by Bruno Maçães
Moreover, our current historical juncture differs from others in the crucial sense that China’s rise does not depend on a technological breakthrough which will remain inaccessible to the West. This is the point where parallels with the corresponding moment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—when the West rose to global preeminence—must necessarily stop. The new world order towards which we are moving is not one where there is a clear centre, but rather one distinguished by the search for balance between different poles. So when we describe a new Chinese world order we have to keep in mind that there will be other shareholders, other shapers, other balancers. In some places it may exist in a pure form; in others there will be some precarious balance or combination; and in still others its influence may well be minimal. The West will diminish in reach and influence, but thirty years from now it will continue to offer a powerful alternative to the Belt and Road, even if it may also be expected to evolve in response to the Chinese challenge. The problem for us is to determine the core of the new Chinese world picture and identify the main traits which—unremittingly—it will come to impress upon the whole.
Different political concepts will share the same space, much as if the age of globalization had merged with an older age of different ethical or religious views. The new world order shares with the last decade of the previous century the belief in the inevitability of interdependency and connectivity, but it combines it with the recognition of division and conflict. We have entered the second age of globalization, where borders become increasingly diffuse but cultural and civilizational differences do not, giving rise to a permanently unstable compound of heterogeneous elements. That is why I prefer to speak of the world after the Belt and Road rather than the Belt and Road world. The Belt and Road may never become universal—just as the West never became universal—but in some areas it will rule unimpeded and different shades of influence will be felt everywhere.
As we have seen in preceding chapters, the new Chinese Tianxia may remind us of the American-led order in some important respects—a network of economic relations used to exert pressure over friendly and less friendly countries and a longterm strategy to shape their internal politics in certain directions—but it is based on a fundamentally different worldview. Modern liberalism of the kind exemplified by the American republic is neutral and mechanic. Its constitution is meant to be a system of checks and balances, capable of counteracting the follies of leaders through institutional and legal constraints. Its political and legal culture is deliberately neutral, keeping as much distance as possible from every particular vision of the good life. Everyone is entitled to the pursuit of happiness and, more importantly, to define on his or her own terms what happiness is. In the relations between countries, the focus is on rules and contracts. Ritual is downplayed or ignored, seen as a relic from the past.
The Chinese Tianxia is different. It emphasizes “togetherness,” a complex network of ties between countries. They are much more substantial than mere legal ties. Virtues are regularly invoked: countries have relations of dependence, generosity, gratitude, respect and retribution. Relations between countries are much more difficult to navigate. Ritual is important, and so is history. Nations are better seen as intersecting stories and power the ability to determine where the story goes next.
“Togetherness” will also mean that social and economic change can be more effectively obtained. Western political societies are fragmented and diverse, with social forces moving in different directions, often resulting in a noisy and agitated state of paralysis. What China has created within its borders and what it intends to project on a larger stage is a precise and coordinated movement in predetermined directions. Opposing forces are coopted or eliminated for the sake of quick and dramatic results. Technology and success are almost synonymous. Whereas Great Britain took 154 years to double industrial output per person and the United States fifty-three years, China and India have taken just twelve and sixteen years respectively, and they have both done it on a much larger scale, with one billion people rather than 10 million. The Chinese made fifty times more mobile payments in 2016 than US consumers, trebling to $5.5 trillion in China while US payments only grew 39 per cent, to $112 billion.40 China’s Tianxia will be one of fast economic and social change, much more at ease with its costs than Western societies at present. Visions of the future will be its main currency and symbols of distinction.
Finally, the Chinese Tianxia will break with the Western model by moving decisively away from Enlightenment ideals of transparency and public knowledge. Even in its formative stage the Belt and Road is an exercise in the opacity of power. There is an exoteric doctrine of the initiative and then an esoteric practice where deals are agreed upon, often with no written evidence, and where hierarchy resembles that of security-clearance levels of access. Some of the participants know only the broadest strokes of the plan, sufficient to defend it and to communicate with lower levels, others know nothing and only a few can see months or years in advance. Or, as you sometimes hear in Beijing, just as every individual has a right to privacy, the Party also has a right to privacy. The Belt and Road is like holy writ—never revealed completely and all at once, but only bit by bit and over many decades.
