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Economic and Political Studies
ISSN: 2095-4816 (Print) 2470-4024 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reps20
Geoeconomics with Chinese characteristics: the
BRI and China’s evolving grand strategy
Mark Beeson
To cite this article: Mark Beeson (2018): Geoeconomics with Chinese characteristics: the BRI and
China’s evolving grand strategy, Economic and Political Studies
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20954816.2018.1498988
Published online: 03 Sep 2018.
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Geoeconomics with Chinese characteristics: the BRI and
China’s evolving grand strategy
Mark Beeson
Political Science and International Relations, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
ABSTRACT
China has become the second largest economy in the world in a
historically unprecedented space of time. Subsequently, China has
begun to exert a form of geoeconomic influence that is changing
the way we think about both the nature of international relations
in the 21st century and about the precise uses China’s policy-
makers will put their growing power into. This paper explores
these debates and China’s evolving approach to foreign and stra-
tegic policies through the prism of the Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI). If the BRI becomes a reality it will quite literally cement
China’s place at the centre of a regional network of production
processes that will inevitability enhance China’s overall economic
and geopolitical importance. At the very least, China’s ascent is
forcing a reassessment about the nature of power and influence
in the contemporary international system. Not only is the nature
of economic organisation currently raising important theoretical
and practical questions about the basis of international competi-
tion, but it is also becoming increasingly clear that the power and
influence of national governments are largely determined by rela-
tive shifts in the balance of economic power, as much as it is by
more traditional strategic factors.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 12 September 2017
Accepted 28 March 2018
KEYWORDS
Belt and Road Initiative;
grand strategy;
geoeconomics; geopolitics;
rise of China
Introduction
China has become the second largest economy in the world in a historically unprece-
dented space of time. Remarkable as this achievement is, it is not only China’s sheer
material significance that has attracted so much attention of late: the feature of
China’s ascent that has really begun to define recent commentary is what the
leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will do with its growing power
and economic leverage (Heilmann and Schmidt 2014; Kastner 2016). In short, China
has begun to exert a form of ‘geoeconomic’influence that is changing the way we
think about both the nature of international relations in the 21st century and about
the precise uses China’s policymakers will put their growing power into (Beeson and
Li 2015; Norris 2016; Blackwill and Harris 2016).
CONTACT Mark Beeson mark.beeson@uwa.edu.au Political Science and International Relations, University of
Western Australia, Perth, Australia
!2018 Economic and Political Studies
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/20954816.2018.1498988
This paper explores these debates and China’s evolving approach to foreign and
strategic policies through the prism of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For some
observers, the BRI represents nothing less than a new Marshall Plan with Chinese
characteristics (Chen 2014). Equally significantly, perhaps, it is centred on a newly
important geographical arena. Even if such assessments prove to be somewhat over-
blown, there is no doubt that if the BRI is realised –and that remains a moot point
at this stage –it will be the most significant economic and strategic development in
the 21st century so far. Indeed, if the BRI becomes a reality it will quite literally
cement China’s place at the centre of a regional network of production processes that
will inevitability enhance China’s overall economic and geopolitical importance
(Beeson and Li 2016).
The general economic expansion and industrialisation of East Asia had already
forced us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about the nature of eco-
nomic development (Stubbs 2005; Ozawa 2009). Now China’s ascent is forcing a
reassessment about the nature of power and influence in the contemporary inter-
national system (Agnew 2005). Not only is the nature of economic organisation cur-
rently raising important theoretical and practical questions about the nature of
national economies and the basis of international competition (Baldwin 2016), but it
is also becoming increasingly clear that the power and influence of national govern-
ments is largely determined by relative shifts in the balance of economic power, as
much as it is by more traditional strategic factors.
To develop and illustrate these arguments the paper proceeds as follows. First, I
put the idea of geoeconomic influence in theoretical and historical contexts. The key
point here is that traditional geopolitics and geoeconomics have always been linked
(Strange 1994), but some historical circumstances are especially conducive to the
application of economic leverage and/or statecraft. Having established this conceptual
terrain, I explore how China is attempting to utilise its growing economic power
generally through an examination of the BRI in particular. Finally, I consider the
implications of China’s economic re-emergence for extant power structures, especially
as they may determine the prospects for a process of ‘hegemonic tradition’.
