‘Constructing’ heritage diplomacy in Central Asia: China’s Sinocentric historicisation of transnational World Heritage Sites

ABSTRACT

As the ancient Silk Road began acquiring new centrality in China’s soft power strategy in the mid-2000s, so did heritage diplomacy, which developed as an engagement tool for fostering relations with Central Asia. The paper examines China’s heritage cooperation with Central Asian countries through the lenses of social constructivism, investigating the conditions whereby the discursive construction of heritage has elicited cooperation. Linking the constructivist canon to Tim Winter’s work, the research considers heritage as diplomacy, suggesting that cooperation is fostered when heritage is framed as a link to a shared past among states and heritage positively engages with the core national interests of recipient countries. The research examines China’s discursive construction of the ‘Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor’ joint nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage list with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in media texts. The paper identifies a Sinocentric historicisation of heritage that, on the one hand, shies away from historical memories of conflict and competition and, on the other, connects joint heritage work with the notion of national sovereignty, playing on Central Asia’s interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Constructivism
• heritage cooperation
• world heritage nomination
• China
• Central Asia

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions and to Professor Tuuli Lähdesmäki and Dr Viktorija Čeginskas for the editorial support. The author also thanks Professor Sofia Graziani, Professor Anke Hein and Dr Eva Seiwert for their invaluable feedback. The author is grateful to Professor Todd Hall and Professor Roy Allison for the time dedicated to discussing this research at its very early stage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A thorough discussion is presented in the following section.

2. Seminal studies on China’s relations with Central Asia include Zhao (2016); Laruelle and Peyrouse (2009); Karrar (2009); Olimat (2017) and Pradt (2020).

3. On the role of the SCO in China’s relations with Central Asia, see Chung (2006); Zhao (2013); Kavalski (2010); Song (2016); Proń (2021) and Seiwert (2021). On the SREB, see Akiner (2011); Pradhan (2018); Reeves (2018) and Pantucci (2019).

4. In the early 1990s, President Jiang Zemin’s mediation with Central Asian republics ensured the settlement of China’s borders (Garver 2016).

5. Most studies on China’s engagement with Central Asia fall within the framework of the SCO and the SREB, even when investigations are conducted at the bilateral level. As an example, see Olimat (2017).

6. The SREB is a case in point in that the project articulates an additional institutionalised framework for China’s engagement with Central Asia. See Pradhan (2018).

7. China’s relations with Central Asia were periodised into four phases. The first spans from independence to the Shanghai Five in 1996, which starts the second phase. The Shanghai Five’s institutionalisation into the SCO determines the start of the third phase. The last and current phase looks at the SREB as a new strategy of engagement. See Garcia (2021).

8. See Swanström (2012) and Umarov (2021).

9. Debates emerged on the validity of the ‘New Great Game’ conceptualisation. See Costa Buranelli (2017).

10. On heritage agreements and cooperative frameworks, see Yau Tsz Yan (2020).

11. States would never operate outside the logic of appropriateness because, if they did so, they would be forced to re-discuss their identity. See March and Olsen (1998).

12. Attraction is the cornerstone of soft power, although what attraction is and how states achieve it remains highly debated. See Nye (2021) for a recent contribution and Hall (2010) for a counterargument.

13. The critical constructivist school aims to understand how states adopt a certain identity. Critical constructivism poses interstate language as a key determinant of identity-transmission. See Cox (1981), Hopf (1998), Linklater (1998) and Jung (2019).

14. See Russo and Giusti (2019). On the politics of heritage, Smith (2006) and Sørensen and Viejo-Rose (2015).

15. See Čaval (2021).

16. See Nye (2004; 2011; 2021).

17. On the nexus between memory, heritage and conflict see Björkdahl et al. (2017) and de le Court (2018).

18. On the Yasukuni shrine, see Callahan (2017), Cheung (2017) and Guan (2018).

19. Japanese visits to the Yasukuni shrine perpetuate the conflictual past between China, Japan, and South Korea, shedding light on opposite memories from the Sino-Japanese conflict and unresolved issues. See Cheung (2010); Fukuoka (2013); Koga (2016).

