by Li Xiguang
Abstract：In match with China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, the paper proposes the construction of a new Silk Roads civilization sphere around China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
There are some new phrases related to the construction of Belt and Road in the 13th Five-Year Plan on National Economic and Social Development recommended by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee at its fifth plenary meeting of the 18th Party Congress in November 2015: 1. “Actively participate in global economic governance and the supply of public goods; improve the institutional voice of the global economic governance, and building broad community of interest;” 2. "Perfecting the opening up strategic layout, promoting two-way opening, promoting 'Belt and Road', promoting pragmatic cooperation in various fields of mutual benefit with relevant countries and regions, promoting international cooperation in capacity and equipment manufacturing, at home and abroad to create a brand new landscape of opening up by linkage land route and sea route, by opening up to both the east and the west.” The key words here are “institutional voice” and “opening up to both the east and the west”.
1. Opening up to both the east and the west
The “Belt and Road” initiatives include the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and "the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”. The "Silk Road Economic Belt" strategy is westward. Through Central Asia, West Asia, Eastern Europe, it has been extended to Western Europe. "21st-Century Marine Silk Road" from China's east coast through the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean after connecting the ASEAN, then west connection in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
The new policy of “Opening up to both the east and the west” redefines China's geopolitical relations. In accordance with the “Belt and Road” initiative, China is both a Central Asian country and a country in the Indian Ocean. Considering the distance between Kashgar and Gwadar, Xinjiang is much closer to Indian Ocean than to Beijing and taking into account China - ASEAN Trans-Asian Railway, BCIM corridors, CPEC and the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the Indian Ocean will become the new definition of China's geographic perspective. The implementation of initiative will make China an Indian Ocean country. With the construction of ports in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean as the footholds along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, such as the Gwadar Port in Pakistan, the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka the Chittagong in Bangladesh, the Kyaukpyu Port in Myanmar, especially with the completion of Pakistan Economic Corridor, China will enter a "two-ocean" era, the era of the Pacific and Indian oceans.
The new policy of “Opening up to both the east and the west” and the “Belt and Road” initiative will again make China a Central Asian country, redefining China as the center of Central Asia. With the “Belt and Road”, Chinese people are no longer standing on the Pacific shores of Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hong Kong to see the world, but they are on peaks of Pamir, Tianshan, Karakorum and Himalayas as the center and starting point to view the world. If we draw a circle around these mountains, there exists a great civilization zone where the Turkic, Arab, Persian, Indian, Russian and Chinese cultures have coexisted for centuries.
If we stand in the Chinese city of Taxkorgan, the border town between China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikstan, and look east to China, China is a vast and complex country so rich in cultural diversity. China is totally unlike the nation state of Europe which pursues an internal homogeneity. With the completion of Belt and Road, especially the opening of CPEC, China’s frontier provinces like Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia will become China’s new hinterland and central plains.
The strategy of “Opening to both the east and the west” will accelerate the formation of a Silk Road Economic Belt along the 64 countries whose total trade volume with China rose from 16.2 percent in 2001 to 26 percent in 2014. Since 2001, trade with those countries has increased by 22.2 percent, which is higher than the growth rate of China's total trade 4.4 percent. China hopes that the Belt and Road will drive the global economy to a new economic era: from the "Trans-Pacific era" and "trans-Atlantic era" to the "Belt and Road era"; from the "Trans-Pacific economy" and "Trans-Atlantic economy" to "Belt and Road economy “. Since modern times, the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific trades which form the "trans-Atlantic economy" and "Trans-Pacific economy" have seen the world's largest total economic activities. Today, with China becoming a new center of the world economy, the Belt and Road will link Chinese economy with East Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and Europe to become a new growth engine of the global economy, making global economic cooperation enter a "Belt and Road Era." The Belt and Road will make European Economic Circle and the Asia-Pacific Economic Circle, two of the world's most dynamic economic zones, link up to become the world's most promising economic corridor and the world’s largest economic body, which will greatly change the geography of the world economy. In addition, China's economic development is increasingly dependent on international oil and gas resources. Its dependence on foreign oil is approaching 60 percent. Eight of China's top ten oil-importing countries are located along the Belt and Road. Considering its Maritime Silk Road transport corridor, no matter what kind of chaos in the Middle East and Central Asia happen, China will not stay away from this area. Peace and stability in the Gulf countries, particularly in the Gulf of Aden in Yemen and Somalia are essential for China's energy supply and trade.
2. Raising China’s voice in “Institutional discourse”
In its 13th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese Communist Party has clearly stated that China needs to raise its voice in global governance, which means that China not only needs an economic belt along the new Silk Roads, but also desperately needs a cultural belt or a civilization sphere in which China will have a big voice in the discourse of world affairs.