Geoeconomics and geopolitics
It is hardly novel to claim that economic development and change have potentially
important geopolitical consequences. Indeed, Gilpin (1981), as a realist scholar, has
long argued that underlying material transformations and economic restructuring
have a concomitant impact on the distribution of power, upsetting the status quo and
potentially creating the preconditions for a ‘hegemonic transition’. While there is cur-
rently a good deal of renewed attention being given to the possible relevance of such
ideas in the context of the bilateral relationship between the US and China (Allison
2017), the reality is that the world has only witnessed one major international transi-
tion in the modern period. It is consequently difficult to make generalisations about
what the current economic and strategic expansion of China might mean for the
international system.
2 M. BEESON
Nevertheless, before we consider how China’s rise may be transforming both its
own prospects and those of the international system more generally, it is worth mak-
ing a few general historical points as they can provide a comparative framework with
which to make sense of the contemporary period. The key points to make about
America’s earlier hegemonic ascent is that, firstly, it replaced a very similar power in
the shape of Britain, and one with limited capacity to resist. Even if Britain had been
more powerful, the fact that the US subscribed to similar values and ideas meant
there was less incentive to push back against a rising power in quite the same way.
Secondly, the US was initially reluctant to assume the hegemonic mantle, and it
would take the drastic international reordering and chaos triggered by the WWII to
make it clear to Americans that they could –and perhaps should –provide inter-
national leadership (Kindleberger 1973). Crucially, it was the US’s overwhelming eco-
nomic importance in the post-war period that allowed it to impose itself on the
international system and create a highly institutionalised system that reflected its own
normative preferences (Beeson and Higgott 2005).
The reality that America’s dominant economic position allowed it to shape an inter-
national order that was conducive to its own ‘national interests’was not only beneficial
to the US itself, however. Even critical scholars have pointed out that one of the rea-
sons the international order that the US largely created has proved so durable is that it
provided real benefits for other states, too (Cox 1987). The fact that the US had the
wherewithal to provide significant material assistance to many of the distressed econo-
mies of Western Europe and East Asia also helped entrench its dominant position and
influence. Put differently, America’s rapidly evolving post-war ‘grand strategy’, which
was primarily geared to ‘containing’the spread of Soviet-inspired communism (Gaddis
1982), was reinforced by a distinctive form of statecraft in which geoeconomic power
was utilised to achieve geopolitical ends (Kunz 1997).
In this context, the Marshall Plan was in the right place at the right time. During
the ‘crisis of 1947’the very survival of a number of European countries as independ-
ent liberal-capitalist entities seemed in doubt as Europe’s devastated economies and
infrastructure struggled to cope with the aftermath of war (Milward 1984). Equally
significantly, the Soviet Union was not just a formidable economic and strategic com-
petitor, but a significant ideological rival. The interwar period had been marked by
an almost terminal crisis of capitalism that culminated in the WWII; the renaissance
and ultimate triumph of capitalism as the dominant form of global political and eco-
nomic organisation were far from assured. It was against this backdrop of economic
crisis and ideological rivalry that the Americans instituted the Marshall Plan. While
the immediate goal of the Marshall Plan was to provide a direct boost to Europe’s ail-
ing economies, in the eyes of its architects it was seen as ‘the key to social harmony,
to the survival of private-enterprise capitalism, and to the preservation of political
democracy’(Hogan 1987, 428).
At the outset, therefore, it is important to emphasise that ‘China’s Marshall Plan’, if
it materialises, will operate in very different political and strategic circumstances. But
before we consider its possible practical implications and significance, it is important
to say something about the nature of geoeconomic power which changed international
circumstances that are seemingly making more important and influential in these days.
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES 3
From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics
In recent history, no event has been of greater long-term significance than the ending
of the Cold War. Although the former Soviet Union was the principal protagonist
while the Cold War persisted its main casualty when it ended, it is also important to
recognise its significance for the US and China. Not only was the US overwhelmingly
preoccupied with the ideological and strategic struggle that characterised the Cold
War period, but China was also effectively marginalised politically and economically
for decades. Truly, the PRC had its own problems and priorities to be content with
(Breslin 2007), but it is clear in retrospect that its economic development was held
back and its potential to play a larger international role was profoundly circumscribed
by the logic of the Cold War’s ideological rivalries (Naughton 1996).
One of the first observers to grasp the possible long-term significance of the Cold
War’s ending is Edward Luttwak. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the almost
entirely unpredicted and peaceful demise of the Soviet Union, Luttwak (1990) argues
that the decreased importance of traditional ideological and especially strategic rival-
ries mean that states would begin to prioritise economic development, which was rap-
idly becoming the locus of interstate rivalry and competition. Indeed, this would
provide a new rationale and raison d^
etre for states that were suddenly liberated from
the crushing, all-consuming confrontations of the Cold War. Other writers have use-
fully drawn attention to the potential use of ‘economic statecraft’before this (Baldwin
1985), but the declining importance and even utility of traditional military power
after the Cold War appeared to give a renewed and seemingly permanent importance
to economic rather than geostrategic instruments of influence.