20. See Jestrovic (2013).

21. For the nomination timeline, see UNESCO (2014a).

22. On China’s foreign policymaking and central and local authorities, see Jakobson and Manuel (2016); Barnett (2019) and S. Zhao (2020). In particular, Wong (2018) discusses the provinces’ ability to influence foreign policymaking processes through central-local officials relations.

23. Several scholars have argued for the nexus between Chinese media and the party-state. See Stockmann’s (2012) work on the nexus between authoritarianism and media commercialisation to expand on why Chinese media should continue to be considered as channelling the strategic thinking of political authorities.

24. This task goes together with the traditional role assigned to the media as the ‘mouthpiece of the Party and the people’ (喉舌论 houshe lun). It also responds to the understanding of Chinese media as ‘grasping discourse power’ (掌握话语权 zhangwo huayuquan) (Mottura 2021), which is considered as constitutive of soft power. See Cao (2014).

25. On the numerous stages of the application, see Uk Kang (2019).

26. The heritage sites inscribed consist of twenty-two sites in China, eight in Kazakhstan and three in Kyrgyzstan. The inscription is composed of ‘capital cities/palace complexes of various empires and Khan kingdoms … central towns, trading settlements, Buddhist cave temples, ancient paths, posthouses, passes, beacon towers, sections of the Great Wall, fortifications, tombs’ (UNESCO 2014a, 8).

27. After the inscription, the title changed into the ‘Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor’. See UNESCO (2014b).

28. Xi’an is also identified in the articles as Chang’an, a term coined during the Han dynasty.

29. On UNESCO’s attention to cultural routes, see ICOMOS (2008) and Grazuleviciute-Vileniske and Matijosaitiene (2010).

30. Starting in 2006, there have been nine meetings between China, UNESCO, and Central Asian countries for the Silk Road heritage nomination. See Uk Kang (2019).

31. See UNESCO (2014a).

32. See UNESCO (2006, 2007, 2008).

33. On central and local authorities in China, see Chung and Lam (2009) and Donaldson (2016).

34. See the Grand Canal nomination submitted to UNESCO and the Silk Road.

35. The number of Silk Road provinces/regions is inconsistent in the articles, varying between four and six, with only Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang steadily listed in the texts. Qinghai is the least mentioned (seven references). Shaanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang became prominent when the historical and geographical scopes of the nomination sharpened.

36. Gansu is mentioned seventy-one times, Shaanxi has fifty-four mentions. Xinjiang is mentioned forty-four times, Henan and Ningxia are mentioned less than thirty times each.

37. Xi Jinping’s speech at the 2014 UNESCO summit is one of the few documents presenting China’s understanding of the nexus between soft power, cultural diplomacy, and heritage work. Xi identifies Shaanxi as a prospective agent to promote history and culture abroad, opening spaces for provinces to be diplomatic agents.

38. The archaeologists were Xu Pingfang, An Jiayao, and Rong Xinjiang.

39. On the centrality of Zhang Qian, see Benjamin (2018).

40. See UNESCO (2014a).

41. Zhang Qian, Ban Chao and Gan Ying are included in the ‘Table of Peerless Heroes’ (無雙譜 Wu Shuang Pu), a xylographic volume containing the biographies and portraits of historical figures of the Han and Qing dynasties. See Benjamin (2018).

42. See Xi (2013).

43. The term Ya’ou dalu (亚欧大陆) translates into ‘Asian-European continent’, framing China and the East as starting points.

44. On Russia’s relations with the post-Soviet space after the 2008 Russo-Georgian conflict, see Ziegler (2011).

45. UNESCO allows countries to present a single application per year. Considering Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan’s limited experience with World Heritage applications, it is logical to presume that China had proposed this strategy.

46. See Yau Tsz Yan (2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giulia Sciorati

Giulia Sciorati is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Trento. Her research examines China’s foreign and security policies and soft power strategy, relations with Central Asia and the country’s peripheries.