Introduction

China’s growing global influence is changing its behaviour on the world stage, as the country finds itself assuming a greater role in international politics and development. Nowhere can this shifting approach be better found than in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Aspiring to build infrastructure and connectivity projects that will encourage commercial and trade cooperation, the BRI encompasses China’s domestic and world view: that economic development is the key to stability, creating a zone of economic prosperity that will bring it security. Building on years of investment and effort, the BRI across China’s western borders is an expression of geopolitical and geoeconomic effort and investment that is best characterised as China’s Eurasian Pivot. Reconnecting China to its near-neighbourhood, it is transforming the Eurasian continent and enhancing China’s role across it.

Pitched as a win-win project and politically benign, the BRI has been met with general enthusiasm but also some suspicion by some players in the 65 countries that China has identified as making up the Belt and Road. This in part stems from the fact that no blueprint or detailed plan has been made available by Beijing, so there has been some confusion as to what exactly it means and where its parameters lie. As a result, many countries that are captured under the BRI’s broad banner (as well as other states observing from the outside) have assumed that there are hidden geopolitical strings attached. Developments in Central and South Asia provide useful case studies of how the project may unfold, and where the economic relations and accompanying influence enshrined in the BRI rhetoric already exist, and have done for some time.

The root of the research question on which this paper is focused can be found in three announcements from 2013, a year that saw the articulation of three foreign policy concepts: the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), announced in May 2013 when China's Premier Li Keqiang made his first foreign policy visit as leader to Pakistan;¹ the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), announced in September 2013 when President Xi Jinping visited Astana in Kazakhstan and spoke at Nazarbayev University;² and the Twenty-First Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), announced when President Xi visited Jakarta in October 2013.³ These three projects offer the outline of what has become the BRI (previously referred to as One Belt, One Road or OBOR). They are the clearest outline of a foreign policy vision that Xi has offered so far and provide a lens through which to understand how Chinese thinking on international relations is developing in the Xi Jinping administration.

The aim of this paper is to examine what the BRI represents to China’s neighbouring regions beyond its western borders, and how the countries in these regions, as well as China, see its implementation and subsequent impact. Apart from Central and South Asia, this paper will also examine how Russia has received the project, not only because China shares a border with Russia, and Russia is therefore part of the relevant neighbourhood, but also because of the effect China’s growing economic influence is having on Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Central Asia. While initially conceived prior to the announcement of the BRI, as the paper’s research proceeded, it became clear that this broader foreign policy concept offered by Beijing would become an increasingly important factor for China, with particular relevance to Central and South Asia. Many of the approaches now being captured or deployed under the BRI overall are ones which China has been undertaking in Central and South Asia for many years, making these regions something of a testing ground for the BRI.

This paper therefore focuses on the land routes of the BRI – the CPEC and the SREB. Under the CPEC, Chinese investment in Pakistan is transforming the country into a corridor of infrastructure connecting Kashgar, in China’s far west Xinjiang region (officially the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, XUAR), to Pakistan’s Gwadar and Karachi ports. President Xi’s speech announcing the SREB in Astana outlined the five aims of the project: policy communication; road connectivity; trade facilitation; monetary circulation; and people-to-people exchanges.⁴ At its root, the SREB is similar to the CPEC in terms of reconnecting western China to its Eurasian neighbourhood and ultimately to Europe.

Both the SREB and the CPEC aim to build and upgrade roads, pipelines, railways, ports, oil refineries, factories and production plants linking China’s west all the way to Europe, enhancing economic relations through connectivity. This is something that China has already been doing in these regions for many years, and thus the CPEC and the SREB have become terms accentuating China’s existing economic and strategic relationships in South and Central Asia respectively.

In contrast, the MSR remains somewhat abstract. While the broad outline is comprehensible – to ‘develop maritime partnership in a joint effort to build the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st century’,⁵ as laid out by President Xi in Jakarta – the detail is lacking. Furthermore, cutting across sea lanes and maritime spaces, where China has complex and hostile relationships, the MSR seems a much more complicated proposition.

Central and South Asia are also significant because China’s cooperation there has formed the outward demonstration of the domestic drivers behind the BRI. China’s particular interest in these border regions is ultimately about development at home, where Beijing is worried about stability in Xinjiang (its westernmost region beset by inter-ethnic tensions between the Han and Uighur populations), and sees domestic economic prosperity as inextricably linked to the development of neighbouring countries. From China’s perspective, this prosperity is key to stabilising Xinjiang, and in many ways, this has now become the central philosophy of the whole BRI concept: that ‘win-win’ investment in infrastructure will result in domestic economic prosperity, which in turn will provide conditions for ensuring social and political stability.

Although the realities are likely to be more complex than China’s declarations, part of this paper seeks to better understand the workings of China’s proposed vision. In many cases, soft loans provided by China’s Export-Import Bank or China Development Bank (CDB) finance projects, which are usually implemented by a Chinese company and workforce. This mechanism is likely to continue, but with the launch of the BRI, China is further diversifying its funding mechanisms. By setting up the Silk Road Fund (a new state-owned investment fund) and the international Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China is not only proving its commitment to the wider concepts around the BRI, but also promoting its own role in Asian development alongside the many other international financial institutions already in existence. The BRI therefore becomes a new umbrella under which China’s ‘Go Out’ policy is implemented.

