Xi Jinping’s Marco Polo Strategy

Jun 12, 2017 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over a highly orchestrated forum for his Belt and Road Initiative, which will involve 65 countries containing some 4.5 billion people. Xi’s plan to integrate Eurasia through a trillion dollars of infrastructure investment is impressive, but will it succeed as a grand strategy?

CAMBRIDGE – Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over a heavily orchestrated “Belt and Road” forum in Beijing. The two-day event attracted 29 heads of state, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and 1,200 delegates from over 100 countries. Xi called China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) the “project of the century.” The 65 countries involved comprise two-thirds of the world’s land mass and include some four and a half billion people.

Originally announced in 2013, Xi’s plan to integrate Eurasia through a trillion dollars of investment in infrastructure stretching from China to Europe, with extensions to Southeast Asia and East Africa, has been termed China’s new Marshall Plan as well as its bid for a grand strategy. Some observers also saw the Forum as part of Xi’s effort to fill the vacuum left by Donald Trump’s abandonment of Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 13 in all 13 Comments on this article

Derrick Baragwanath Jun 19, 2017

China's `One Belt One Road' strategy is fraught with historically dangerous precedents. The old Silk Route was very expensive for two reasons: Firstly, overland transport by pack animals was not very efficient, modern technology can overcome this handicap. The second reason is more insurmountable. robber barons, warlords and chokepoints along the old Silk Route led to an interminable series of taxes on the goods in transit. Effectively this is what drove Europe's westward expansion across the oceans, to circumvent the extreme costs of the overland route. China may build an advanced transport network but it still must pass through multiple sovereign states. Historically if a sovereign state sees an opportunity to get cash they will. Can China really stop the numerous petty states with a constant cycle of new petty dictators from going for the money grab? Current agreements aren't generally honored by the next dictator. Once one does it they will all jump in for their share and this will spell doom for the whole concept. But what can China do to stop it? Send in the marines! Good luck with that one!
- anogueira70 Jan 16, 2018
  
  Chinese best power today is the economic one. With it, China can buy almost all robber barons. China needs space with sovereign to make deals, even though those spaces are land of robber barons. Seas are no sovereign land and there cannons are the law. We all know China has no means to face US navy. For a while. Until China get a navy strong enough to face US navy, the rimland robber barons will be cheapest way to get space to breathe.
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Peter Ellis Jun 18, 2017

The benefits for people are improved standards of living but China needs to acknowledge the contribution to climate change this massive transport and infrastructure programme entails if it is not handled with sensitivity to energy use. That is paramount.
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Ting Mak Jun 18, 2017

American policy is indeed containment of China. The purpose of massive flows of trade and students between the countries is to contain China's governmental policy from being too prevalent inside China and abroad and to spread America's values in China instead of China's values in America. If Chinese "nationalism" is China's "self containment", then "America's Fisrt" is America's self containment. Remeber that China is still barred from joining the internaional Space Station Project. Remember that America object to China's exertion of its territorial right in the South China Sea even though America doesn't object to Chima's announcement of the Dash Lines for the South China Sea and even after America supported China to phycially claim those features within the Lines.
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jun 18, 2017

A Chinese said to Wedge Infinity, a Japanese magazine publisher, "No one will remember the BRI ten years later. Massive loans China is providing will have turned into non-perforiming loans." A Chinese news reporter said to a Japanese newpaper, "It is important none the less to look big." Sri Lankans are angry with the debts they owe to China which they have no prospect of repaying. Indonesians are already getting angry because China has not been delivering jobs to them and Chinese workers are inundating their lands. Even some local Pakistanis are angry according to a Japanese report.
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TRIQUI AHMED Jun 14, 2017

