The \u201cOne Belt, One Road\u201d strategy provides a guide to the future of China in Eurasia.<\/p>\n
By Michael Clarke
September 10, 2015<\/p>\n
The People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s (PRC) Eurasian frontiers have once more emerged as major factor in Beijing\u2019s foreign policy. Indeed, President Xi Jinping\u2019s recent enunciation of China\u2019s \u201cOne Belt, One Road\u201d (OBOR) strategy<\/a>, comprising an initiative to enhance Eurasian economic connectivity through the construction of a Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and a Maritime Silk Road (MSR), has placed Eurasia \u201cfront and center\u201d in China\u2019s contemporary foreign policy. This has led some to argue that Beijing is in the process of its own \u201cpivot\u201d to Asia that will have far-reaching strategic consequences.<\/p>\n Matthew Burrows and Robert Manning recently argued<\/a> that this \u201cpivot west to Eurasia seeks to turn its vulnerability \u2013 a border with fourteen nations \u2013 into a strategic asset. Together they seek to realize Mackinder\u2019s vision of a Eurasian heartland unopposed.\u201d The success of this Eurasian pivot may well prove to be a \u201cnightmare\u201d for the United States as Beijing\u2019s economic and strategic heft attracts a weakened Russia into a partnership to stabilize and modernize Eurasia on the basis of \u201cauthoritarian state-centric capitalism.\u201d In contrast, Jeffrey Payne responds<\/a> that such fears \u201cshould be pushed aside,\u201d as Beijing will not only have to confront a region of unpredictable and uncontrollable political forces but also latent, and mutual, Sino-Russian suspicion.<\/p>\n Wider Context<\/strong><\/p>\n Such views however do not provide an adequate account of either the underlying motives for Beijing\u2019s \u201cEurasian pivot\u201d or the wider regional context in which Chinese policy is operating. Two factors are central in this regard. First, the OBOR can in part be seen as China\u2019s response to the \u201cpivot\u201d or \u201crebalance\u201d to Asia under U.S. President Barack Obama and to Russia\u2019s relative decline in Central Asia. Second, the OBOR (and the SREB component especially) is as much about Beijing\u2019s domestic concerns as it is about its grand strategy priorities. Of major concern here is China\u2019s hold on its major and often restive Eurasian frontier regions, such as Xinjiang and Tibet. While the relative decline of U.S. and Russian influence in Central Asia has provided Beijing with strategic opportunities to expand its reach, the intensification of Uyghur and Tibetan opposition to ongoing Chinese rule since 2008 has underlined for Beijing the need to accelerate the economic development\/modernization of these regions as the primary means of achieving their integration into the modern Chinese state. Geopolitics and domestic state-building imperatives are thus interwoven in Beijing\u2019s Eurasian pivot.<\/p>\n Prominent Chinese scholar Wang Jisi has argued<\/a> that China\u2019s \u201cmarch westward\u201d (i.e., OBOR) is a \u201cstrategic necessity,\u201d because the \u201ceastward shift\u201d in strategic focus of the Obama administration (known as the \u201crebalance\u201d) threatens to lock Sino-U.S. relations into a \u201czero-sum game\u201d in East Asia. If China\u2019s \u201cmarch westwards\u201d succeeds, \u201cthe potential for U.S.-China cooperation\u201d across a variety of fields will increase and \u201cthere will be almost no risk of military confrontation between the two.\u201d For most of its history, Wang notes, the PRC was strategically oriented to the east due to the \u201ctraditional development advantages\u201d of the country\u2019s eastern provinces and the fact that the major strategic and military threats to the country emanated from its maritime frontiers. Now, however, a \u201cmarch westwards\u201d is needed to ensure that: \u201charmony and stability\u201d in Xinjiang (and Tibet) are not threatened by \u201cextremism, terrorism and other hostile external forces\u201d; \u201cthe supply channels for oil and other bulk commodities to the west of China\u2019s borders remain open\u201d; and China can expand its economic cooperation (including the provision of economic aid) with \u201call West Asian nations.<\/p>\n From this perspective Central Asia emerges<\/a> as a strategic safety valve for the expansion of Chinese influence, given the perceived decline of U.S. influence and interest in the region after its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The MSR seeks to complement this strategic shift by seeking to bolster economic interconnectivity between China and the maritime states of Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. A crucial commonality between both the \u201cland\u201d and \u201cmaritime\u201d Silk Roads as far as Beijing is concerned is their potential to deliver greater access<\/a> (and security of supply) to the oil and gas of both Central Asia and the Middle East.