Question

The Tributary System was implemented by Imperial China to conduct diplomatic and trade

relations. The Belt and Road Initiative was launched in 2013 to increase global influence of

People’s Republic of China. Using ONE country in Central Asia as example, compare merits and

deficiencies of the above two programs. In view of the current economic situation, how likely will

the Belt and Road Initiative be successful? Why? (500 words)

Answer 1

The Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” (also called belt and road initiative) encompasses 66 countries across Central & Eastern Eurasia and the maritime Asia Pacific. It covers 63% of the global population and over 1/3rd of the world’s GDP. It contains almost every current major world religion, and straddles six of the seven fault lines between civilizations, as envisaged by Samuel P. Huntington. BRI is China’s unilateral vision for the future structure of the greater Eurasian region. It attempts to promote infrastructure connectivity and investment through land-locked continental Eurasia, develop efficient maritime connections from the South China Sea and Africa to Western Europe, and hopes to exert China’s comprehensive geo-economic, geopolitical and strategic influence in the whole region.

Given the old and new security spirals in East Asia and the PRC’s sharp response to perceived violations of Chinese national core interests by Japan and its Southeast Asian neighbors, the fifth generation’s foreign strategy has widely been categorized by the label “new assertiveness.” This classification subscribes to neo-realist scenarios, which predict an inevitable clash between rising powers and the old power centersㅡalso involving the latter’s (regional) allies.

OBOR is a Chinese response to perceived growing dependence and vulnerability of China’s domestic (economic) development to changes occurring in its external (regional and global) environmentㅡa response that does not secure the status quo but initiates a general transformation of China’s national role-conceptions and its world order images. Seen from the outside, the announcement of China’s OBOR initiative has re-activated the old debate on Sinocentrism, the role- identity of China as tianxia (literally: all under heaven) as well as the tributary system as the operational code of the Chinese empire’s external relations. A revival of tianxia is expected to establish China as the only economical and political center in the Asian region: If the New Silk Road does have a focal point centered on Beijing, the ordering rules and general patterns could be expected to somehow mirror “Chinese” normative views and principled beliefs. Furthermore, the establishment of a strongly intertwined regional network of trade and financial cooperation would also imply that the PRC will have to engage in maintaining regional security and to protect its new trading lanes by expanding the mandate of its armed forces. This step, however, might trigger additional security spirals in the Asian region.

The China Model is essentially built upon political authoritarianism and a certain degree of economic liberalization, selected privatization and limited industry deregulation, often classified as authoritarian capitalism. Due to the natural political profile of the BRI region being predominantly quasi-democracies, failed democracies and autocracies, the China Model would allow these countries to develop economically, while still maintaining tight political control by the people in power. When faced with a dire need for economic development, regional countries are offered a choice between the China Model, and the Washington Consensus

The diverse backgrounds of authoritarian regimes and the lack of full liberal democracy in the BRI region essentially provides China with the political incubator to expand its model of authoritarian capitalism. Therefore, the success and sustainability of the economic strategy of the BRI is essentially a competition over economic effectiveness and efficiency delivered between market authoritarianism and market liberalism, or the competition between the China Model and the Washington Consensus model. The success and sustainability are externally predicated upon the choices made by countries in the region based on their unique political economic preferences.

The BRI encompasses two principal groups of routes: the continental routes and the maritime routes. In the Maritime Asia-Pacific region, the power status quo will remain intact for the foreseeable future. China will largely embrace a more defensive posture. All the island disputes will remain a security issue and will get resolved one way or another, at least in the view of Henry Kissinger.16 The U.S. has indisputable military superiority in maritime Asia, and China stays a second, but a rising second. China should understand fully that even with a potential challenge to U.S. hegemony, it is not likely to bring about a change to U.S. hegemony.

The BRI is circumstantial in a sense that China happens to be the largest economy in greater Eurasia at this particular juncture in history. But there is also something more structural, and more historically natural about it, which is the transfer of the world’s power gravity between land and sea, or between the inner crescent and the outer crescent.