By Xue Li and Xu Yanzhou
The challenges facing China’s Silk Road strategy — and how to overcome them.
In 2014, “one belt and one road” (OBOR), a reference to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, were the keywords for Chinese diplomacy. The OBOR strategy has become China’s major foreign policy goal, Beijing will promote this initiative economically, politically, militarily and culturally over the next eight to ten years. In Chinese academia, it’s often said that 2013 marked the conception of the OBOR idea, while 2014 saw its operationalization. In 2015, the main task will be fully implementing OBOR.
In 2014, preparations for the OBOR strategy made remarkable progress. Politically, China made use of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) and a dual-track approach; economically, Beijing advanced several economic corridors and upgraded the China-ASEAN free zone, as well as the Asia-Pacific free trade zone. All these examples hint that China is undergoing a strategic foreign policy transformation — that is the policy of “keeping a low profile” is fading, as it cannot fully reflect the new government’s diplomatic ambitions. Being “proactive and enterprising,” in the words of Zhao Kejin and Yan Xuetong, is Beijing’s new diplomatic approach. Neighborhood diplomacy has a significant role in this strategy and will probably become more important than the traditional diplomatic priority of China-U.S. relations.
The success of this new OBOR strategy depends on three factors. First, how should China assess the United States’ “rebalance to Asia” – is it containment or hedging? Second, how can China gain recognition and cooperation from countries along the Belt and Road? Third, how can China avoid economic and political risks as much as possible?
Read the full story at The Diplomat