We now understand, of course, that the ‘peace dividend’promised by the Cold
War’s ending has proved difficult to realise, and that a rather old fashioned preoccu-
pation with military security and spending has continued to dominate the thinking
and actions of policymakers in many countries. In part, this can be explained by the
disastrous presidency of George W. Bush and the woefully misguided decision to
invade Iraq (Packer 2005), an action that destabilised the entire Middle East region
and led directly to the current international obsession with the threat of terrorism.
Significantly, even Japan, which for some observers represented the quintessential
exemplar of an entirely new kind of ‘trading state’that had eschewed conventional
ideas of national security (Rosecrance 1986), has seemingly succumbed to the siren
song of traditional national security.
And yet it is important to recognise that for decades Japan did demonstrate that
other national developmental priorities were not only possible but actually highly
effective. Moreover, Japan provided a master class in acquiring overseas geoeconomic
influence –despite the legacy of its actions during the WWII. Indeed, for some
observers, Japan’s economic success seemed to epitomise the changing logic of inter-
national competition: Japan achieved through foreign investment after the WWII
what it had been unable to achieve through force of arms (Hatch and Yamamura
1996). It is also important to recognise that the Japanese experience has provided
important policy ideas and models for China’s leaders, too –even if they might be
loath to admit to taking advice from such a source (Heilmann and Melton 2013).
Nevertheless, China’s leaders are beginning to employ a range of strategies and
4 M. BEESON
initiatives that are attempting to achieve similar sorts of geoeconomic goals, albeit
with distinctive Chinese characteristics.
Geoeconomics in practice
Geoeconomics has recently become increasingly prominent in the academic literature.
It is not difficult to see why: the remarkable economic rise of China and the deter-
mination of its leaders to turn this material power into political and even ideational
influence take some explaining and geoeconomics offers a persuasive way of doing
so. There is, however, no complete agreement on quite what the term means or the
best way of conceptualising it. For some observers, geoeconomics is part of a trad-
itional form of great power politics. Hence, geoeconomics is ‘applying economic
instruments to advance geopolitical ends’(Blackwill and Harris 2016, 8). In this con-
ception, geoeconomics is realist power politics by other means; national interests
remain pre-eminent, and geoeconomics provides one increasingly important way of
pursuing them. As far as China is concerned, Blackwill and Harris (2016, 135) suggest
that the principal goal of its leadership is ‘to foster asymmetrical economic depend-
ence on China among certain countries –and once that is achieved to shape their
foreign policies in ways congenial to China’s national interests’.
More nuanced readings of emerging geoeconomics capture some of its complexity
and contradictions. For Cowen and Smith (2009,24–25) ‘changes in the nature of the
international system challenge geopolitical conceptions and may better be captured
today by a “geo-economic”conception of space, power and security, which sees geopol-
itical forms recalibrated by market logics …geoeconomics recasts rather than simply
replaces geopolitical calculation’. In this formulation, the sort of geoeconomic competi-
tion that Luttwak highlighted is the key to understanding contemporary international
relations. Not only does such competition now routinely occupy a range of actors
beyond the state, but it has the capacity to reshape the state itself and the thinking of
the political elites that claim to represent it.
Perhaps the principal manifestation of this possibility –and its limitations –can be
seen in China’s experience in the recent reform era. On the one hand, as China has
been integrated more fully into a global capitalist economy dominated by the US and
the enduring institutional architecture it created in the aftermath of the WWII,
China’s domestic structures have been transformed. The most important example of
this possibility occurred when China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), an
event that entrenched capitalist economic practices and norms in the PRC, and which
effectively snuffed out domestic opposition to further market-oriented reform (Breslin
2007). In this regard, there is little doubt that an enormous process of ‘socialisation’
has been occurring in China, and not just at the elite level. On the contrary, ‘China’is
a very different entity than it was 40 or even 20 years ago (Steinfeld 2010).
On the other hand, however, it is apparent that there are limits to this process.
Despite China’s WTO accession occurring as a consequence of America’s geoeco-
nomic power, especially as exercised through institutions, China retains distinctive
characteristics that have proved impervious to wholesale reform. Indeed, one of the
most potentially significant consequences of China’s economic and political
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES 5
transformation is that its leadership is beginning to assert itself internationally in pre-
cisely the same way that the US has for the past half century or more. Clearly, many
in China believe that this is an especially opportune time to assert the country’s lead-
ership, a belief that gained momentum in the aftermath of the American-made ‘global
financial crisis’(Ren 2017). The key questions in this context are about the sort of
norms and principles that China will seek to champion, and the ways in which its
elites will seek to promote them (Chin and Thakur 2010). In this context, a number
of points are especially important when thinking about the Chinese experience
generally and the prospects for and significance of the BRI in particular.