Despite this emphasis on economics, China’s expanding influence in Central and South Asia, which will be further promoted through the BRI, raises questions about China’s increased involvement in regional security. This expresses itself in three ways. First, with increased investment and economic interests abroad, China will undoubtedly need to protect its assets from damage, instability or, in some cases, attack. It also needs to protect Chinese nationals who are working to build and maintain those interests. China cannot always depend on local actors to provide adequate security. Second, it is still not completely clear whether or how China will take a more direct role in other domestic or regional security matters where it shares a common interest with the partner state, such as counterterrorism, an issue that preoccupies many of the BRI countries discussed in this paper. Third, and potentially the most controversial in light of China’s traditional policy of ‘non-interference’, is the question of whether China becomes more involved in the internal political issues of partner countries that may block the progress of the BRI or its individual infrastructure projects. Arguably in all of these areas, China is aware of the risks and is already engaged, to different degrees. This reality is one of the most significant changes in China’s approach to foreign policy that the BRI may be impacting.

The aim of this paper is to explore these issues in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of the BRI, examining the CPEC and the SREB in particular. China’s success in conducting connectivity projects with its western and southwestern neighbours is crucial for fulfilling the country’s overall domestic objectives. A key interest is how those encountering the SREB and the CPEC on the ground perceive them and what the likely impact could be, both positive and negative, particularly as a formal foreign policy stamp is put on China’s growing influence to the west and south. In so doing, a clearer understanding will emerge of what China’s new foreign policy approach looks like, along with lessons that may be useful to opinion-formers and policymakers trying to manage, engage or understand China’s rise.

Research Objectives and Methodology

This paper draws on research and analysis from a two-year project.⁶ The research objective was to examine the importance of the SREB and the CPEC within China’s foreign policy and its implications for China’s influence in nine countries near China: Russia; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Uzbekistan; Turkmenistan; Tajikistan; Afghanistan; Pakistan; and India. The initial intent was to better understand China’s growing influence over its western borders, but as research was undertaken and the BRI projects or concepts of the SREB and the CPEC came to the fore, the project's focus became reframed as the countries focused on are strong case studies for what China seeks to achieve through the BRI, as well as the challenges that the BRI will face. They are also gateway countries for China’s development at home, as well as a bridge to reach other markets – two key objectives of the CPEC and the SREB. Rather than concentrate on individual bilateral relations, the focus of the research was to understand China’s new foreign policy approach holistically across the region.

The first year consisted of open source research, supplemented by face-to-face interviews on nine research trips conducted by the authors covering China (Shanghai, Beijing and Ürümqi), Russia (Moscow), Kazakhstan (Atyrau, Astana and Almaty), Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek and Osh), Uzbekistan (Tashkent), Turkmenistan (Ashgabat), Tajikistan (Dushanbe), India (New Delhi) and Pakistan (Islamabad). The security situation prevented the authors from travelling to Kabul in Afghanistan, so interviews were conducted remotely and Afghan participation was secured during the regional workshops and conferences. Afghanistan was a focus for discussions at many of these events. The authors spoke to approximately fifteen to 20 people in each country and sought to cover a wide range of actors, including: academics; government officials, particularly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ministries responsible for economic development and infrastructure; economists; business people; representatives from local Chinese embassies; foreign diplomats; and market traders. The first year culminated in a conference in Shanghai, held in conjunction with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, which brought together representatives from the ten countries involved, including China, who mainly work in the think tank, academic and business worlds.

The second year of research sought to explore in greater detail specific themes relevant to the SREB and the CPEC based on the first year of research, as well as expose Chinese experts to the views of how the initiative was being seen from the ground. These themes were identified as economics, security and infrastructure for both the SREB and the CPEC and were the subject of three separate workshops: one addressing economics held in Almaty in Kazakhstan; one on security in Tashkent in Uzbekistan; and one on infrastructure in New Delhi in India. During the New Delhi workshop, particular attention was paid to Afghanistan, with an additional half-day discussion including Afghan and Chinese officials. The aim was to bring China specialists to the region to exchange ideas. Each workshop drew a group of approximately 20 participants, including RUSI representatives and host country experts (usually from the partner institute with which RUSI was holding the workshop), as well as two China specialists. The China specialists were thought leaders in the relevant field, drawn from prominent universities and think tanks.

The research had three main objectives. First, it sought to understand China’s rationale behind announcing the BRI and how it planned to implement it. Second, the research trips were aimed at gathering information on how stakeholders in the nine neighbouring countries viewed the project, and what they understood its objectives to be and how they would be implemented. Third, it sought to understand the overall effect of the BRI on China’s economic, political, social and security influence in the region.

In concluding, this paper sketches out a clearer understanding of how the BRI is being implemented and seen in China’s immediate western and southwestern periphery, offering an understanding of the geopolitical context and logic behind China’s Eurasian Pivot, as well as some thoughts for policymakers who are seeking to better understand both what China’s BRI actually looks like on the ground and how they might engage with it.

Notes

1 Xinhua, ‘Li's Visit Opens New Chapter in China-Pakistan Relations', 24 May 2013.

2 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, ‘President Xi Jinping Delivers Important Speech and Proposes to Build a Silk Road Economic Belt with Central Asian Countries', 7 September 2013.

3 Wu Jiao and Zhang Yunbi, ‘Xi in Call for Building of New “Maritime Silk Road”’, China Daily USA, 4 October 2013.

4 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, ‘President Xi Jinping Delivers Important Speech and Proposes to Build a Silk Road Economic Belt with Central Asian Countries'.

5 Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Romania, ‘Work Together to Build a 21^st-Century Maritime Silk Road', 28 January 2015.

6 The paper's research also builds on earlier work on Central Asia that can be found at the China in Central Asia blog, <http://chinaincentralasia.com/about/>, accessed 10 November 2016.