<\/p>\n Complementary Interests<\/strong><\/p>\n The fact that the SREB is in some ways complementary to the interests of the Central Asian states has also worked in Beijing\u2019s favor. Most immediately, China\u2019s focus on greater economic interconnectivity in the region through improvements to critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines, highways, railways and telecommunications networks gels with the long-held desire of Central Asia\u2019s energy rich states (e.g., Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) to diversify<\/a> export routes for their oil and gas. Additionally, a number of the Central Asian states have also identified<\/a> diversification of their economies beyond resource exports as a core priority for their future economic well-being. China\u2019s contribution of $40 billion to a \u201cSilk Road Fund\u201d to assist in the necessary infrastructural development for the SREB has also been seen by Central Asian states as emblematic of the seriousness of Beijing\u2019s commitment to the project.<\/p>\n Additionally, Central Asia\u2019s apparent receptiveness to China\u2019s initiatives must also be framed by the region\u2019s evolving view of the role of the United States and Russia. The Obama administration\u2019s approach to Central Asia as whole arguably became captive to its dilemmas in Afghanistan. That Washington would view the region through this particular lens was not surprising given Obama\u2019s \u201csurge\u201d of 30,000 extra U.S. troops into Afghanistan from July 2009 and withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. and NATO forces by 2014. For the Central Asian states that had benefitted from the arrival of the U.S. on the regional stage after 9\/11; however, the prospect of declining U.S. attention to the region suggested they would be squeezed between an ascendant Beijing and a weakened yet assertive Russia.<\/p>\n An outgrowth of Washington\u2019s Afghan-centric approach was its explicit broadening of the definition of Central Asia to an amorphous \u201cGreater Central Asia\u201d that encompassed<\/a> not only the five post-Soviet states but also Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran\u2019s Khorasan province, and China\u2019s Xinjiang province. For many policymakers and commentators in Washington since the late 1990s, and especially since 2001, much of Central Asia\u2019s apparent instability was due to a perceived lack of integration with the liberal global order (understood in both political and economic terms). This became apparent with the administration\u2019s launch of its \u201cNew Silk Road Initiative<\/a>\u201d (NSRI) in 2011 that aimed to promote the liberalization of trade, economic cooperation, and \u201cpeople-to-people\u201d links between Central and South Asia.<\/p>\n This initiative was clearly driven by the administration\u2019s desire to set the conditions for the consolidation of an independent and stable Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. troops with then Undersecretary of State for Economic, Agricultural and Energy Affairs, Robert Hormats, noting that the, \u201cbasis for the \u2018New Silk Road\u2019 vision is that if Afghanistan is firmly embedded in the economic life of the region, it will be better able to attract new investment, benefit from its resource potential, and provide increasing economic opportunity and hope for its people.\u201d Key to this vision would be for the U.S. to assist countries in this region to reorient their key infrastructure (such as highways, railways, telecommunications networks and so forth) southward and assist in \u201cremoving the bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people.\u201d<\/p>\n The success of such an initiative would also ultimately serve a wider goal for the U.S. as the consolidation of an amenable regime in Afghanistan would provide<\/a> Washington with the capacity to develop north-south linkages between Central and South Asia to compete against the west-east linkages being developed by China and Russia. This development would ultimately contribute to an enduring American geopolitical interest \u2013 to ensure that no one power or group of powers dominates Eurasia. However, this initiative has been undermined almost from the start by the administration\u2019s shifting priorities, the lack of economic integration amongst the Central Asian states themselves, and the administration\u2019s broader \u201cpivot\u201d or \u201crebalance\u201d to the Asia-Pacific. The latter, from the perspective of Central Asia\u2019s elites, signals<\/a> a decline in U.S. attention and commitment to the region from the high point of the early 2000s.<\/p>\n \u2018Post-Soviet Space\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n If China\u2019s recent initiatives in Central Asia have been based on economic and strategic strength, Russia\u2019s have been based on weakness. Indeed, the catalyst for Russia\u2019s renewed interest in integration projects in the \u201cpost-Soviet space\u201d was the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008\/09 and its impact on Russia\u2019s resource-led economic growth. While Russia\u2019s economy had achieved significant levels of growth between 1999 and 2007, with the size of the economy increasing six-fold from $200 billion to $1.3 trillion and per capita GDP rising to $7,000, it had remained overly reliant<\/a> on the export of its energy resources particularly to Western Europe. The GFC not only \u201cexposed the limits of this strategy\u201d but the consequent decline in Russia\u2019s economic growthprompted<\/a> Moscow to seek the reinvigoration of integration in the \u201cpost-Soviet space\u201d as a means of weathering the fallout from the crisis. Russian trade with Central Asia had also begun to decline by 2007, with Chinaovertaking<\/a> Russia as the region\u2019s major foreign trade partner. Russia had by the mid-2000s also begun to refocus on its major advantage vis-\u00e0-vis Central Asia \u2013 its dominant role in the energy sector \u2013 as a means of both buttressing its traditional position in the region and its domestic energy demand. Moscow\u2019s attempts to maintain control over exports from Central Asia do not stem<\/a> from a need for extra oil and gas imports \u201cbut rather because it wants to re-export petroleum for a profit.