What History Tells Us
Let us first look into the past. Post-Napoleonic France never defeated Germany, whereas the latter defeated the former in both the Franco-Prussian War and WWII. Why was France so subject to defeat? The two countries had different railroad networks. Once Germany was united in 1871, it built a dense railroad network, while in France, all railroads simply led to Paris. France had its centralized authority based in Paris, and no other French city could compete with it. For example, there were no railroads linking cities in southern France: one had to take a train to Paris and transfer to another one to travel from one southern city to another. This was quite useful for ruling the nation, but it was quite an obstacle in war because railroads were highly important for the transportation of supplies and soldiers.
What does this have to do with the matter at hand? The globalization of today is comparable to the France of the past.That is, nations at the center of the global stage are being connected to those on the fringes. The balance of trade between China and Europe is not figured in euros but dollars. That is to say, today’s globalization is being directed by the US or the West, especially the information and financial sectors. But with such form of globalization, as soon as the US slides into recession, has a debt crisis, or becomes unwilling to provide public commodities, a multitude of problems will arise. Most importantly, this capitalist-oriented globalization, in which capital is brought everywhere for the sake of profit-seeking, has been the cause of numerous economic bubbles and financial crises. The US and Europe have still not completely come out from under the shadow of the 2008 financial tsunami. Thus,China needed to create a new model for globalization, which is precisely the reason why the Belt and Road Initiative has elicited such a huge response. The original form of globalization is unsustainable, making a new form of cooperation and globalization vital. They sent many geographers, cultural artifact experts, and archaeologists to China in search of a bridge between East and West. One of the more iconic individuals of that time was von Richthofen, who explored China numerous times and touched upon the Silk Road (mainly the route between Chang’an and Central Asia) in his writings. One of his students, Sven Hedin,wrote a book entitled The Silk Road, which popularized the concept of the route in the West.
The keyword for the initiative is “connectivity.” At the First Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in May 2017, President Xi Jinping spoke of a network of connectivity spanning the land, air, sea, and cyber spheres and buiding the Digital Silk Road. Many people believe that the initiative is a revival of the old Silk Road, but that is incorrect. The old Silk Road was limited to culture and trade, but today’s Silk Road involves so much more. Noteworthy is that the concept of a new Silk Road was not first proposed by China—it was by a German geographer, Ferdinand von Richthofen, in 1871. Germany became united in 1877. Let us look at the problems that the newly united Germany was up against. Regarding spheres of influence, most of the world had already been divided up among the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British, so the Germans were limited to a search for more territory via land.
Perspective
The origin of the Silk Road concept
The German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen first mentioned the Silk Road to the Western world in 1877, and in 1936, the Swiss traveler Sven Hedin popularized the concept of the Silk Road in the West with his book The Silk Road, In which he wrote, “It is without exaggeration that I say this transportation thoroughfare was the longest to span the Old World. From the aspect of culture and history,it was the most important link connecting all the peoples who have existed and all the continents of the Old World … If the Chinese government could revitalize the Silk Road with the aid of modern transportation, it would be a contribution to humankind and serve as a monument to China itself.”
Hedin described the Silk Road as a “the most important link connecting all the peoples who have existed and the continents of the world,” and he went further in saying, “The day the Chinese reinitiate the Silk Road will be the day this ancient nation sees its revival.” Such statement was quite a vision. In 2012, President Xi proposed the idea of the “Chinese dream of great national rejuvenation,” just a year before proposing the Belt and Road Initiative. Could this simply be a coincidence of history? First, the great national rejuvenation is not to be attained by reassigning borders to their past states—that would be chaotic. Second, it is not to be attained by war-won expansion. The methods to be used are peace, cooperation, and benefits for all involved. Third, our achievements in the great national rejuvenation will not only exceed those of our own past but also, in the end, those of the greatest heights reached by anyone in world history in contributing to human development,hence the use of the word “great.”