First, China –especially under the leadership of Xi Jinping –has clearly abandoned
Deng Xiaoping’s famous admonition about keeping a low profile to achieve something
(Yan 2014). Now, by contrast, China’s elites are both increasingly confident about their
capabilities and their right to occupy a more central position in the mechanisms of glo-
bal governance. Indeed, one of the principal drivers of China’s new assertiveness is the
sense that the existing institutional order reflects and entrenches a form of American
hegemony that works against Chinese interests and is designed to contain China’s
international influence (Zhao 2013). Whatever the merits of this sort of analysis, there
is little doubt that it informs the thinking of many of the more influential actors in
China’s non-transparent foreign policy making process (Jakobson and Knox 2010).
Second, the precise form these ambitions will take is a work-in-progress, and there
is a good deal of policy experimentation at both the domestic and international levels.
At the level of direct geoeconomic influence of a sort that the BRI looks certain to
consolidate, China has become an increasingly important and influential source of
direct investment and engagement from Africa to Latin America, as well as within
the ‘Asian’region it has traditionally dominated (Das 2009). There are striking paral-
lels between Japan’s earlier expansion into Southeast Asia and China’s current bilat-
eral ties with Africa in particular (Br€
autigam and Tang 2014). While this relationship
is not always smooth or without its tensions and contradictions, Africa is providing
an important testing ground for China’s evolving resource diplomacy and its efforts
to ensure long-term economic security and influence (Beeson, Soko, and Yong 2011).
Third, the precise form China’s overseas engagement takes may have implications
for economic partners that are distinctive and different from those associated with
‘Anglo-American’forms of neoliberal capitalism. As Jiang (2009, 592) observes, ‘for
those who have faith in “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, China’s reform expe-
riences in the past three decades can serve as a model for developing countries in
Africa on how to eliminate poverty and make strides in industrialisation’. For
admirers of the so-called ‘Beijing consensus’this is precisely what is so significant
about China’s distinctive developmental experience: it represents an alternative path
to economic modernisation and expansion that is not burdened with the burdensome
demands of the better known and historically more influential Washington consensus
(Halper 2010; Lin 2011).
Finally, while China may be developing the sort of ‘grand strategy’that we associate
with the US and other great powers historically (Layne 2006), it is one predicated upon
distinctive Chinese priorities that are a reflection of its unique historical experience
(Goldstein 2005). The number one priority of China’s grand strategy is the survival of
6 M. BEESON
the party-state and the leadership role of the Communist Party of China (CPC). As Qin
(2014, 309) points out, ‘the security of the state and political system is the most import-
ant consideration in designing China’s international strategy’, a reality that shapes all
subsequent policy considerations. It is precisely this underlying logic which leads Wang
(2011, 74) to conclude that China, like Japan before it, has adopted a ‘comprehensive’
view of security that ‘incorporates economic and non-traditional concerns with trad-
itional military and political interests’. This distinctive nexus of strategic, economic and
political imperatives forms the core of China’s‘national interest’as defined by the
party-state. Even if we recognise that ‘national interests’are socially constructed, histor-
ically contingent manifestations of political power (Weldes 1996), that does not make
them any the less consequential when determining domestic and foreign policy.
While some of the claims made about China’s influence are overblown and uncrit-
ical, the direction of travel seems clear: there is no doubt that China’s leaders chafe
against some aspects of the existing order and are keen to either play a more promin-
ent role in the extant institutions or –failing that –create an alternative institutional
order of their own (Paradise 2016). Again, we need to recognise that this process is
still in its formative stages, but there are already important indications of the willing-
ness of China’s elites to assume an international leadership role that is strikingly at
odds with former times. While this may be a measure of growing ambition, it is also
an equally telling indicator of the challenge of creating a viable alternative to the pre-
vailing order (Liao 2016). No initiative more clearly illustrates the possibilities and
constraints facing Chinese policymakers than the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB), which may play a potentially crucial role in providing the financial
wherewithal for grandiose initiatives such as the BRI. Before examining the BRI itself,
therefore, it is important to explain the significance of the AIIB as it highlights key
issues that will determine the BRI’s success.
Institutionalisation with Chinese characteristics
In 2014 at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, President Xi Jinping pro-
posed establishing both the AIIB and a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).