For 30-odd consecutive years of rapid and sustained economic growth, China’s per capita GDP increased by 30 times. In 2014, China’s GDP growth declined to 7.4 percent, the lowest in 20 years, but its growth is equal to the half of India or a half Russia one year's GDP. As China being the world’s second-largest economy and the largest economy in the future, China should write the new rules of the future. Currently, China has no say in the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank. However, the United States has a veto power in these institutions. The emergence of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a milestone marking the first step for China to shake the world geo-politics and economy. With the Belt and Road initiative, China proposes the cooperation principle of “peaceful cooperation, openness, mutual learning, mutual benefit and win-win spirit, advocating civilization tolerance, respecting the choice of development path and development model of each country, strengthening the dialogue among civilizations”.
In culture and ideology, China and the countries along the Belt and Road, especially those neighboring countries like Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar, have lost the thousands of years of center-periphery relation in culture, or "China - borderland" secondary cultural structure. By contrast, the United States and most neighboring countries around China have formed a cultural and ideological center-borderlands relationship.
In order to consolidate its global leadership position, the US by means of color revolution (like Arab Spring) has taken steps to accelerate fragmentation of Eurasia region after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Many countries along the Belt and Road are allies of the United States or hosting US military bases, which pose huge political, diplomatic, military and economic obstacles for China to promote construction of the Belt and Road.
3. A civilization sphere of the Belt and Road
The eventual rise of China along the Belt and Road does not depend on its economic power, but must be based on the cultural power. Historically, every rise of an empire along the Silk Roads had its own cultural sphere of influence - the farthest frontier the governance can reach, the farthest point the transportation can reach, the farthest border region its mainstream culture affects and the farthest countries it traded up with.
For example, Alexander the Great ruled the Silk Roads from Greece, Persia, all the way to today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan. And later the Helenistic Kushan Empire also had a big influence on China’s western through Buddhism and Gandhara art. The great Tang Dynasty ran the most prosperous Silk Roads not only based on its military power in Central Asia, but also based on an extended network of education, culture and religious exchanges. Tang Dynasty saw the largest group of Chinese Buddhist students going through Wakhan corridor, Karakoram mountains, traveling along the Indus River to such holy religious places like the Swat, Peshawar and Taxila.
The Belt and Road initiative marks the first time in recent history that China has taken a step to establish a new relationship with neighboring countries and Western countries. Getting away from its over 100 years of passive integration into the world order since the 1911 Revolution, China has now decided to play an active role by combining its own development and shaping a new world order together. China and the countries along the Belt and Road will become a consortium of geopolitical, geo-economic cooperation, eventually form a community of common destiny, a community of common interests, a community of values and a community of cultures and a community of security.
CPEC is the hub area of the Belt and Road, which links the belt in Central Asia and the road in Indian Ocean. If we draw a circle around the CPEC, we will see a picture that this is a region which has seen the rise of the previous world cultural centers. It is the area where the ancient world influenced China. It is also the place where China influenced the world. If we designate Karamay in northern Xinjiang as the northern starting point of CPEC and draw a circle around Karamay, Ili, through Kashgar, Gilgit to Gwadar, we will see that the CPEC runs through the five highest mountains (Tianshan, Pamir, Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya) of the earth, which are the sources of Amu Darya and Indus rivers.
In this circle, we find that China, particularly its western provinces, are not only linked with the Central and South Asia by mountains and rivers through corridors, roads, paths and bridges, but are interlinked by blood, languages, beliefs and common cultural heritage. Until modern times, many countries in the circle had tributary relationship with China.
Since ancient times, monks, caravans, adventurers walked through the Wakhan corridor to China. Buddhist travelers Faxian and Xuanzang wrote great accounts of the area. But over the past century few books were written about the area.
Constructing a civilization sphere across the Belt and Road is reshaping China’s geopolitics and geo-civilization circle. The Silk Road is not only an "economic zone", but more a "cultural zone". The Silk Road is not only a commercial channel, but a human social interaction platform where multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural fusions take place. The winner of the new Silk Road in the great power game is not only an economic leader along the Belt and Road, but also a leader in building a new Silk Roads civilization.
4. A new Silk Roads civilization belt
The new Silk Roads civilization along the Belt and Road encourages diverse culture in the spirit of coexistence, tolerance and win-win, which is totally different from Columbus discovery of the so-called New World which was characterized by cultural cleansing and cultural genocide. The 2,500-year-old Eurasian Silk Road culture with the ethnic life, culture and religion based in the life of deserts, oases, steppe, plateaus, are still alive today. For example, there are more than 20,000 Zoroastrian believers living in Iran today and Iranian Parliament maintains two seats for Zoroastrians. Silk Road cultural respects life and nature. For example, people living along the northern Silk Roads grasslands have a tradition of Khoomei, a throat singing imitating sound of nature.
