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Abstract
This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduction of capitalist developmental ideas expressed particularly in the form of networks, which themselves have become a feature of contemporary global political economy. In other words, the Silk Roads vision is more of a ‘spatial fix’ than a geopolitical manoeuvre.
Notes
1. In much English-language commentary this has been reduced to ‘one belt one road’. This paper uses ‘belt and road initiative’, reflecting the language in the English version of the Chinese government action plan issued in March 2015. State Council, Vision and Actions.
2. European Council on Foreign Relations, “‘One Belt, One Road’,” 2.
3. State Council, Vision and Actions.
4. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society.
5. The term ‘ideoscape’ is from Appadurai, cited in Knight, Imagining Globalisation, 14.
6. The twenty-first-century reference has been explained as a ‘maritime Silk Road adapted to the needs of the twenty-first century’. See Ruan, “What Kind of Neighbourhood?,” 39.
7. Swaine, “Chinese Views and Commentary.”
8. The material here is the author’s translation from this Chinese text. See below for a comparison with the ideas in the March 2015 government document.
9. This may be an effort to respond to popular concerns expressed in some neighbouring countries about Chinese dominance.
10. State Council, Vision and Actions. All quotations are from this English version, with references to the relevant section of the document.
11. Although it does not feature prominently in this document, energy security has been an important driver of Chinese government interests in developing economic and commercial ties to its western regions over recent years. The trade and investment statistics with central Asian countries are dominated by energy investment and purchases and related business. National attention to the link through Yunnan and Myanmar to the Bay of Bengal was probably stimulated largely by the prospect of oil and gas flows along this corridor. The importance of energy linkages as part of the Silk Road also comes through in some official commentary on the belt and road, for example in one Xinhua article which quotes a Kazakh energy executive saying that ‘the China–Kazakhstan gas pipeline is a link in the great Silk Road economic belt and that the pipeline will bring pragmatic benefits for his country’. Xinhua, September 15, 2013.
12. A map which reflects this complex connectivity better can be found in the Financial Times, June 19, 2015.
13. See also Ruan, “What Kind of Neighbourhood?,” 40.
14. Madan, “Modi’s Trip to China.” For background on BCIM, see Summers, Yunnan, 87–95.
15. State Council, Vision and Actions. Unless otherwise stated, quotations in this section are from section VI of the vision document.
16. This quotation is taken from page 26 of the English version of the report posted on the website of the Wall Street Journal on March 5, 2015.
17. See below for discussion of the importance of the inclusion of cities as well as provinces.
18. Yeung and Shen, Developing China’s West.
19. Summers, “China’s Western Regions 2020,” 149.
20. State Council, Guowuyuan guanyu Dongbei zhenxing “shi’er wu” guihua de pifu.
21. Ash et al., “Rebalancing towards a Sustainable Future.”
22. Gangyao, Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Guomin Jingji he Shehui Fazhan de Shi’er ge Wunian Guihua Gangyao, 130–134.
23. For further background on the latter, see Freeman and Thompson, China on the Edge.
24. Lai, “Developing Central China,” 109.
25. European Council on Foreign Relations, “‘One Belt, One Road’,” 2.
26. Both can be found in National Development and Reform Commission, “Report on the Implementation of the 2014 Plan,” 7, 21; and Xinhua, “Zhonggong Zhongyang Guanyu Zhiding Guomin Jingji he Shehui Fazhan Dishisan Wunian Guihua de Jianyi,” Sections 3(2), 6(3).
27. Christoffersen, “Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle,” 136.
28. Yang, “Patterns.”
29. Millward, “Positioning Xinjiang,” 55.
30. Gangyao, Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Guomin Jingji he Shehui Fazhan de Shi’er ge Wunian Guihua Gangyao, 131.
31. State Council, Vision and Actions, Section VI.
32. Summers, Yunnan.
33. Yang, Between Winds and Clouds.
34. Gangyao, Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Guomin Jingji he Shehui Fazhan de Shi’er ge Wunian Guihua Gangyao, 131.
35. Summers, Yunnan, 68.
36. State Council, Vision and Actions, Section VI.
37. Szczudlik-Tatar, “‘One Belt, One Road’.”
38. State Council, Vision and Actions, Section VI.
39. Economist Intelligence Unit, Prospects and Challenges.
40. For example, the ‘Silk Road’ term has been used by senior government officials in Yunnan to justify their long-standing plans to connect the region with southeast and south Asia, and has been used in Xinjiang since the 1980s. See Qin, “Yunnan guoji tongdao jianshe chuyi”; and Millward, “Positioning Xinjiang.”
41. Knight, Imagining Globalisation, 51–53.
42. Frieden, Global Capitalism.
43. The most radical thesis was Kenichi Ohmae’s view that globalisation signalled the end of the nation-state and the emergence of regional states as the main economic territories. Ohmae, The End of the Nation State. Rebuttals include Hirst and Thompson, Globalization in Question. In the International Relations field, Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan, suggests that, by eroding state sovereignty under the Westphalian order, globalisation has contributed to a crisis of ‘liberal order’.
44. Dirlik, Global Modernity, 1.
45. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society. Dirlik, Global Modernity, 23–27, particularly highlights the juxtaposition between surfaces and networks in his discussion of globalisation and of Castells, from which I have drawn in this section.
46. Dirlik, Global Modernity, 24.
47. Harvey, Spaces of Capital, 123.
48. Garver, “Development of China’s Overland Transportation Links,” 18.
49. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 407.
50. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 434–440.
51. See above; and State Council, Vision and Actions.
52. State Council, Guowuyuan guanyu yinfa quanguo zhuti gongnengqu guihua de tongzhi.
53. State Council, Vision and Actions, Section VI.
54. Summers, Yunnan, 107.
55. C. Y. Leung, Speech delivered at Boao Forum, Hainan, March 27, 2015. http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201503/27/P201503270812.htm.
56. Meisner, Mao’s China and After, 489.
57. Dirlik, Global Modernity, Chap. 5. See also Knight, Imagining Globalisation.
58. Perdue, “The Economy of the Silk Road.”
59. Penna, “China’s Marshall Plan.”
60. Wang, “China’s ‘New Silk Road’”; Shen, “China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ Strategy”; and Liu, “New Silk Road.”
61. Wang Jisi, “North, South, East, and West,” 44.
62. Wang, “China’s ‘New Silk Road’.”
63. Huang, “Keys to the ‘Belt and Road’.”
64. Gurtov, Will this be China’s Century?, 46.
65. Callahan, “Introduction,” 1.
66. Cited in Oakes, “China’s Provincial Identities,” 668.
67. Holbig, “The Emergence.”
68. Knight, Imagining Globalisation, 14.