As Wang (2015) notes, both of these initiatives need to be seen in the context of a
geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with the US. In what Wang describes as
the biggest foreign policy shift in Beijing since 1989, he argues:
Xi’s strategy is a sophisticated and progressive one. Instead of directly challenging the
current existing international institutions, the Chinese are trying to create new platforms
that Beijing can control or substantially influence. Through these new initiatives, Beijing
aims to create a new international environment that is more favourable to China, one
that will limit strategic pressures from the United States …In creating its own
alternatives, China maintains more control, and can make a greater impact …China’s
new strategy is to try to establish new institutions and platforms as tools for Beijing to
play the kind of role China cannot play in the ADB or IMF. (Wang 2015)
The emphasis on the geoeconomic aspect of China’s foreign policy is also highlighted
by a prominent Chinese scholar Shi, who claims that China now uses two categories
of policy instruments: ‘strategic military’and ‘strategic economic’(Shi 2015).
An emphasis on the newly-prominent ‘strategic economic’element of foreign policy
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES 7
will potentially have two major benefits for China: on the one hand, it may help to
reassure those neighbours alarmed by China’s more assertive strategic policies, of
which there is a growing number. On the other, it will offer an alternative strategy
and institutional forum for those Chinese policymakers who have long chafed at the
dominance of the US and West more generally in the institutions like the IMF and
the World Bank (Clegg 2011).
Even in the East Asian region, which is the primary focus of China’s pursuit of
greater international influence, it lacks a suitable outlet for its ambitions. Some of the
region’s existing institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank, are dominated by
China’s great rival Japan, and mean that China is comparatively uninfluential (Lim
and Vreeland 2013). Other institutional initiatives, such as the ASEAN Plus Three
(APT) grouping –which includes all the states in the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) in addition to Japan, South Korea and China itself –are being
increasingly sidelined in the growing contest to represent the region (Beeson 2014).
Indeed, one of the most striking features of China’s immediate neighbourhood is the
number of alternative definitions of the region in question and the most appropriate
organisation or initiative that might actually give expression to possible collective
goals. The net effect of these overlapping and competing institutions is that none of
them are especially effective (Beeson 2016).
More importantly from a Chinese perspective, none of the plethora of this regional
initiatives has the capacity to allow China’s leaders to exercise leadership in the way
they might like. Even the APT, which China initially supported and looked set to
dominate, has been rendered less effective by the emergence of rival groupings such as
the East Asia Summit, which includes other major powers like India, Japan and, most
consequentially, the US (Terada 2012). Indeed, it is a concern about the prospects of
Chinese domination that has led other states to pursue a form of ‘institutional bal-
ancing’as a response to China’s growing power (He 2015). The development of new
initiatives like the AIIB and the FTAAP is, therefore, partly a recognition of China’s
difficulty in influencing the way by which extant organisations operate.
Given the complex patchwork of overlapping regional initiatives it is far from clear
how important or effective the AIIB will actually be. Although the ideational influ-
ence of the AIIB may be limited at this stage, it is important not to lose sight of its
symbolic and practical potential. At one level, the AIIB is clearly an attempt by
Chinese leaders to create an institution that reflects China’s norms, preferences and
interests, in precisely the way some scholars have predicted (Chan, Lee, and Chan
2012). It is possible –even likely –that it will prove difficult for China to exert an
uncontested influence over the lending practices of the AIIB or the crucial condition-
ality that accompanies any loans and assistance. In order to win the support of coun-
tries such as the UK and Australia, the AIIB has had to take seriously concerns about
‘good governance’and transparency (Perlez 2015). Nevertheless, at another level, such
technical issues will not undermine the Bank’s attractiveness to potential borrowers in
Asia. On the contrary, the potentially less stringent conditionality associated with the
Beijing as opposed to the Washington Consensus makes the AIIB potentially much
more attractive to Asian leaders desperate for much-needed infrastructure investment
and not enamoured of liberal political or economic reforms (Browne 2015). It is
8 M. BEESON
important to remember that China’s engagement with extant international institutions
has been driven by a desire to protect state sovereignty and Asian-style intervention-
ism, not to undermine it (Chin and Thakur 2010)–an idea borrowers might find
entirely acceptable and palatable.