M.Joseph S. Nye revient sur l’opposition entre Mahan et Kennan, et remarque que Mahan l’emporterait sur Kennan. Je ne voudrais pas revenir sur Kennan et le containement face à la Russie communiste, dont seul le volet militaire a été retenu. Les idées de Mahan sont toujours congruentes avec la stratégie développée par les Etats Unis à travers le Monde. Ainsi lorsque l’on mesure la dotation en porte-avions entre les principales puissances, nous ne pouvons qu’affirmer que les USA sont bien la première puissance militaire maritime.
Le BRI semble entrevoir une réelle dynamique des affaires, mais aussi une remise en cause de ce qu’est un statu-quo stratégique ; le BRI vient aussi confirmer ce qui fut si bien exprimé par Z.Brzezinski, qui reprenant Mackinder, a popularisé la notion de heartland en une maxime célèbre : « Qui gouverne l’Europe de l’Est domine le heartland ; qui gouverne le heartland domine l’îles-monde ; qui gouverne l’îles-monde domine le monde. »
Mackinder a forgé un autre concept qui parait aujourd’hui opérationnel, qui est celui « d’aire-pivot « , d’où l’idée selon laquelle la géopolitique postule que la prééminence sur le continent eurasien sert de point d’ancrage à la domination globale.
Brzezinski écrivait dans « Le Grand échiquier, « L’Eurasie demeure le seul théâtre sur lequel un rival potentiel des Etats Unis pourrait éventuellement apparaitre. Si l’on souhaite élaborer les règles d’action stratégiques des Etats Unis, c’est-à-dire définir les moyens qu’ils doivent se donner pour gérer à long terme leurs intérêts géopolitiques en Eurasie, il est indispensable (…)
- d’identifier les Etats possédant une réelle dynamique géostratégique et capables de susciter un bouleversement important dans la distribution internationale du pouvoir,
- et de formuler des politiques spécifiques pour contrebalancer les effets néfastes des politiques initiées par ces Etats.
Bref concluait Brzezinski, « la définition d’une orientation géostratégique pour l’Eurasie exige d’abord de la clarté dans la méthode », en particulier, de traiter avec les Etats dotés d’une « position géopolitique dynamique ».
En effet si rien n’oblige ni ne doit obliger les relations entre la Chine et le Etats Unis à devenir un jeu à somme nulle, M.Henry Kissinger, par exemple, milite pour une « co-évolution « dans les rapports sino-américains signifiant que « les deux pays ont à répondre à leurs impératifs intérieurs, coopérant là où ils en ont la possibilité, et adaptant leurs relations pour minimiser le conflit(…) les deux parties s’efforcent d’identifier et de mettre en oeuvre des intérêts complémentaires. Les Etats Unis et la Chine doivent à leurs peuples et au bien-être du monde d’y travailler. »( De la Chine, 2012)
Reste la Russie ?
Je me suis toujours demandé dans quelle mesure, tout jeune américain lisant « De la démocratie en Amérique »(1835) d’Alexis de Tocqueville n’est pas imprégné par cette réflexion contenue chez Tocqueville, faisant de la Russie le principal adversaire des Etats Unis d’Amérique ?
Et que faire ?
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Paul Daley Jun 14, 2017

Good article. A reflexive opposition to China's efforts to connect with the wider world is not warranted, nor likely to be successful. It would be better for the US to position itself to mediate between China and other powers as China enters new areas. One only has to look at the diplomatic opportunities that have emerged from China's efforts to traverse the South China Sea to appreciate the importance of engagement with China and other regional states as this BRI initiative moves forward.
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Shahiduzzaman Shuvo Jun 14, 2017

Superb & nice
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j. von Hettlingen Jun 13, 2017