We have embarked and it is almost certainly too late to go back. The world after the Belt and Road awaits us, like a new continent at the end of a long journey. It will be a world of saints, soothsayers and spooks.
NOTES
1. WHAT IS THE BELT AND ROAD?
1. Jack Farchy, “New Silk Road Will Transport Laptops and Frozen Chicken,” Financial Times, May 9, 2016
2. Howard French, Everything Under the Heavens (Knopf, 2017), p. 120.
3. John Garver, China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 403.
4. Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 89.
5. Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds Its Way,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2011, pp. 68–79.
6. “Facing the Risks of the ‘Going Out Strategy,’” European Council on Foreign Relations, January 2012.
7. Xu Jin and Du Zheyuan, “The Dominant Thinking Sets in Chinese Foreign Policy Research: A Criticism,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics, September 2015, pp. 251–279.
8. “China’s overcapacity crisis can spur growth through overseas expansion,” South China Morning Post, January 7, 2014.
9. Wang Yiwei, The Belt and Road Initiative (New World Press, 2016), p. 4.
10. Devin Thorne and Ben Spevack, “Harbored Ambitions: How China’s Port Investments Are Strategically Reshaping the Indo-Pacific”, C4ADS, 2017, pp. 16–17.
11. Mei Xinyu, “The Gwadar Port Disillusion,” Caijing, December 19, 2016.
12. Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017), p. 113.
13. Bruno Maçães, “Russia’s New Energy Gamble,” Cairo Review, 2018.
14. Nadine Godehardt, “No End of History: A Chinese Alternative Concept of International Order”, SWP Research Paper, Berlin, January 2016.
15. Wang Yiwei, The Belt and Road Initiative: What China Will Offer the World in Its Rise (New World Press, 2016), p. 1.
16. See Zhao Tingyang, “Rethinking Empire from a Chinese Concept ‘All-under-Heaven’ (Tian-xia, 天下),” Social Identities, January 2006, pp. 29–41.
17. “一带一路”: 人类命运共同体的重要实践路径 作者: 张耀军 来源: 人民论坛
18. “China to establish court for OBOR disputes,” Asia Times, January 25, 2018.
19. William Callahan, “China’s ‘Asia Dream’: The Belt and Road Initiative and the New Regional Order,” Journal of Comparative Politics, 2016, pp. 226–243.
20. 明浩, “一带一路”与“人类命运共同体, 中央民族大学学报 哲学社�
�科学版, 2015, p. 29.
21. Wang Jisi, “China in the Middle,” The American Interest, 2015.
22. Dingding Chen and Jianwei Wang, “Lying Low No More? China’s New Thinking on the Tao Guang Yang Hui Strategy,” China, 2011.
23. 徐进, 郭楚, “命运共同体”概念辨析” 2017 年02期 目录.
24. Peter Harrell, Elizabeth Rosenberg and Edoardo Saravalle, “China’s Use of Coercive Economic Measures,” CNAS, June 2018.
25. Astrid Nordin, “Futures Beyond the West? Autoimmunity in China’s Harmonious World”, Review of International Studies, 2016, p. 169.
2. NUTS AND BOLTS
1. Haig Patapan & Yi Wang, “The Hidden Ruler: Wang Huning and the Making of Contemporary China,” Journal of Contemporary China, 2017, p. 14.
2. Astrid Nordin and Mikael Weissmann, “Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order,” International Affairs, 2018, p. 237.
3. M. Dian and S. Menegazzi, New Regional Initiatives in China’s Foreign Policy (Palgrave, 2018), p. 77.
4. Linsey Chutel, “China is exporting facial recognition software to Africa, expanding its vast database,” Quartz, May 25, 2018.
5. “China Exim Bank Boosts Lending to Belt and Road Projects,” Xinhua, January 14, 2016,
6. Wang Yingyao, “The Rise of the ‘Shareholding State’: Financialization of Economic Management in China’”, Socio-Economic Review, 2015, p. 603.
7. “Building the Belt and Road: Concept, Practice and China’s Contribution,” Office of the Leading Group for the Belt and Road Initiative, May 2017, pp. 9–10.