Silk Road culture since ancient times has been maintained and supported multi-nationally. For example, the thousands of caravanserais and bazaars from Istanbul, Damascus, Isfahan, Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, Andijan, Osh, Kashgar, Hotan, Dunhuang all the way to Xi'an, has been supported by the local rulers along the Silk Roads.
The decline of Silk Road overland decline was not entirely due to the opening of the Maritime Silk Road. In the mid of 19th century, as the British and Russia were fighting a great power game in Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia, they redrew borders in these areas and built artificial barriers at the traditional Silk Road passages. For example, the Anglo-Russian division of the Wakhan corridor boundaries eventually blocked the busiest passage between China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia and West Asia.
In accordance with the policy of five goals set by China about the building of the Belt and Road, which are connection of policy, connection of roads, connection of trade, connection of currency and connection of hearts, China hopes that through investment and construction of the Belt and Road, China and those countries along the new Silk Roads will build into a community of common destiny, a community of security, a community of common interests, a community of common values and eventually a new belt of civilization. Main elements of the Chinese culture are Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism which are essentially atheistic. People may doubt how could an atheistic culture build into a community of common values with a monotheism culture? The 2,500-year uninterrupted Chinese culture is known for its philosophy of a middle course, loving peace, seeking calm life, respecting for nature, pursuit of harmony, not going to extremes, not engaging in ethnic struggles and religious wars. It is the best way to revive a Silk Road civilization and unite people and countries of different cultures, beliefs and Ethnic groups.
Construction of a Belt and Road civilization has nothing to do with Sinocentrism. Nations along the way are proud of their own culture, religion, architecture, art, history, heroes and social system. China should be clear in articulating its core values in building the Belt and Road. The new Silk Roads nations do not want to see China's value and China dream narrowly confined to China. Goals of the Belt and Road that China advocates should be something everyone living on the Silk Roads wants to achieve. China needs to design an effective new Silk Roads slogan which can be easily understood and disseminated along the Belt and Road. Confucius coined five-word slogan for his civilization construction “Benevolence, Justice, Courtesy, Wisdom, Trust”. Mao Zedong coined a two-word slogan as the core values of the communists "Serve the people".
Many Belt and Road countries are located in the strip of the world's most serious disputes: strategic hub areas, ethnic conflict zones, religion overlapping areas, energy-intensive areas. The countries along the Belt and Road in the Middle East and Central Asia can be subdivided into resource-based countries, geopolitical countries and multi-ethnic and multi-religious countries. The big powers are not only coveting the rich economic resources in such Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, but also value the geopolitical resource much higher than the value of their economic resources with such countries as Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen.
Geographically, many countries along the Silk Roads have their own distinguished cultural tradition. But the Belt and Road civilization running through Pamir, Tianshan, Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayas is a not a heterogeneous mixture. The majority of the Silk Road countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Arab are non-Western civilization. These countries share a long historical affinity of being colonized or ruled by Western powers. Since ancient times, these countries are the place where the Western powers seek to control. In modern times, these countries and their people were forced to response strongly to the Western civilization, and struggling to create a new national identity, a political identity and a cultural identity.
Because the Belt and Road is geographically sandwiched in a variety of cultural systems, the Belt and Road civilization will be a unique civilization system across multiple cultures. The Belt and Road civilization needs a more inclusive and universal ideology supporting the multi polarities of politics and culture, respecting for history and tradition. The Belt and Road civilization does not advocate for a single ideology and religious view nor does it encourage binary opposition ideology which always triggers conflicts and violence.
The binary opposition nature of Western civilization is homogenous and exclusive. Only by returning to a Silk Road civilization, the diversified cultures of the ancient Silk Road will treat each other with respect and coexist peacefully. The clash of civilizations will not take place until the Western powers stopped using "democracies" and "non-democratic countries" to rudely tear the world into a single binary opposition, denying the historical, geographical and cultural commonality of these countries.
Chinese need a civilization belt to match its planned huge economic belt along the Belt and Road. In this sphere of new Silk Road Civilization, China should do everything possible to maximize the identity, cohesion, self-esteem and creativity of different cultures, different nationalities, different religions and tribes for the integration of the unlimited resources along the Belt and Road, making people believe that the construction of the new Silk Roads benefits all the people along the Belt and Road.
(Professor Li Xiguang is Director of the Center for Pakistan Cultural Communication Studies of Tsinghua University)
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