The Belt & Road Initiative in the Global Arena: Chinese and European Perspectives

277 Pages·2018·3.04 MB·English

by  Yu Cheng

THE BELT & ROAD
INITIATIVE IN
THE GLOBAL ARENA
CHINESE AND EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES
Edited by Yu Cheng, Lilei Song and Lihe Huang
The Belt & Road Initiative in the Global Arena
Yu Cheng · Lilei Song · Lihe Huang
Editors
The Belt & Road
Initiative in the Global
Arena
Chinese and European Perspectives
Editors
Yu Cheng Lihe Huang
Tongji University Tongji University
Shanghai, China Shanghai, China
Lilei Song
Tongji University
Shanghai, China
ISBN 978-981-10-5920-9 ISBN 978-981-10-5921-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5921-6
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Tongji University China Today Book Series focuses on contemporary
China studies from an international perspective. Contributors to the
book series span different disciplines and constitute a joint team at
Tongji University, led by Professor Peiming Lü (Vice President of Tongji
University), conducting research and offering courses in English on
contemporary China studies. After years of endeavor, these courses, as a
package, have received several honors, including
English-taught Exemplary Course for International Students granted
by the Ministry of Education, P.R. China.
The articles published in this book exclusively reflect the points of view
of their authors and are not the official standpoint of institutions pro-
viding financial support for the research grants. This work was partially
sponsored by the following projects:
Jean Monnet Teaching Module Program: European Integration:
Experience, Practices, and Policies (No. 2013-3175).
2016 Civil Diplomacy Program of Shanghai Overseas Returned
Scholars Association.
Tongji University “The Belt & Road Initiative” Think-Tank Project
(Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities).
F
oreword
The “Belt and Road” (OBOR) initiative refers to the “Silk Road
Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” initiatives,
which were unveiled by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Together,
these initiatives constitute a Chinese framework for organizing multina-
tional economic development, primarily in Eurasia.
The Belt and Road initiative is an inevitable extension of China’s
comprehensive opening up and the inevitable trend for cultural revival.
It includes the demands of globalization, which indicates that China has
undergone from participating in globalization to shaping globalization.
Since the 1970s, China’s “Reform and Opening Up” policy mainly paid
attention to opening up to developed Western countries. Through dec-
ades of development, however, Western countries have now opened up to
China and China is opening up more to developing countries and neigh-
boring countries. China not only exports products, but also exports a
sustainable development pattern as its contribution to the world. Today,
the Belt and Road initiative is an important public good that China is
giving to the world, and is a new proposal from China for enhancing
international cooperation after the so-called globalization, also known as
Americanization or Westernization, failed to reach its goals.
The Belt and Road initiative is essentially aimed at providing efficient
supply, thus stimulating fresh demand, with a focus on infrastructure
investment in both developed and developing economies, which covers
4.4 billion people. As the Bloomberg Report said recently, the Belt and
Road initiative will help 3 billion Asians grow into the middle class by
vii
viii FOREWORD
2050. China’s own research also predicts that China’s trade volume with
the countries along the Belt and Road will increase to US$2.5 trillion in
the next 10 years. The Belt and Road initiative will help generate vital-
ity and further promote China’s inland provinces to open up, enabling
more exchange with other countries and regions. When I mentioned
this to European friends, they were excited and felt there were a lot of
opportunities.
Many countries, ranging from the United Kingdom to ASEAN mem-
bers, have shown interest in endorsing the Belt and Road initiative, high-
lighting their desire to use innovative means to improve their domestic
infrastructure. The Belt and Road initiative welcomes other countries
to enjoy the benefits of China’s economic development and will conse-
quently strengthen economic and cultural cooperation, while putting
aside complicated military and political differences to bring about a win–
win situation. Admittedly, some China observers cannot accept China’s
rise and believe that its participation in global governance is associated
with grave security risks. Some have even played up Beijing’s so-called
challenge to the Washington-led world order, regarding the Belt and
Road initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as
threats to the environment and the rule of law.
The fact is that China still needs the support of Europe to carry for-
ward its strategic plans, although some European politicians remain sus-
picious of the intentions and feasibility of the Belt and Road initiative.
Therefore, measures have to be taken to convince them that stabilizing
global growth is also in China’s interest. Both China and Europe should
work closely together to improve global infrastructure and economic