8. Hasaan Khawar, “CPEC: transport or economic corridor?,” The Express Tribune, June 5, 2018.
9. “Adhering to the Planning, Orderly and Pragmatically Build the ‘Belt and Road’ The Belt and Road Progress Report,” The Belt and Road Progress Research Team, Renmin University of China, September 26, 2016, pp. 12–14.
10. “Seeking Belt buckle role, Kazakhstan launches China-backed financial hub,” Reuters, July 5, 2018.
11. Li Lifan, “The Challenges Facing Russian-Chinese Efforts to ‘Dock’ the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and One Belt, One Road (OBOR),” Russian Analytical Digest, May 3, 2016.
12. Andrew Small, “First Movement, Pakistan and the Belt and Road Initiative,” Asia Policy, 2017, p. 82.
13. Eileen Guo, “Now on Netflix: A love song to China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” SupChina, June 8, 2018.
14. Long Term Plan for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (2017–2030), p. 5.
15. Faseeh Mangi, “China’s Vast Intercontinental Building Plan Is Gaining Momentum,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2018.
16. Murtaza Ali Shah, “Chinese company to invest $500m in Gwadar to build homes,” The News, October 20, 2017.
17. David Brewster, “The MSRI and the Evolving Naval Balance in the Indian Ocean,” in Jean-Marc F. Blanchard (ed.), China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia: A Political Economic Analysis of Its Purposes, Perils, and Promise (Palgrave, 2018).
18. Shawn W. Crispin, “A man, a plan, a canal…Thailand?,” Asian Times, January 25, 2018.
19. Chief of Naval Operations, The United States Navy Arctic Roadmap for 2014 to 2030, February 2014.
20. “Investors feel more ‘assured, confident’ by presence of China’s base in Djibouti,” Global Times, July 6, 2018.
21. Chi-Kong Lai, “Li Hung-chang and Modern Enterprise: The China Merchants’ Company, 1872–1885,” Chinese Studies in History, 1991, p. 41.
22. Hidetaka Yoshimatsu, “China, Japan and the South China Sea Dispute: Pursuing Strategic Goals Through Economic and Institutional Means,” Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 2017, pp. 294–315.
23. Chien-peng Chung and Thomas J. Voon, “China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative: Political-Economic Calculations of Southeast Asian States”, Asian Survey, 2017, p. 422.
24. 印度洋海权格局与中国海权的印度洋拓展, 《太平洋学报》2014年5期 作者: 李剑 陈文文 金晶.
3. THE BELT AND ROAD AND THE WORLD ECONOMY
1. Richard Baldwin, The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization (Harvard University Press, 2016), p. 161.
2. Kenneth Rogoff, “Will China Really Supplant US Economic Hegemony?,” Project Syndicate, April 2, 2008.
3. Wang Jisi, “North, South, East, and West—China is in the ‘Middle’: A Geostrategic Chessboard,” China International Strategy Review, p. 39.
4. Interconnected Economies: Benefiting from Global Value Chains, OECD, 2013.
5. Baldwin, The Great Convergence, p. 146.
6. “There’s a Global Race to Control Batteries—and China Is Winning,” Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2018.
7. Matthew Dalton and Lingling Wei, “How China Skirts America’s Antidumping Tariffs on Steel,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2018.
8. “The Fundamental Path to Accelerating the Advancement of the Building of an Internet Power” (加快推进网络强国建设的根本遵循), Guangming Daily, May 7, 2018.
9. 中国制造 2025, State Council, July 7, 2015.
10. Guiding Opinion on Promoting International Industrial Capacity and Equipment Manufacturing Cooperation (State Council, Guo Fa [2015] No. 30, issued May 13, 2015).
11. Guiding Opinion on Further Guiding and Standardizing the Direction of Foreign Investment, preamble (NDRC, MOFCOM, PBOC, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Ban Fa [2017] No. 74, issued Aug. 4, 2017).
12. “China Manufacturing 2025,” European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, 2017, p. 51.
13. “Germany Vetoes Chinese Purchase of Business Citing Security Grounds,” Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2018.
14. James McGregor, China’s Drive for ‘Indigenous Innovation’: A Web of Industrial Policies, Washington, DC: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2010.
