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2019 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

4. From Central Asia to the World: China’s Regional Diplomacy as a Precursor for Global Connectivity

verfasst von : Hasan H. Karrar

Erschienen in: China’s Belt and Road Initiative in a Global Context

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

During a landmark speech in September 2013 in Kazakhstan, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the Silk Road Economic Belt; soon afterwards, Xi unveiled the Maritime Silk Road in Indonesia. Together, these came to be known as One Belt One Road (OBOR), or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). BRI was an expansive vision of connectivity predicated on Chinese investments and technology flows, and bulwarked by over a trillion dollars. In this chapter, I argue that the BRI model of global connectivity rested on two regional efforts undertaken by Beijing in the 1990s: (1) China’s multilateral and multidimensional diplomacy with the post-Soviet Central Asian republics—as early as 1994, Beijing’s outreach in Central Asia had been described by Premier Li Peng as a new Silk Road—which resulted, initially, in the Shanghai Five forum in 1996. After 2001, this multilateral diplomacy was famously institutionalized in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Although initially focused on security cooperation, in later years, the SCO became a venue for identifying new economic cooperation, many of which would reappear under BRI. (2) Sustained infrastructure building in the western regions of China. This effort, that began in 1991, and acquired momentum at the end of that decade, was in no small part a result of growing ties between China and Central Asia; now, China’s successful regional diplomacy engendered a more expansive, Eurasia-wide connectivity. Hence, inasmuch as BRI seeks to build a conducive investment climate in Afro-Eurasia along multiple corridors since Xi took power, it builds on China’s regional initiatives since the Cold War.

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Vorheriges Kapitel The Changing Asian Perception of China’s Rising: A BRI Context

Nächstes Kapitel BRI: Connectivity, Trade, Investment and Politics in South Asia

While BRI is projected as heralding an increasingly interconnected future, state narratives about the Belt and Road are informed by a rendering of the past in which the imperial Chinese state is reaching out to surrounding polities and states, by land and by sea; Zhang Qian and Zheng He serve as erstwhile ambassadors for a purportedly non-hegemonic Middle Kingdom. This is a projection of connected history that is predicated on fraternity and mutual benefit with a pivotal role for China. According to Xi’s rendering of history, two thousand years of the Silk Road are a testament to friendship across cultures and nationalities, mutual trust and shared benefits, in other words, a win-win for all (MFA, 2013). Such a framing of the past echoes official narratives describing BRI.

The end of the Cold War led to new foreign policy challenges in the region, such as the 1995–1996 showdown in the Taiwan Straits, and more recently, tensions with Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, as China attempts to assert its sovereignty along the Nine Dash Line 九段线 that according to Beijing, marked China’s traditional influence in the South China Seas. In the Asia Pacific, China finds itself not only jostling with its neighbors, but with the United States, too. As Obama had categorically asserted in his speech to the Australian Parliament, with the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq—and at the time, an anticipated withdrawal from Afghanistan—Washington was looking to “pivot” to Asia; Washington too saw itself as the Asia Pacific. Insofar as one can speak of a Maritime Silk Road, since the formation of the People’s Republic, this is a road that has been fraught with obstacles. It is along the Maritime Silk Road that the legacies of the Cold War, a newly assertive China, and critical reassessment of Chinese investments in countries such as Malaysia and Sri Lanka—where the veneer of Chinese infrastructure has given way to foreboding about dependency and the loss of sovereignty—come together, creating one of the most complex geopolitical landscapes in the world (and this is not factoring in securitization on the Korean peninsula, or the relationship between China and Japan that remains laden with the legacy of the Second World War in Asia).

The Eurasian Customs Union presently comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. While tariffs are imposed on goods entering the Customs Union, the movement of goods and labor between member-states is free from tariffs. Notably, the Customs Union does not include China; it has been described as an attempt to limit China’s commercial reach in the region.

Central Asia, along with the Caspian, also attracted American interest over a period of 15 years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. American interest in the region, that began with what was seen as a scale back of Russian influence, saw the United States looking to both tap both into the region’s energy resources, and to leverage geopolitical influence across the former Soviet periphery. American regional engagement peaked following 9/11 and the Anglo-American led military campaign in Afghanistan. This was largely a zero-sum approach toward foreign policy, epitomized in the then oft-used “New Great Game,” or chessboard imagery (Brzezinski, 1997; Kleveman, 2003; Menon, 2003).

De-escalation in tension between China and its neighbors had resulted from improving relations between China and the Soviet Union since 1986. Subsequently, during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s landmark visit to Beijing in May 1989, the two former antagonists had agreed to normalize relations (Garver, 1989; Lampton, 2001). But rapidly unfolding events globally—the collapse of the Berlin Wall; a populist wave in Eastern Europe; the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the United States’ assembly of a military coalition—signaled new global geopolitics. These were best captured by US President George Bush, who speaking to Congress on 11 September 1990, promised “a new world order” in which the nations of the world, “East and West, North and South” could “prosper and live in harmony” (Freedman, 1991, 195). Diplomatically for China, this was uncharted territory.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Central Asia’s energy resources were described as being comparable to the Middle East. Besides the fact these were exaggerated, the region’s energy industry required extensive investment, for which there was little appetite in the 1990s; in the late 1990s, the price of oil dropped to as low as US$ 12 a barrel.

Bush’s “new world order” had given way to debate and speculation, under the presidency of Bill Clinton, whether China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) status would be renewed or not. Although it was renewed in 1994, Clinton had linked MFN status with human rights. Differences between Beijing and Washington escalated sharply in 1995–1996 that were triggered by the US issuance of a visa to Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui who was seen to be moving Taiwan away from the People’s Republic. Tensions between Beijing and Washington continued to escalate over the 1998–1999 Kosovo war, peaking with the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 1999 (Lampton, 2001).

This would, of course, also be a core component of the state discourse around BRI when it was gradually unrolled in 2013. Although BRI is not a formal organization, as the SCO is, the SCO Charter can be read as a precursor of principles that would inform BRI. It begins with a nod to a shared past: “historically established ties” between people of the six countries. It foregrounds “mutual trust, mutual advantage, and equality.” It calls for “mutual respect of sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity of States” (SCO, 2002).

Irrespective of China’s motives, or its successes and failures in this regard, it begs asking: how did Beijing acquire this role? The growing leadership of the SCO, and hence China, in fighting regional instability stemmed from a range of factors. On the one hand, Washington’s efforts in 2002 to shift the War on Terror to Iraq proved both politically alienating in the region, and also diminished Washington’s resolve in comprehensively eliminating the security challenges in the greater Central Asian region. Washington also alienated itself through its criticism of human rights violations in Central Asia, especially following the crackdown in Andijan, Uzbekistan, in May 2005, and in its support for the so-called “colored revolutions” in the Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.

The idea that western China could connect westward through neighboring countries dates to the 1950s before construction had begun on the Karakoram Highway (Ispahani, 1989). While the opening of the Karakoram Highway in 1978 added credence to China connecting overland in the westward direction (Peking Review, 1978), hostility with the Soviet Union ensured that following the Sino-Soviet split, there was no other way of connecting overland out of Xinjiang besides through Pakistan.

This conceals the fact that the railway to Kashgar was completed during the Ninth Five Year Plan (China Daily, 1997). On the other hand, it emphasizes the importance of connectivity as a planning ethos.

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Titel: From Central Asia to the World: China’s Regional Diplomacy as a Precursor for Global Connectivity
verfasst von: Hasan H. Karrar
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: China’s Belt and Road Initiative in a Global Context
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14721-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-14722-8

Copyright-Jahr: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14722-8_4

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