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The New Silk Road and China’s Evolving Grand Strategy

The China Journal · 2016-11-14 · 93 citations

The “new Silk Road” has emerged as the signature foreign policy initiative of Xi Jinping’s presidency and the main channel through which China is adapting its grand strategy to address daunting economic, environmental, and strategic challenges. In elite discourse, China’s “period of strategic opportunity” (zhànlüè jī yùqī 战略机遇期) is no longer defined mainly by other powers’ relatively benign postures. In this context, the new Silk Road offers unique insight into descriptions of Chinese foreign policy as becoming more fènfā yǒu wéi 奋发有为 (proactive, or self-achieving): China can increasingly leverage its own capabilities to enhance Chinese influence and secure Chinese interests by proactively encouraging greater regional and global multipolarity. While the West has long-term interests that would be well served by the new Silk Road’s success, this would also appreciably augment China’s strategic autonomy, ultimately compelling substantial adaptation in American grand strategy.

<i>Toward Well-Oiled Relations? China’s Presence in the Middle East Following the Arab Spring</i>, edited by Niv Horesh. Houndsmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xii+239 pp. £62.50/US$120.00 (cloth).

The China Journal · 2016-12-07

Previous articleNext article FreeReviewsToward Well-Oiled Relations? China’s Presence in the Middle East Following the Arab Spring, edited by Niv Horesh. Houndsmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xii+239 pp. £62.50/US$120.00 (cloth).Flynt LeverettFlynt LeverettPennsylvania State University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAnalyses of China’s Middle East policy tend to fall into two camps. One emphasizes economic and domestic political motives for China’s engagement in the region; the other sees Beijing’s Middle East policy as part of a broader and increasingly “assertive” posture, aimed at replacing US hegemony with Chinese hegemony, not only in East Asia but in the Middle East, too.As the book’s editor, Niv Horesh, writes in his introduction, he and most of his contributors stand in the first camp: China is “not actively seeking to undermine U.S. hegemony in the region”; indeed, “as China becomes more reliant on Middle Eastern oil and the American security architecture that permits free navigation across the Hormuz Straits, there is a strong Sino-American convergence of interests in the Middle East that might actually alleviate Pacific tensions between the US and China in the future” (1–2). Yitzhak Shichor, Israel’s leading specialist on China’s Middle East policy, explicates this more fully in the opening chapter.Several contributors highlight energy as a key motive for Beijing’s Middle Eastern engagement—a dynamic that is well assessed in a chapter by US National Defense University scholar Gawdat Bahgat. In explaining how China’s demand for Persian Gulf oil has grown as America’s need for imported hydrocarbons has shrunk, Bahgat makes a critical point that America is still “highly unlikely to withdraw or disengage from the Middle East” (119); other interests and the integration of global oil markets will keep drawing US attention to the region—an assessment endorsed by Horesh and Shichor. Among the contributors, only Michael Singh of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy depicts “the steady disengagement of the United States” from the Middle East and a “growing distance between Washington and its [regional] allies” (167) as realities that China could potentially exploit to fashion a bigger political/security role there for itself.Other chapters note other factors shaping Beijing’s Middle East policy: economics, with the region now a growing market for Chinese goods and capital; domestic security, especially regarding penetration of Muslim-majority Xinjiang by violent jihadis and their ideologies; and Beijing’s view of the region as a buffer against US pressure on China via Central Asia. As Singh notes, the proliferation of China’s Middle East interests drives expanded Chinese activism there—including “missions to combat piracy and evacuate Chinese citizens from Libya and Yemen, the appointment … of a Chinese special envoy for the region [and] the increased pace of high-level official Chinese visits to the region and vice versa” (174).Against this backdrop, most of the book’s chapters deal with what China’s rise means for particular Middle Eastern states and their relations with Beijing. These country-specific chapters concentrate on China’s relations with Persian Gulf oil producers. Neil Quilliam’s survey of China’s ties to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) tracks the Horesh-Shichor thesis, judging that Chinese-GCC relations “will continue to be driven by energy interdependency,” with “few signs to suggest that [they] will develop into a strong and durable alliance” (148). Other authors are not as sanguine as Horesh and Shichor on possible Sino-American competition for influence in the Middle East; yet they also worry less than Singh that such competition would play out militarily in any significant measure.This is evident