Story
China and the Silk Road
The old name of China was related to silk.In the West’s earliest dealings with China, the Romans and Greeks respectively called the latter “Serica” and “Serike,” words based on the Greek word serike (silk), meaning they viewed China as a place of silk production.But later, the Chinese-made item that was shipped on a large scale to Europe was actually porcelain because silk was so expensive that only royalty and the aristocracy could afford it. The iconic porcelain sold to Europe came from the town of Jingdezhen, whose name was“Changnan” in those times. When Europeans asked where the porcelain came from, they were told “Changnan,” which morphed slightly into the more familiar-sounding “China.” Silk and porcelain represented China, and they were respectively the major products traded along the Silk Road on land and Maritime Silk Road.
China’s destiny was tightly bound to that of the Silk Road.Once the Silk Road began to fall from prominence, China followed suit. And now China looks once again to connect the land and sea in an innovative way.
The Rise of the Great Powers, a TV documentary series made in China, begins with Portugal. In the Age of Exploration,Portugal turned its relatively small kingdom into a world power,and the Spanish later did the same. Christopher Columbus first petitioned Spain to sponsor his effort at finding a Western sea route to Asia, but the Spanish thought he was mad to believe the Earth was round. The Portuguese had scant resources and only one neighbor (Spain), and as poverty breeds the desire for change, they agreed to sponsor Columbus’ voyage. It led to great wealth for the Portuguese, and the 15th century became Portugal’s century. When the Spanish saw what was happening, they wanted a piece of the pie and competed with the Portuguese for it. Today, with the exception of Portuguese speaking Brazil, the vast majority of Latin America is Spanish speaking as a result (the same happened in Africa, though things changed once the British and French took control there from the Portuguese and the Spanish). The 16th century was Spain’s century. On June 7, 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed with the Pope as a witness to establish the Line of Demarcation, which divided the New World into eastern and western hemispheres to be occupied by Spain and Portugal. The Dutch rose to prominence with its Bourgeois Revolution, out of which was born the famous thinker Hugo Grotius, who stated that though Spain and Portugal occupied the land, the seas were open. He called this concept mare liberum (freedom of the seas). As a result, international law was established and the Dutch became the “coachmen of the sea,” and the 17th century was the century of the Dutch. Later, the British used free trade to rein the whole world into its colonial system, which included opening the doors of Chinese trade. During the Opium Wars,the great majority of Japanese-produced silver and half the silver from the Americas were funneled through China. At that time, the British king sent George Macartney as an envoy to China’s Qianlong Emperor to express that since the British were buying so much porcelain, silk, and tea from China, the Chinese should buy something from the British in return as the trade deficit was quite significant. The Qianlong Emperor famously responded, “The Qing Empire is large and rich in goods. We lack nothing, we require nothing from abroad, and we need not trade with foreign nations.” Since the Chinese would not buy British goods, the latter made up the trade deficit difference by selling opium to China, prompting the Chinese statesman Lin Zexu to try to eliminate the opium trade. Based on the excuse of violating free trade, the British Parliament declared war on China, resulting in the latter’s secession of Hong Kong.
China’s trade deficit is once again massive, so why has another Opium War not broken out? The first reason is that China is both strong and prosperous, and the more important reason is that it has become integrated into the global discourse system, whereas before, China had been closed off to the world.
The US of the 20th century turned free trade into freedom in democracy, as seen in the contributions of three major political scientists, Seymour Lipset, Robert Dahl, and Samuel Huntington. Democracy first came about in Europe and was originally tightly linked to equality. The democracy of the US was linked to freedom and became estranged from equality. In the US, democracy means free elections, religious freedom, and freedom of speech. The US has monopolized the discourse on the topic of freedom, deconstructing the concept from Europe and thus becoming the representative of the West.
The community of shared future for mankind has taken a further step from the foundation established by the West. Just as Grotius did not renounce Spain and Portugal and simply added the ocean to the definition of territorial influence, China is attempting to build a larger system that possesses a greater degree of inclusiveness.
From looking at the 15th century of Portugal, the 16th century of Spain, the 17th century of the Dutch, the 18th and 19th centuries of the French and British, and the 20th century of the US, it is evident that the rise of a nation brings about cooperative initiatives and value concepts that will guide the world’s future.China’s current rise is transcending the traditional rise of world powers because the Belt and Road Initiative is geared toward creating a community of shared future for mankind, which will establish a new form of civilization for humankind in the 21st century.