15. Andrew Polk, “China Is Quietly Setting Global Standards,” Bloomberg, May 6, 2018.
16. Noah Barkin, “‘Boiled frog syndrome’: Germany’s China problem”, Reuters, April 15, 2018.
17. President Trump Announces Strong Actions to Address China’s Unfair Trade, Press Release, Office of the United States Trade Representative, March, 2018.
18. Minxin Pei, “Xi risks losing face in a trade war with Trump,” Nikkei Asian Review, July 9, 2018
19. Olaf Merk, “Geopolitics and commercial seaports,” RIS, Fall 2017, p. 74.
20. Qiushi Feng, Variety of Development: Chinese Automakers in Market Reform and Globalization (Palgrave, 2018).
21. 胡怀邦: 以开发性金融服务“一带一路”战略 胡怀邦: 以开发性金融服务“一带一路”战略.
22. 金琦董事长在“一带一路”高峰论坛的午餐演讲.
23. “Long-Term Plan on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), P.R.C. China Development Bank (CDB), December 2015.
24. Tristan Kenderdine, “China’s industrial capacity policy is a one-way street,” South China Morning Post, June 8, 2017
4. THE BELT AND ROAD AND WORLD POLITICS
1. 中巴经济走廊实地调研报告, pp. 28–29.
2. Jichang Lulu, “State-managed Buddhism and Chinese-Mongolian relations,” China Policy Institute: Analysis, June 23, 2017.
3. Raja Mohan, Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific (Brookings Institution Press, 2012).
4. Bob Carr, “The shrinking ‘Quad’: how the alliance is going nowhere as Japan and India court China,” South China Morning Post, May 17, 2018.
5. Josh Rogin, “Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy: Where’s the beef?”, Washington Post, June 6, 2018
6. “Trump rants behind closed doors with CEOs” Politico, August 8, 2018.
7. “Investment in Indonesia’s Sabang port will be test of India’s diplomatic wisdom,” Global Times, June 28, 2018.
8. Jonathan Hillman, “The clouds gathering around China’s Belt and Road,” Nikkei Asian Review, May 16, 2018.
&n
bsp; 9. Raffaello Pantucci, “China’s South Asian Miscalculation,” Current History, April 2018, p. 147.
10. Andrey Kortunov, “Indo-Pacific or Community of Common Destiny?” Russian International Affairs Council, May 28, 2018.
11. “Absorb and Conquer: An EU Approach to Russian and Chinese Integration in Eurasia”, European Council on Foreign Relations, 2016.
12. Nicolas Moës, “Is it a Transatlantic, Transpacific or Eurasian global economy?” Bruegel, February 14, 2018.
13. François Godement and Abigaël Vasselier, “China at the Gates: A New Power Audit of EU-China Relations”, European Council of Foreign Relations, 2017, p. 90.
14. Thorsten Benner et al., “Authoritarian Advance: Responding to China’s Growing Political Influence in Europe”, GPPI, February 2018, p. 16.
15. “EU sets collision course with China over ‘Silk Road’ rail project,” Financial Times, February 20, 2017.
16. “China’s Silk Road Initiative Sows European Discomfort,” Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2017.
17. See “Balancing China,” Asia Policy Brief, Bertelsmann Stiftung, May 3, 2018.
5. THE WORLD AFTER THE BELT AND ROAD
1. An earlier version of this section was published in Politico Europe in July 2018.
2. “China scales back investment in Ethiopia,” Financial Times, June 3, 2018.
3. Will Doig, High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia (Colombia Global Reports, 2018). See also Tom Miller, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road (Zed Books, 2017).
4. “China emerges as wild card in elections across Asia,” Nikkei Asian Review, June 5, 2008.
5. “China’s Xi offers fresh $295 million grant to Sri Lanka,” Reuters, July 22, 2018.
6. Jeremy Page and Saeed Shah, “China’s Global Building Spree Runs Into Trouble in Pakistan,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2018. “Pakistan turns to China to avoid foreign currency crisis,” Financial Times, May 23, 2018.
7. Andrew Small, “Buyer’s Remorse: Pakistan’s Elections and the Precarious Future of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” War on the Rocks, July 27, 2018.