Joseph S. Nye is overwhelmingly positive about Xi Jinping's ‘Belt and Road initiative’ (BRI) - China's version of Marshall Plan - saying, the most ambitious development project in history would make Marco Polo - the celebrated Venetian explorer who in 1271 set off on an epic journey through Asia - proud of him.
Xi's pet project is expected to cost $1 trillion. Given the "low-yield" generated by US Treasury bonds, China is more than willing "to use its surplus financial reserves to create infrastructure that helps poor countries and enhances international trade." But such hard infrastructure is often followed by a complementation of soft arrangements - free trade and investment agreements, and other accords.
No doubt Trump's shelving of Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - a trade deal that the US had concluded with 11 Pacific nations, without Beijing - has given China the upper hand to boost trade and stimulate economic growth across Asia and beyond. The BRI has two main prongs: the "Silk Road Economic Belt" (the belt) - a series of overland corridors connecting China with Europe, via Central Asia and the Middle East - and the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road" (the road) - a sea route linking China’s southern coast to east Africa and the Mediterranean.
While China hopes to build massive amounts of infrastructure connecting it to countries around the globe, it also aims to improve the economies of less developed border regions such as Xinjiang in the west with its Uighur population. Critics say Beijing seeks to create "alternative markets for Chinese goods," at a time when the economy is slowing, and to help export excess cement and steel capacity to less developed countries.
However, the project faces politic risk, different topographic and environmental challenges. "India is not happy to see a greater Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean," especially Beijing's close economic ties to Pakistan, its arch-enemy. Trade aside, which may not pay off, given the amout of money invested, the author also sees China's interest through the prism of geopolitics, saying it is "betting on an old geopolitical proposition."
As a historian, the author sheds a light on how great powers had pursued their strategic goals in the past. The "Eastern Question” that he raises - "the control of area ruled by the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Infrastructure projects like the Berlin to Baghdad railway roused tensions among the Great Powers" - may be replaced by the "Eurasian Question" - with Central Asia being the venue of "the nineteenth-century 'Great Game' for influence that embroiled Britain and Russia, as well as former empires like Turkey and Iran."
The British geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder argued a century ago, "that whoever controlled the world island of Eurasia would control the world." Even "in the age of the Internet, but geography still matters." Today, Russia, Turkey, and Iran still "have their own agendas in Central Asia." But Americans didn't share the same view, they "had long favored the geopolitical insights of the nineteenth-century admiral Alfred Mahan, who emphasized sea power and the rimlands."
The Cold War strategist, George F. Kennan "adapted Mahan’s approach" to contain the Soviet Union, "arguing that if the US allied with the islands of Britain and Japan and the peninsula of Western Europe at the two ends of Eurasia, the US could create a balance of global power that would be favorable to American interests. The Pentagon and State Department are still organized along these lines, with scant attention paid to Central Asia," which is claimed by China and Russia as their backyard. Given the blood and treasure squandered in Afghanistan, ordinary Americans have no appetite to remain engaged in Central Asia.
The author says, the US "is betting more on Mahan and Kennan. Asia has its own balance of power, and neither India nor Japan nor Vietnam want Chinese domination. They see America as part of the solution." In recent years, China's "territorial disputes with its maritime neighbors" had driven them "into America's arms. He doesn't see America seeking to contain China, as there are "massive flows of trade and students between the countries." But he sees China containing itself, "even in the age of Internet and social media," China indulges in nostalgic "national greatness" and pursues its own interests.
The author says, instead of fearing a rising China and its project, the US should embrace the opportunities for American companies to benefit from BRI investments, allowing China to play the role of a "responsible stakeholder," and to contribute to "the provision of global public goods." The US and China "have much to gain from cooperation on a variety of transnational issues like monetary stability, climate change, cyber rules of the road, and anti-terrorism. And while the BRI will provide China with geopolitical gains as well as costs, it is unlikely to be as much of a game changer in grand strategy." In fact "a more difficult question is whether the US can live up to its part." EU-member states are interested in Xi's BRI, but they are wary of its lack of guarantees on transparency, sustainability and tendering process. Despite its grand vision, the BRI is a daunting task.
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Steve Hurst Jun 12, 2017

Overland has one distinct advantage - it is quicker than movement by sea, which makes global markets nearer for China
- P. Kamath Oct 16, 2017
  
  Sir: We have to wait for atleast few decades and see what awaits the fate of nations that willingly jump into this OBOR initiative,
  
  Chinese are deluding themselves to believe that a super rich cache of reserves would catapult this nation to greatness. Other factors do matter. - culture, governance, rule of law, contributions to humanity etc. What is China's contributions to people elsewhere?
  
  European dominance has had a dreadful dark past ,but the world was benefitted by spin-offs of Europe's contributions in political rights, science , technology, systems of justice etc.
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- Michael Public Jun 13, 2017
  
  It also potentially extracts value from every stop along the way - resources, labor.
  - P. Kamath Oct 15, 2017
    
    Sir: it is just a hope. Unless the nations are minimally industrialised enough and possess the infrastructure, how much will they give in return? How much can they sell fruits, nuts, carpets and grain perhaps especially in Central Asia ? The real beneficiaries will be major actors like China and European powers perhaps!
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