When Premier Li Keqiang indicated China’s willingness to consult with relevant par-
ties across Asia and beyond regarding the formal establishment of the AIIB in 2014, the
attractiveness of the proposal was enhanced by China’s willingness to provide US$100
billions of initial capital. Negotiations and consultations culminated in 21 countries sign-
ing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the establishment of the AIIB in
Beijing on 24 October 2014. In a major diplomatic coup for China and indication of its
growing geoeconomic influence, the UK became the first major Western power to lodge
an application to be a founding member on 12 March 2015, despite the clear unhappi-
ness of its key ally, the US (Anderlini 2015). Britain’sleadwasrapidlyfollowedbyother
key European countries, including Germany, France and Italy. South Korea and
Australia also decided to join the AIIB in April 2015. Australia’s decision also occurred
despite the wishes of the US and after acrimonious cabinet divisions. The point to
emphasise again is that even for some of the US’s most loyal and reliable allies, geoeco-
nomic issues could trump geopolitical ones at times (Branigan 2015).
Whatever the basis and merits of America’s concerns, a number of points are worth
emphasising. First, there are arguably limits to what the US can do to influence, much
less stop, a fundamental restructuring of global economic activity and the concomitant
results: not only do such processes reflect a long-term return to ‘normal’as China
reassumes its briefly interrupted regional ascendancy, but the US is itself a beneficiary
of, and highly dependent on China’s economic development, significantly limiting its
capacity for pushback (Cohen and DeLong 2010; Altman and Hass 2010). Second,
there is still a significant need for investment finance in Southeast and Central Asia
where infrastructure frequently remains poor and an obstacle to economic develop-
ment and integration. The ADB (2012) suggests that countries in the Asian-Pacific
region need to invest about US$8 trillion in infrastructural building and replacement
between 2010 and 2020. Third, the BRI has the potential to help address the ‘new nor-
mal’of more moderate Chinese growth by alleviating the overcapacity problems in the
domestic economy (Noesselt 2017). The final point to stress is that China is already
the largest source of international lending, with or without the AIIB. In fact, China
now provides more ‘international development finance than all of the world’s six
major multilateral financial institutions put together’(Kynge 2016). Put differently,
China’s sheer material importance to the global economy has already transformed its
position and given it the potential to play a much more significant role in the inter-
national system, and not just in its immediate neighbourhood. The question is
whether the BRI is a feasible expression of China’s growing international ambitions.
One belt, one road –one ambition?
Seen in the context of long run economic restructuring, an expanding material geoe-
conomic influence, to say nothing of a rising tide of nationalism (Hornby 2017), the
development of a more self-confident and externally-oriented policy agenda was
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES 9
perhaps inevitable. It is no coincidence, therefore, that China’s leaders, especially Xi
Jinping, have been talking about the possibility of re-establishing the fabled ‘Silk
Road’and the old trade routes that were an important expression of China’s long-
standing economic importance in Asia. China’s BRI is the key manifestation of this
goal, which potentially marries direct and indirect sources of influence.
There are two principal aspects to the BRI, a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’(SREB)
and a ‘Maritime Silk Road’(MSR). As the name suggests, the MSR is designed to
more effectively link and integrate the maritime states of Southeast and South Asia in
particular. The SREB, by contrast, is intended to re-establish and modernise trad-
itional overland connections with Central and South Asia, ultimately linking them to
both China itself and ultimately to Europe. An integrated network of ports, railways
and roads –of the sort that China has great experience in delivering –is envisaged, a
development that will consolidate China’s place at the centre of economic activity
across much of Asia (Pitlo 2015). The seriousness with which the Chinese leadership
is taking this initiative can be gauged from the fact that the BRI was included in the
comprehensive reform blueprint of the Party leadership, and adopted as a key policy
priority before 2020 (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China 2013).
Although it is too soon to judge how effectively such grand ambitions will be real-
ised, some predictable implications and consequences of BRI’s possible trajectory are
already becoming clear. It is also clear that China has both the state capacity and the
practical experience to make such a project a reality: key agencies, such as the
National Development and Reform Commission (NRDC), have developed detailed
plans for the implementation of specific aspects of the BRI. It is important to empha-
sise that despite the shift to a more market-oriented economy, the state and its devel-
opmental agencies continues to play a major role in the overall coordination of
economic development. As Heilmann and Melton (2013, 581–583) note:
China’s planning system evolved alongside the economic transition and remains central
to almost all domains of public policy making and the political institutions that have
fostered China’s high-speed growth and economic stability …the very essence of state
development planning has been preserved in China as a governmental effort at strategic
policy coordination, …resource mobilisation …and macroeconomic control.