\u201d Thus \u201cthe Central Asian energy market has in fact sustained the Russian market with low-cost energy while sales to Europe are made at much higher prices.\u201d Falling European demand post-GFC however ultimately undermined this strategy.<\/p>\n It is this context that President Vladimir Putin attempted to reanimate the concept of a \u201cEurasian Union\u201d<\/a> (an idea first floated by Kazakhstan\u2019s President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1994) in a October 2011 op-ed in Izvestia<\/em>in which he foresaw<\/a> it as a \u201csupra-national body\u201d that would \u201ccoordinate economic and currency policy\u201d as a means of providing a \u201cnew post-crisis\u201d development model. Yet Putin\u2019s push for the \u201cEurasian Union\u201d to encompass not only Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus but also Ukraine jeopardized the entire project. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych\u2019s decision to reject a trade deal with the European Union in favor of joining the Eurasian Union precipitated the domestic upheaval that ultimately toppled him and precipitated Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea. The fallout from the Ukrainian crisis for the \u201cpost-Soviet space\u201d has been damaging for Russia\u2019s partners in the Eurasian Union<\/a>. The West\u2019s imposition of wide-reaching sanctions on Russia has undoubtedly harmed the Belarusian and Kazakhstani economies. In January 2015, for example, the Kazakh government cut its GDP growth forecast to 1.5 per cent from its previous prediction of 4.8 per cent with Nazarbayev acknowledging<\/a> the knock-on effects from Western sanctions on Russia and a decline in oil prices. With respect to the former, one Kazakh analyst noted<\/a> that the country\u2019s trade with Ukraine prior to the crisis had exceeded its trade with the rest of Central Asia but thereafter bilateral trade had declined by a third from a high of $4 billion per year.<\/p>\n Moscow\u2019s partners have also begun to doubt the economic viability of the project, with Kazakhstan for example questioning Moscow\u2019s desire to woo states such as Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into the group. Kazakh analyst Sultan Akimbekov, for instance, has suggested<\/a> that Moscow is more intent on making a political statement by making the Eurasian Union into \u201can \u2018umbrella\u2019 brand to bring together a large number of states in the post-Soviet space\u201d as a means of demonstrating its power and sway over its weaker neighbors rather than forge an effective economic grouping. Additionally, he questions whether the Eurasian Union has in fact brought tangible economic benefits to Kazakhstan since it took effect, noting that while the value of the Kazakhstan\u2019s exports to Russia in 2012 were almost exactly the same as four years prior, Kazakhstan has emerged under the Union as \u201can increasingly important sales market for Russia and Belarus.\u201d<\/p>\n Politically, the Ukrainian crisis has also given rise to misgivings in both Minsk and Astana as to the ultimate goals of Putin\u2019s agenda. The Russian president\u2019s invocation of Moscow\u2019s duty to defend ethnic Russians as a justification for annexation of the Crimea in particular has revived concern in Kazakhstan about possible Russian irredentism in the country\u2019s northern reaches. Now has Russian rhetoric since allayed such concerns. Putin\u2019s statement, for instance, at a pro-Kremlin youth camp at Lake Seliger near Moscow in August 2014 that before 1991 \u201cKazakhs had never had statehood\u201d and that ultimately Kazakhstan is part of the so-called Russki mir<\/em><\/a> (Russian world), predictably due the ire of Astana. Nazarbayev took to state television to assert<\/a> that, \u201cKazakhstan has a right to withdraw from the Eurasian Economic Union,\u201d and that \u201cKazakhstan will not be part of organizations that pose a threat to our independence.\u201d Such Russian posturing also prompted<\/a> Nazarbayev to announce plans to officially celebrate the founding of Kazakh statehood in 1465 by the Kazakh khans Kerey and Janybek, while the Astana Times<\/em> editorialized<\/a> on the legitimate history of the statehood of the Kazakh people.<\/p>\n Challenges for Beijing<\/strong><\/p>\n Yet the SREB and increasing bilateral economic relationships with Beijing are not unproblematic for Central Asia. The former, despite some recent Russian protestations to the contrary, runs counter to Moscow\u2019s protectionist agenda within the rubric of its Eurasian Union as Beijing is clearly focused on facilitating freer economic interaction throughout Central Asia. One analyst remarked<\/a> in this respect that \u201cthe real concern\u201d for Russia vis-\u00e0-vis the SREB is \u201cChina\u2019s business-is-business approach with others, which differs from both the West\u2019s political strings for economic intercourse and Russia\u2019s heavy doses of geopolitics.