report of the US National Intelligence Council identifies the shifting nature of the world order from the point of view of US interests.

An ever-widening range of states, organizations, and empowered individuals will shape geopolitics. For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War. So, too, perhaps is the rules-based international order that emerged after World War II. It will be much harder to cooperate internationally and govern in ways publics expect.

(National Intelligence Council 2017: ix)

It also recognises a dwindling scope for action on the part of the US.

It will be tempting to impose order on this apparent chaos, but that ultimately would be too costly in the short run and would fail in the long.… Although material strength will remain essential to geopolitical and state power, the most powerful actors of the future will draw on networks, relationships, and information to compete and cooperate.

(National Intelligence Council 2017: ix)

And it envisages three alternative scenarios for the emerging world order: ‘Islands’, ‘Orbits’, and ‘Communities’ that emphasise ‘alternative responses to near-term volatility – at the national (Islands), regional (Orbits), and sub-state and transnational (Communities) levels’ (National Intelligence Council 2017: x).

The National Intelligence Council report is an acknowledgement of the obsolescence of Cold War and Westphalian paradigms and an attempt to imagine new paradigms for a changing world order. In his recent essay ‘The Return of Marco Polo’s World and the US Military Response’, Robert D. Kaplan⁵ also responds to the BRI by problematising the Cold War approach but by making US interests the core of his analysis he still maintains Cold War-style objectives.

The supercontinent [Eurasia] is becoming one fluid, comprehensible unit of trade and conflict, as the Westphalian system of states weakens and older, imperial legacies – Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Turkish – become paramount. Every crisis from Central Europe to the ethnic-Han Chinese heartland is now interlinked. There is one singular battlespace … that the U.S. military now must grapple with.

(Kaplan 2017: 1, 3)

It is doubly symptomatic of a conventional Realist approach that he frames the emerging situation in terms of security (military conflict) and from a Eurocentric point of view, taking the travels of Marco Polo (1254–1324) as the reference point for his analysis. Later in the essay he refers to ‘Afro-Eurasia’ as a more accurate descriptive term for the tendencies emerging beyond the Euroamerican ambit (Kaplan 2017: 5). That being the case it might be more apt to look to Ibn Battuta (1304–1368) or Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) or 郑和 Zheng He (1371–1433) as reference points rather than Marco Polo. Both the time period and their travels overlapped, as did the geographical space of Afro-Eurasia.

Kaplan suggests that the BRI duplicates the routes that Marco Polo travelled because China wants to duplicate the ‘Pax Mongolica’ of Genghis Khan (1162–1227).

The Mongols … were, in fact, ‘early practitioners of globalization’, seeking to connect the whole of habitable Eurasia in a truly multicultural empire. And Yuan China’s most compelling weapon was … not the sword but trade: gems, fabrics, spices, metals, and so on.… Mongol grand strategy was built on commerce much more than on war.

(Kaplan 2017: 9)

Kaplan also erects a theoretical framework based on the empires that dominated the Eurasian space in the past – Mongol, Persian, Russian, Ottoman and Chinese. He suggests that strategists look to the past for ideas to deal with new developments along the Belt and Road. ‘If you want to understand China’s grand strategy today, look no further than Kublai Khan’s empire’ (Kaplan 2017: 9). The paradigm he applies to the analysis of these Eurasian empires is also Eurocentric; he sees them as throwbacks to a pre-Westphalian past. An alternative paradigm might be that being developed by Wang Hui, who points to qualitative differences in the nature of the much longer-lived Chinese Empire in comparison with relatively short-lived European empires and even suggests the necessity of an empire-like state for supranational entities like the European Union and China, now and in the future (Wang 2010, 2011).

Although he indicates some limitations intrinsic to Cold War paradigms in this situation, Kaplan still frames the changing world order from an American point of view and i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: China’s New Silk Road
• PART I: The general context
• PART II: The economic dimension
• PART III: The strategic dimension
• Index