Equally importantly, China’s domestic record of economic expansion and the cre-
ation of domestic infrastructure are unparalleled. Indeed, so extensive has China’s
capacity and need to deliver continuing infrastructure and other forms of domestic
investment become to overall development that some consider that it has actually
become a liability. China’s infamous ‘ghost cities’and the perverse incentive struc-
tures that continue to encourage such developments at the provincial government
level are frequently cited as the most glaring illustration of the drawback of breakneck
development (Walter and Howie 2011). China’s response to the global financial crisis
of 2008, when a massive programme of domestic investment was unleashed, has
entrenched the problems of overcapacity and a growing economic and political reli-
ance on unsustainable internal development (Jiang 2015).
This backdrop of growing concerns about the sustainability of China’s domestic
growth model has led some observers to claim that one of the BRI’s principal attrac-
tions is its potential to solve the growing problem of surplus domestic capacity (Lo
10 M. BEESON
2015). While this may, indeed, be desirable from the perspective of a government
that derives much of its authority and legitimacy from its capacity to sustain rising
living standards and economic stability (Yang and Zhao 2015), shifting domestic
problems overseas is also fraught with potential long-term difficulties. As Huang
(2016, 321) points out, ‘dumping excess capacity to the “Belt & Road”countries could
spoil the entire game’. This is a possibility that is already beginning to worry some
foreign governments, and not just in those countries that are likely to feel the direct
impact of the BRI. On the contrary, many governments in the European Union are
concerned about the impact of state-subsidised competition on the still fragile and
under-performing economies of Western Europe (Casarini 2016). European
responses, albeit varied and uncoordinated, are a reminder that foreign reactions to
China’s plans will ultimately determine its success or failure.
The BRI is a two-way street
If there is one thing China’s leaders ought to appreciate, it is that exerting inter-
national influence and realising grand strategic ambitions is not simply dependent on
the actions of the dominant partner. On the contrary, as China’s preoccupation with
‘American hegemonism’reminds us, the actions of subordinate states are the critical
determinants of the way in which various foreign policy initiatives and hegemonic
goals are realised (Deng 2001). There are already some doubts about China’s capacity
to exert the same sort of ‘soft power’that many observers –especially in the US
(Nye 2004)–saw as a key element of the success and durability of American influ-
ence (Beeson and Xu 2015). Although China’s leaders might like to think of them-
selves as having more in common with ‘the South’, and states in the ‘periphery’
rather than the Western core, the reality is that China’s growing international eco-
nomic presence has already generated a degree of resistance and concerns about neo-
colonialism (Lumumba-Kasongo 2011).
Such considerations are important given that many observers view the BRI as the
quintessential manifestation of China’s potential economic leverage and more pro-
active approach to foreign policy-making more generally (Clarke 2017). This is an
especially important consideration in the context of Norris’s(2016, 61) claim that
‘China’s growing economic stature has enabled it to shift from a grand strategy that
merely sought to enable its economic goals to one that can begin to leverage its grow-
ing economic power to achieve foreign policy goals that previously may have been
out of reach’. While China is plainly much more influential than it once was, it is
also apparent that there are potentially major contradictions in the rationale for, and
application of, some of China’s ambitious goals, especially where geoeconomic and
geopolitical goals intersect.
Despite the supposed importance of the BRICS grouping, for example, which
includes Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa in addition to China itself, there are
underlying tensions between its members, not least because of China’s dominant pos-
ition (Pant 2013). The recent flare up of territorial tensions between India and China
is a reminder of the tenuous nature of their new partnership (Buckley and Barry 2017),
a relationship that may be stretched to breaking point because of Pakistan’s prominent
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES 11
role in the evolving BRI blueprint (Afridi and Khalid 2016). It is also important to rec-
ognise that for China one of the principal drivers of its ‘Westward march’is securing
its own borders and minimising the threat of internal instability posed by Xingjiang
(Wang 2012; Clarke 2005). Even if China’s neighbours can be persuaded that its for-
eign policies are driven primarily by domestic security and developmental imperatives
rather than hegemonic ambitions, the prospect of achieving something close to control
of Halford Mackinder’s fabled ‘heartland’is likely to be just as alarming to traditional
regional rival Russia as it is for the US (Fallon 2015).
One of the most critical tests of the efficacy of the BRI will be its reception in
Southeast Asia. Whatever one may think about the legitimacy of China’s territorial
claims in the South China Sea, their inherently threatening nature and China’s will-
ingness to use its growing military capabilities to reinforce them ought to provoke a
major reaction in Southeast Asia generally and from the ASEAN in particular
(Hayton 2014). In reality, however, ASEAN’s response has been fitful, incoherent and
ineffective. In part, this has occurred as a direct consequence of a highly successful
policy of divide and rule on China’s part: states, such as Cambodia in particular, are
in favour of Chinese policies (Kynge, Haddou, and Peel 2016), making any unified
policy position on the part of ASEAN even more difficult than usual (Beeson 2015).