\u201d A deeper problem for Beijing, as prominent Chinese international relations scholar Wu Zhengyu notes<\/a>, is that \u201cif China increases its economic penetration of Central Asia, that region\u2019s countries will likely, in the interest of maintaining political and strategic autonomy, opt to strengthen strategic cooperation with other powers as a means of hedging against political risks caused by economic dependence\u2026Chinese inroads into the Central Asian region may probably create another instance of separation between political relations and economic links.\u201d<\/p>\n Underlying China\u2019s push here, however, is its state-building imperatives in its core Eurasian frontier regions of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Historically, these frontiers constituted<\/a> the marginal \u201cInner Asian zone\u201d of Chinese expansion. These regions were ethnically and geographically liminal zones between Han Chinese and largely Turkic and Mongolian civilizations that not only often remained beyond the authority of imperial China but were also potential threats in the form invasions of China by those peoples. Over the past three decades, Beijing has constructed a coherent strategy toward these regions that seeks to fundamentally transform this historical relationship. Since the institution of \u201creform and opening\u201d under Deng Xiaoping the core assumption<\/a>has been that the delivery of economic development and modernization will ultimately \u201cbuy\u201d the loyalty of such non-ethnic groups as the Uyghur and Tibetans.<\/p>\n The economic development of these frontier regions first assumed national importance under the \u201cGreat Western Development\u201d campaign, formally launched by former President Jiang Zemin in 2000, in which regions such as Xinjiang were envisaged as becoming industrial and agricultural bases and a trade and energy corridor linking China\u2019s economy with Central and South Asia. In this sense, Beijing has had the \u201cjump\u201d on U.S. initiatives such as the NSRI by nearly two decades, with Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen noting<\/a>that, \u201cthe web of connections that China is forging across the region\u2026is the realization of the \u2018New Silk Road\u2019 vision articulated by the U.S. State Department but with the connections oriented largely toward Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n With continued unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet (and even incidents of terrorism in the former) in recent times, it is thus no coincidence that these regions are specifically envisioned as playing key roles in the OBOR. China\u2019s National Development and Reform Commission\u2019s (NDRC) policy paper of March 28, 2015, for example, explicitly stated<\/a> that, \u201cWe should make good use of Xinjiang\u2019s geographic advantages and its role as a window of westward opening-up to deepen communication and cooperation with Central, South and West Asian countries, make it a key transportation, trade, logistics, culture, science and education center, and a core area on the Silk Road Economic Belt.<\/p>\n The core challenge for Beijing however is that the Eurasian connectivity that the OBOR seeks to invigorate, while holding the potential to enhance China\u2019s influence across its Eurasian frontiers, is just as likely to create opportunities for the transmission of various currents (e.g., radical Islamism) antithetical to its core goal of consolidating its hold on places such as Xinjiang. The existence of small numbers of Uyghur militants operating<\/a>with the assistance of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban along the Af-Pak frontier and the increasing flows of Uyghur refugees into South East Asia are but two current examples<\/a> of the potential challenges here.<\/p>\n Burrows and Manning\u2019s assertion China\u2019s Eurasian pivot could create \u201ca new bipolarity\u201d of \u201cChina, Russia and a handful of authoritarian regimes from Central Asia on one pole and the United States, EU and Asian allies and partners on the other\u201d thus ignores the challenges for Beijing arising from the domestic imperatives of its OBOR strategy. Payne\u2019s position that the U.S. can afford to strategically disengage from Eurasia, while ultimately framed by the well-established argument that \u201cUnited States is naturally oriented to serve as an offshore balancer,\u201d nonetheless runs counter to the geopolitical interest that has consistently animated<\/a> U.S. grand strategy since the end of the Second World War \u2013 to ensure that no one power dominates the Eurasian landmass.<\/p>\n U.S. policymakers cannot afford to rely on views that either exaggerate Chinese geopolitical weight in Eurasia or blithely dismiss the fact that the U.S. retains a strategic stake in its future. Correctly identifying the motives for, and obstacles to, China\u2019s OBOR provides a better guide to the likely future of Chinese power and influence in the region.<\/p>\n Dr. Michael Clarke is Associate Professor at the National Security College, ANU. He is the author of <\/em>Xinjiang and China\u2019s Rise in Central Asia \u2013 A History (Routledge 2011).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The \u201cOne Belt, One Road\u201d strategy provides a guide to the future of China in Eurasia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2042"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}