in chapters on Sino-Iranian relations by John Garver and Manochehr Dorraj, long-time students of the topic. Garver analyzes Sino-Iranian ties on the eve of the 2015 nuclear deal, arguing that “by giving the US a certain level of cooperation in managing the ‘Iran nuclear issue,’ while simultaneously giving Tehran a certain level of support in the face of US pressure … Beijing has effectively pursued two seemingly contradictory goals. It has maintained the Sino-American comity upon which its long-term development drive is premised. [And] it has moved the world in the direction of multi-polarity by undermining the American scheme for hegemonic control of Persian Gulf oil” (203). Dorraj prospectively highlights Iran’s centrality to China’s One Belt, One Road strategy—Beijing’s “new vision for gaining influence over a larger region” (213), which reflects “aspirations for deeper relations with [West Asia] to push back against US attempts to contain [China’s] rise” (215). Future research can usefully explore whether nuclear diplomacy actually facilitates more significant Chinese investment in Iran and the forging of more clearly strategic Sino-Iranian ties.The Garver and Dorraj chapters underscore Beijing’s growing capacity to use economics and other nonmilitary means to compete for influence in the Middle East—especially in the Persian Gulf. This is also a theme of Iraqi Kurdish scholar Mohammed Shareef’s chapter on Sino-Iraqi relations, which dissects China’s success in improving ties to both the Baghdad-based Iraqi central government—representing a Shi’a-majority “Arab” Iraq—and the increasingly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). China has become the leading investor in and a major customer for Iraq’s oil sector; overall, Shareef writes, China is “the biggest beneficiary” (74) of Iraq’s post-Saddam oil boom. At the same time, Beijing uses relations with the KRG to signal that “if Ankara continues to support Uyghurs, Beijing will support the Kurds,” to “outflank the US in Iraq by gaining a foothold in the Kurdish north,” and to access Iraqi Kurdistan’s rising oil production (77).Strikingly, the prospect that China could compete with the United States for influence through largely nonmilitary means is affirmed by Horesh’s own chapter examining how Israeli governments under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have sought closer relations with Beijing—precisely as a hedge against US adoption of a more balanced Middle East posture. While Horesh doubts that efforts to sell Israel in Beijing as an island of regional “stability” will bear much fruit, the fact that Likud governments make such efforts is notable.Among the chapters on China’s dealings with non-oil-producing states, three—by Zan Tao, Christina Lin, and Robert Bianchi—treat Sino-Turkish relations. They describe rapid growth in Sino-Turkish economic and military ties, noting Ankara’s and Beijing’s overlapping interest in Eurasian economic integration—including Turkey’s prospectively key status for the new Silk Road. They also posit that bilateral trade heavily unbalanced in China’s favor, competition over third-country markets between sectors of the Turkish and Chinese economies with similar production structures, and disagreement over the Uyghur issue weaken prospects for a genuinely strategic partnership. Future scholarship can usefully investigate how dramatic developments in Turkey since this book’s publication—a failed coup, potentially long-term instability, escalating terrorist violence, and economic decline—affect China’s Middle East calculations. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 77January 2017 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/689221 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

American hegemony (and hubris)

2015-03-27 · 2 citations

This chapter shows how Iran fits into China's counter-hegemonic foreign policy, historically and currently. It examines how Chinese policymakers have sought to accommodate United States (US) pressure over the nuclear issue without completely sacrificing China's ties to Iran. The chapter also shows how Chinese perceptions of America's relative decline and of Washington's evolving posture toward both the People's Republic and the Islamic Republic are affecting Beijing's approach to Sino-Iranian relations. It further explores Tehran's shifting calculations about relations with China. The chapter finally explains the future trends in Sino-Iranian ties and their ramifications for America's position in the Middle East and vis-a-vis the international economic order. From Beijing's perspective, Tehran has been and remains a partner in preventing consolidation of US footholds in Central Asia, promoting regional economic integration, and combating radicalized Sunni extremism.

America’s Monetary Stake in the Gulf and the Looming Challenge of the Petroyuan

Gerlach Press eBooks · 2015-09-30 · 2 citations

America’s Monetary Stake in the Gulf and the Looming Challenge of the Petroyuan

2015-09-30

The Birth of the Petroyuan, Sino-American Currency Contestation, and the International Monetary System: An Institutional Analysis

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2014-01-01 · 1 citations