Likewise, the Philippines under the erratic leadership of Rodrigo Duterte has back-
tracked from its high-profile opposition to China’s claims, despite winning a notable
legal victory at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Even more signifi-
cantly from the perspective of the long-term strategic trajectory of the region, per-
haps, Duterte has moved toward China and away from its traditional ally, the US
(Moss 2016).
Admirers of China’s policy –especially in the PRC itself –have tended to stress
the China’s government’s constructive contribution to regional development, which
will be reinforced by the MSR in Southeast Asia, and the generally positive implica-
tions of China’s‘win-win’diplomacy (Tseng 2016; Lu 2016). While there is little
doubt that Southeast Asia does need significant infrastructure development, the MSR
initiative is only likely to deepen the inherent policy differences between ASEAN’s
maritime and mainland states. Perhaps the most revealing bellwether state in this
context is Vietnam, which occupies an ambiguous position as both a mainland and
maritime state, but one with an enormous stake in the resolution of the maritime ter-
ritorial disputes. Despite initially seeming to move toward greater strategic ties with
the US as a way of balancing China’s growing influence (Perlez 2016), more recently
it seems a rapprochement may be possible with China, its vitally important and his-
torically problematic neighbour (Nguyen 2017). If China can re-establish cordial ties
with Vietnam, given the fraught nature of recent relations, the auguries for its wider
regional ambitions look promising.
Concluding remarks
China’s place in the global economy and the institutions that seek to manage it have
changed significantly over the last few years. Indeed, China currently looks more of a
‘responsible stakeholder’than does the US under the leadership of Donald Trump
12 M. BEESON
(Wolf 2017). The fact that China’s leaders can make a case to be the champions of
globalisation in the absence of American leadership is a remarkable turn of events
and one that illustrates how rapidly some of the seemingly central pillars of the
existing order can shift (Browne 2016). While there is no doubt that Xi Jinping has
placed his personal stamp on the way in which China engages with the wider world
(Chen and Wei 2017), it is important to recognise why this matters in quite the way
it does: without an underlying transformation in the structure and scale of the
Chinese economy the influence of any Chinese leader, no matter how able or
proactive, would be significantly reduced.
China’s economic rise has given China’s leaders generally, and Xi in particular,
much greater potential agency. It is clear that they are keen to use it to restore
China’s place at the forefront of international diplomacy and great power politics.
Recovering China’s former dominant position, especially in its own region, is plainly
something that is widely supported by both the leadership of the PRC and by the
population more generally, even if there is some debate about its impact on foreign
policy (Johnston 2017). What we can be sure of is that China’s enhanced geoeco-
nomic power and influence is clearly allowing it to pursue and achieve these ambi-
tions much more quickly than many observers had imagined possible only a decade
or two ago. The question now is how China’s leaders will attempt to pursue such
goals and what role key initiatives such as the BRI will play in helping them realise
such ambitions.
For analysts such as Miller (2017, 11, 18), there is no doubt that
President Xi’s mission is to return China to what he regards as its natural, rightful and
historical position as the greatest power in Asia. That does not mean that China has to
replace the US as the world’s only superpower, but it does mean that Asia has to
predominate in its own backyard …the goal of China’s economic diplomacy is
to create a modern tribute system, with all roads literally leading to Beijing.
The inauguration of the BRI suggests that the conception of China’s‘backyard’has
expanded far beyond the boundaries of the original tribute system. Now China’s lead-
ers are looking to expand their influence beyond Northeast and even Southeast Asia,
and to Central Asia and beyond. In some ways this is entirely predictable, even if
some regional powers struggle to deal with its implications for them and for the
extant security architecture dominated by the US. This is, after all, what established
or aspirant great powers do. It is precisely what the US did in the WWII aftermath,
when its changed economic status meant that its leaders felt compelled to assume
responsibility for the maintenance and management of the international order.
We should not be surprised about China attempting to play a similar sort of role
given its history and sense of exceptionalism (Zhang 2013)–another trait it shares
with the US. In this context, the BRI has immense symbolic and practical importance.
If it succeeds –and given China’s recent development, it would be foolish to bet
against such an outcome –it will not only restore China’s diplomatic fortunes, but
will also reinforce its geoeconomic influence for the foreseeable future. Barring a not
impossible economic or political upheaval in China itself, the BRI may be the most
tangible manifestation yet of China’s seemingly unstoppable rise to regional primacy.
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES 13
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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