By Michael Clarke
The “One Belt, One Road” strategy provides a guide to the future of China in Eurasia.
The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Eurasian frontiers have once more emerged as major factor in Beijing’s foreign policy. Indeed, President Xi Jinping’s recent enunciation of China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) strategy, comprising an initiative to enhance Eurasian economic connectivity through the construction of a Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and a Maritime Silk Road (MSR), has placed Eurasia “front and center” in China’s contemporary foreign policy. This has led some to argue that Beijing is in the process of its own “pivot” to Asia that will have far-reaching strategic consequences.
Matthew Burrows and Robert Manning recently argued that this “pivot west to Eurasia seeks to turn its vulnerability – a border with fourteen nations – into a strategic asset. Together they seek to realize Mackinder’s vision of a Eurasian heartland unopposed.” The success of this Eurasian pivot may well prove to be a “nightmare” for the United States as Beijing’s economic and strategic heft attracts a weakened Russia into a partnership to stabilize and modernize Eurasia on the basis of “authoritarian state-centric capitalism.” In contrast, Jeffrey Payne responds that such fears “should be pushed aside,” as Beijing will not only have to confront a region of unpredictable and uncontrollable political forces but also latent, and mutual, Sino-Russian suspicion.
Read the full story at The Diplomat