{"id":61768,"date":"2015-08-03T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61768"},"modified":"2015-07-31T17:36:25","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:36:25","slug":"new-silk-road-a-chinese-style-new-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/new-silk-road-a-chinese-style-new-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00ab New Silk Road \u00bb: A Chinese-style New Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"silk-route-366x204<\/a><\/p>\n

Historians will remember that the Chinese President Xi Jinping officially launched the new \u201cSilk Road\u201d with a 30-minute speech at the Boao Economic Conference on Hainan Island the 28 Mar 2015, in front of 16 heads of State or government and 100 or so ministers from the 65 countries which are on the path, land or sea, of this new trade route<\/a>[1]<\/a>. For us, involved in political anticipation, what a challenge we have been given! China is suggesting that we imagine the future by stepping back several centuries, even two millennia.<\/p>\n

Such a move isn\u2019t absurd, as a fact ! The strength of nations such as Russia, Iran, India or China comes from their ability to think far into the future. Europe also has an historical depth \u2013 the two world wars encouraged it to rediscover the age before nations, that of Charlemagne or even the Roman Empire. This way of thinking is probably most alien to the US undoubtedly and which will look at the Chinese project with the greatest suspicion. However it will have to live with reality: the appetite for this \u201cresurrection of the past\u201d from their European allies, but also a country like Israel<\/a>[2]<\/a>, all countries which have just decided to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank created by China for the occasion, confirms that this project which is based on an ancient past has a future.<\/p>\n

In what follows, we propose sketching the foreseeable consequences of the Chinese initiative. Three elements must be identified more clearly: do we say \u201cthe road and corridor\u201d of Chinese power? What will be the repercussions on the rest of Eurasia? What will be the US attitude, facing what represents the first challenge of a new era, where it\u2019s going to have to learn that power is shared.<\/p>\n

65 countries, 4.4 billion people, 63% of the global population are affected by the New Silk Road. For the moment, these countries together only account for 29% of world output, but we are only at the beginning of a global rebalancing around Eurasia. China expects that, within 10 years, its trade relations with the countries along what it calls \u201cthe road and corridor\u201d should have more than doubled to $2.5 trillion. China has sent a very strong signal: at a time when its economic growth has begun to slow, China hasn\u2019t chosen to stimulate its economy through military spending, which would justify a possible \u201cCold War\u201d with the US<\/a>[3]<\/a>. It has chosen diplomacy and trade with a view to rebalancing: to depend less on the transatlantic economic relationship it seems to it that it must strengthen various relationships \u201cin the West\u201d. It\u2019s a matter of literally once again becoming \u201cThe Middle Kingdom\u201d <\/a>[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To gather together the capital necessary for this new economic axis\u2019 gigantesque infrastructure, China has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, with 52 participating countries, including the nine leading European economies. The initial capital was originally intended to be $100 billion but, given the influx of applications, it will be higher. China has already made it known that, to attract investments, no right of veto would be given to the Board of Directors (unlike the US in the Bretton Woods financial institutions). However, let\u2019s not be under any illusion, China, drawing on its diplomatic experience since time immemorial, will find all sorts of indirect means to control to control a public investment bank for which it took the initiative<\/a>[5]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The country intends to take advantage of a favourable situation to advance its interests: Russia needs its support if it wants to stand firm in the showdown with the US over the Ukraine\u2019s future. And the EU is seriously tempted by increased Chinese investment in Europe to contribute to an exit from the crisis<\/a>[6]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, don\u2019t overestimate China\u2019s position of strength either. Having accumulated huge dollar reserves, it feels, given the US economy\u2019s fragility, the need to diversify its assets. Investing part of its currency reserves in a major project such as the \u201cNew Silk Road\u201d matches a need. On the other hand in the diplomatic power struggle which puts it against the US, Russia isn\u2019t totally dependent on China: not only can it count on its nuclear deterrent but also on the support, direct or indirect, of India, Iran and Turkey. Finally, carefully note that China is financial power is far from sufficient to meet investment needs spanning two continents and four seas. The \u00ab\u00a0road and corridor\u00bb project will only succeed to the extent that each regional group invests massively<\/a>[7]<\/a>. From the EU perspective this already raises the question of knowing what will follow the Juncker Plan. The European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will play an increasing role in the coming years to enable Europe to play its part in the \u201cNew Silk Road\u201d.<\/p>\n

The EU is at a crossroads. The Ukrainian crisis becomes a handicap if it continues: not only do the economic sanctions imposed on Russia negatively affect the European economy, but an increasing number of investment opportunities are being lost in central Asia, and the Union itself risks being divided between an Atlantist camp and one eager to come to an arrangement with Russia. To tell the truth there is no other way than reinforcing the Minsk agreements. And, to avoid an endless crisis, Germany will gradually give substance to a European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance, strong enough to influence the US and lead it to the crisis\u2019 exits. The way in which the European countries have converged on the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank confirms that a rebalancing towards Eurasia from the transatlantic link \u2013 the European equivalent of the Chinese move from the transpacific link towards the \u201cNew Silk Road\u201d could take place quickly.<\/p>\n

\"Figure<\/a>

Figure 1 \u2013 China\u2019s New Silk Road \u2013 Chinese projects for a modern economic zone \u2013 land route in brown; sea route in blue. Source : Die Welt<\/p><\/div>\n