integration, in a bid to upgrade their bilateral ties and learn from each
other to bridge the widening gap between the demand and supply of
international public goods, which is exactly what the Belt and Road ini-
tiative seeks to achieve. This was the intention of the forum “The Belt
and Road to a Better Future: China–Europe Youth Dialogue” hosted by
Tongji University in June 2016, which collected truly innovative sugges-
tions by young scholars from Europe and China.
This proceedings of the forum on the One Belt, One Road initia-
tive covers the cultures, religions, languages, political systems, and
national interests of the different Eurasian nations, trying to provide
answers to questions on the implementation of the Belt and Road ini-
tiative, which is likely to encounter numerous challenges. This book
aims to be a very useful reference for graduate students and teachers
FOREWORD ix
of international relations, in China and in the countries along the pro-
posed Belt and Road. This collection can also be recommended to
researchers and government officials who want to know more about
the Belt and Road initiative.
Prof. Dr. Yiwei Wang
Renmin University of China
Beijing, China
P
reFace
This book is the proceedings of the international forum “The Belt and
Road to a Better Future: China–Europe Youth Dialogue,” initiated by
Dr. Yu Cheng, Dr. Lilei Song, and Dr. Lihe Huang. This forum was
hosted by the International School of Tongji University and supported
by the Shanghai Overseas Returned Scholars Association, Shanghai
Institute for European Studies, and the Collaborative Innovation Center
for Belt and Road Security Issue, Tongji University. Twenty young schol-
ars from both China and Europe presented their research outcomes on
the forum and fourteen papers were selected for inclusion in this volume,
after peer review.
The forum assembled a package of next-generation ideas for the pat-
terns of regional trade, investment, and infrastructure development. It
also discussed the next steps for promotion of enhanced policy coordi-
nation across the Eurasian continent and strategic implications for EU,
Russia, and other major powers. This new publication is a comprehen-
sive presentation of diverse papers on the Belt and Road initiative from
the perspectives of spatial, temporal, geopolitical, economic, cultural, and
other dimensions.
The volume mainly focuses on four important themes of the Belt and
Road initiative: comprehension and communication, regional coopera-
tion, economic cooperation, and geopolitical challenge.
“Part One, Comprehension and Communication on the Belt and
Road Initiative,” includes four articles: “Public Opinions on the Belt
and Road Initiative: A Cross-Cultural Study” by Yu Cheng. This paper
xi
xii PREFACE
conducts a comparative study to examine cross-cultural differences in
shaping the image of the Belt and Road initiative as well as the functions
of public opinion and media in this process. Cheng suggests a commu-
nication strategy for launching the initiative. In the paper “China’s Belt
and Road Initiative: Connecting and Transforming Initiative,” Dragana
Mitrovic discusses China’s bold attempt to reshape the existing global
order and transform it into something new, more multipolar, and more
Sinocentric.
Lihe Huang’s paper “Intercultural Education on the Theme of the
Belt and Road Initiative: A Multimodality Oriented Pedagogical Design”
discusses how to make full use of the Belt and Road initiative to develop
Chinese students’ intercultural competence using a blended instruction
pattern. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a pedagogical
design by using international and domestic affairs for students’ intercul-
tural education, which is a practice of “internationalization at home.”
Lilei Song and Zhao Qiqi’s paper “A Model for the Belt and Road
Initiative: China’s Cultural Diplomacy Toward Central and Eastern
European an Countries” explores the roadmap China has formulated for
its cultural diplomacy toward CEE countries and examines the develop-
ments and problems of China’s cultural diplomacy to CEE countries in
recent years.
Part Two mainly talks about regional cooperation in the Belt and
Road initiative. Ágnes Szunomár’s paper “One Belt, One Road:
Connecting China with Central and Eastern Europe” suggests that
the One Belt, One Road initiative could provide a new framework for
cooperation between China and CEE countries because it offers several
opportunities for countries that wish to participate in implementing the
strategy. “Determinants and Directions of Polish–Chinese Cooperation
in the Context of the One Belt, One Road initiative” is by Piotr Bajor.
The author discusses the political and economic cooperation between
China and Poland, with particular emphasis on the changes that have
occurred in China’s relations with CEE countries after the accession
of some of them to the European Union. Ikboljon Qoraboyev’s paper
“One Belt, One Road: A Comparative Regionalism Approach” contrib-
utes to efforts at conceptualizing the initiative using alternative theoreti-
cal and conceptual frameworks.
Part Three refers to economic cooperation in the Belt and Road initi-
ative. Balázs Sárvári and Anna Szeidovitz use the modern Silk Road con-
cept as an example of China’s foreign policy in the wake of globalization