The map that unfolds in front of our eyes is fascinating for an historian accustomed to think like Fernand Braudel<\/a>, an historian of the Mediterranean and capitalism, with a \u201clong-term\u201d approach: from a Chinese point of view the land route leaves from Xi\u2019an, passing through Bishkek, Tashkent, Teheran, Ankara, Moscow, Minsk before reaching Rotterdam, Anvers, Berne and Venice. The ancient City of the Doges is at the western end of a maritime route through Athens, Cairo, Djibouti, Nairobi, Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore (with a branch towards Jakarta), Hanoi, Hong Kong and Fuzhou ending at Hangzhou. China is therefore offering us a tie-up with a 2000 year old trade route; it\u2019s also proposing, in contrast to Huntington<\/a>\u2019s fatalistic vision, a true dialogue of civilizations between the Confucian, Indian, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, East African, Christian Orthodox and Western zones of influence.<\/p>\n

Players in a polycentric globalization, the heirs of the Chinese Empires, Mongolian, Persian, Russian, Ottoman, Arab, Byzantine, Romano-Germanic, French and British have the fascinating opportunity to finally live a common and peaceful history. Care should be taken, for Eurasia\u2019s balance, that India should be increasingly sought and better integrated in these new networks than China is currently planning. France and Germany, with the rest of the European Union, has a natural card to play here, also important from the point of view of their long-term interests: this \u201cNew Silk Road\u201d will only be beneficial for all the countries concerned to the extent that it will be based on a balance of forces. The rapprochement with India is a valuable advantage to weigh against Russia and China. Additionally, it allows it to stay more in line with the BRICS rationale, a rationale to which the Silk Road doesn\u2019t belong at the moment, at a time when Chinese dynamism and the Russian need to neutralize US influence in Central Asia leads to favouring The Shanghai Cooperation Organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Chinese \u201cNew Silk Road\u201d project is made possible by the new organizational age of which the Internet is one of the most striking manifestations. The Chinese leaders have undoubtedly understood faster than their European counterparts that the information revolution has exploded the old geopolitical opposition between the continental and maritime powers. Crossed by high-speed trains, called to depend less and less on its energy resources\u2019 geographic concentration, Eurasia is in the process of becoming a \u201cliquid space\u201d<\/a>[8]<\/a>. The New Silk Road can, without exaggeration, be considered as a double \u201cliquid\u201d axis falling under the same criteria of analysis. Obviously, such a development will have its shadowy areas. The \u201cliquid spaces\u201d could be infested with pirates \u2013 already numerous on the Internet. Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times online<\/em> has, for a long time, called the \u201cliquid war\u201d<\/a>[9]<\/a> the way in which the US contributed to the destruction of States like Iraq, Libya or the Ukraine. However, let\u2019s measure the change underway and the immense changes on the horizon for the European Union, whose mission is no longer to build this \u201csmall promontory of the Asian landmass\u201d which Paul Val\u00e9ry spoke of, but to organize a triple interface: Euro-Atlantic, Euro-African and Eurasian\u2026.<\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>[1]<\/a> Source\u00a0: Die Welt<\/a>, 30\/03\/2015<\/p>\n

<\/a>[2]<\/a> Source\u00a0: Japan Times<\/a>, 01\/04\/2015<\/p>\n

<\/a>[3]<\/a> Whilst in 2010, China had decided to begin reducing its military spending (source: Wikipedia<\/a>), the tensions between the West and the emerging nations, expressed in 2014 by the Ukrainian crisis, nevertheless led it to increase it by 12.2% last year with 10% announced for 2015. That said, as a percentage of GDP, which is the method habitually chosen for measuring a country\u2019s military spending (remember that the US asks NATO members to contribute up to 2% of their GDP to the Alliance\u2019s budget), the share of this spending is more or less stable \u2013 around 2.1% (the US spends more than 4%) \u2013 taking account of the fact that China\u2019s GDP is increasing by nearly 7% this year. Something else seems to say that China is increasing its military spending as reasonably as possible and it\u2019s the fact that, in the context of its opening to the world, it\u2019s forced to be more transparent and that a whole host of hidden spending is undoubtedly simply in the process of emerging into the open. But the total budget for military spending doesn\u2019t peak at only 95\u20ac billion, versus 460\u20ac billion for the US, knowing that this sum is largely devoted to maintaining a huge military personnel (2.1 million), and that the share devoted to equipment purchase is all the more reduced(source\u00a0: Deutsche Welle<\/a>, 04\/03\/2015).<\/p>\n

These factors lead our team to consider that, contrary to what the Western media would have us believe, China doesn\u2019t have an aggressive military posture.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[4]<\/a> Michel Aglietta\/ Guo Bai, La voie chinoise. Capitalisme et empire, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2012<\/p>\n

<\/a>[5]<\/a> Fran\u00e7ois Godement, Que veut la Chine\u00a0?, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2012<\/p>\n

<\/a>[6]<\/a> Claude Meyer, La Chine banquier du monde, Fayard, Paris, 2014<\/p>\n

<\/a>[7]<\/a> Source\u00a0: Eurasia Review<\/a>, 30\/03\/2015<\/p>\n

<\/a>[8]<\/a> I have borrowed this concept from John Urry, Global complexity<\/em>, 2000<\/p>\n

<\/a>[9]<\/a> Pepe Escobar, Globalistan\u00a0: How the Globalised World is Dissolving into Liquid War, 2007<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

LEAP-GEAB (Laboratoire Europ\u00e9en d\u2019Anticipation Politique-Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin)<\/a> is an independent future-oriented European think-tank working on two themes mainly: European governance (Euroland Gouvernance 2020 Project); Europe-rest of the world relations (Euro-BRICS project).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 geab.eu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historians will remember that the Chinese President Xi Jinping officially launched the new \u201cSilk Road\u201d with a 30-min speech at the Boao Economic Conference on Hainan Island the 28 Mar 2015, in front of 16 heads of State or government and 100 or so ministers from the 65 countries which are on the path, land or sea, of this new trade route.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}