Weifeng Zhou & Mario Esteban. Journal of Contemporary China. Volume 27, Issue 112. July 2018.
Introduction
This article explores the motivations and calculations behind China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It argues that China’s efforts to enhance regional multilateral cooperation across the Eurasian space through the BRI are strongly motivated by a multifaceted grand strategy. First, China makes use of the BRI as a vehicle of soft balancing to frustrate the US containment and encirclement of China, and undermine its dominance in Eurasia and beyond. Second, China intends to promote alternative ideas and norms and build its role as a normative power through the BRI for fostering the legitimacy of its rising power. Third, China seeks to form a bargaining coalition through the BRI and AIIB to reshape global governance and transform the existing international system in a way that reflects its values, interests and status. Overall, the BRI serves as a decisive strategic maneuver for China to ensure security and promote power status in the international order, moving from a rule-taker to rule-maker.
Over the past three decades, China has considerably enhanced its comprehensive national strength and emerged as a regional and global power. China’s mounting prominence in the international arena triggered a debate about China’s rise and its implications for the existing international system. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign policy experienced a dramatic shift from bilateralism and multilateralism to regional multilateralism. Since the late 1990s, China has become a major actor in initiating, developing and institutionalizing multilateral cooperation mechanisms such as ASEAN Plus Three, ASEAN Plus One, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), East Asia Summit and Trilateral Cooperation. In 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), namely the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road, to promote regional multilateral cooperation in the Eurasian space. The BRI is considered Beijing’s most ambitious foreign policy initiative and is creating a new global geopolitical map, since the Initiative not only promises a mega geoeconomic agenda to deepen regional economic cooperation along the Silk Road, but also sets up a great power strategy to advance China’s geopolitical and geostrategic interests in Eurasia and beyond. In particular, this diplomatic maneuver signals a significant shift in Chinese foreign policy from ‘Keeping a Low Profile’ (taoguang yanghui) to ‘Striving for Achievement’ (yousuo zuowei). The ideas of China renaissance (mingzu fuxing) and Chinese dream (zhongguo meng) introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping embodied the key element of China’s global ambition. This article addresses the two main questions: why does China as a rising power become increasingly enthusiastic for regional multilateralism and what are the strategic calculations behind China’s BRI?
The rise of China is one of the most prominent events of the twenty-first century. Some scholars argue that China’s growing enthusiasm for regional multilateralism is closely associated with its changing role in the international system. Indeed, there is a consensus among the scholars and policymakers in both Washington and Beijing that China’s rising economic and military capabilities enable it to play a greater role in global affairs and promote its great power status. At the same time, China’s growing power makes it the most credible challenger to the US’s global dominance and has triggered a Sino-US strategic rivalry. The intensifying Sino-US competition presents Beijing with a stark dilemma of how to manage its relations with Washington for ensuring security and achieving its peaceful rise.
This article argues that China’s embrace of regional multilateralism in Eurasia is not only driven by neorealist thought, but also shaped by constructivist and neoliberal logics that are respectively linked to power balancing, normative influence and institutional transformation. In particular, regional multilateral cooperation that enhances the nexus of economic, political and security relations serves as a vital instrument for China to tackle security challenges in pursuit of its peaceful rise. Accordingly, China’s approach towards the BRI is strongly motivated by a multifaceted grand strategy: adopting a soft balancing strategy to frustrate the US containment of China and undermine its power and influence, promoting China’s soft power and building its role as a normative power through the promotion of alternative ideas and norms, and reshaping global governance in a way that reflects China’s values, interests and status.
To further explore the motivations and calculations behind China’s BRI, this article is divided into seven sections. Section I gives a brief overview of China’s activism in regional multilateral cooperation and the BRI. Section II looks into the concept of regional multilateralism based on the three international relations theories: neorealism, neoliberalism and constructivism. Section III illustrates China’s geoeconomic, geopolitical and geostrategic interests in promoting regional multilateral cooperation within the BRI. Section IV explores the logic of China’s use of the BRI as a vehicle of soft balancing to counter the US containment strategy and undermine its dominance. Section V provides insight into China’s endeavor to build its role as a normative power and foster the legitimacy of its rising power through the promotion of alternative ideas and norms within the BRI. Section VI deals with China’s attempts to forge a bargaining coalition and reshape global governance through the BRI and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Section VII presents some conclusions by highlighting the potential risks and challenges of BRI.
Regional Multilateralism and International Relations Theories
Regional multilateralism was defined by Robert Keohane as the practice of coordination, cooperation and collaboration in certain policy areas among three or more states through ad hoc agreements, conventions and arrangements under the provisions of international institutions, organizations and regimes. Regional multilateralism as a subset of multilateralism emphasizes the common, universal and reciprocal norms and rules to coordinate specific policy areas within regional multilateral settings. At present, regional multilateral cooperation has gone far beyond trade and become a multidimensional mechanism encompassing economic, political, security and cultural aspects. Building on the existing literature, the changing balance of global power is identified as one of the main factors explaining the emergence of regional multilateralism.
From a neorealist perspective, international institutions are often viewed as means of statecraft of powerful states and play a vital role in shaping a hierarchical power structure in the international system. For example, the Bretton Woods institutions have great significance in consolidating US hegemonic status and global influence. However, regional multilateral institutions have different implications for a rising power and for an existing hegemon, since they can either be used to increase the power of the former at the expense of the latter or be used to socialize the former into the latter’s preferred regime and mechanism. Three neorealist assumptions provide explanations to the rationale of China’s growing engagement in regional multilateral institutions: bargaining power, institutional balancing and counter-containment. The first argument suggests that regional multilateral settings enable China to take advantage of asymmetric power and raise its bargaining power over other regional and international actors, advancing its interests. The second argument asserts that China has incentives to form a balancing coalition through regional multilateral institutions to counter the perceived threats. The third argument finds that promoting regional multilateral cooperation can be a strategic maneuver to frustrate the US containment of China and enhance Beijing’s position in the power competition.
Neoliberalism argues that states pursue absolute gains rather than relative gains to other states and the international institutions facilitating cooperation and compromise between states can produce absolute gains for all their members. Neoliberal institutionalism assumes that states advance their overall interests with a commitment to strengthen cooperation within international institutions or regimes, since those institutions or regimes can not only reduce costs, form preferences and monitor processes, but also overcome collective action problem, facilitate problem-solution and achieve goals. Accordingly, while regional multilateral cooperation helps enhance strategic interdependence among the states and reshape the balance of power at regional and global levels, regional multilateral initiatives can be used strategically and tactically as a vehicle of soft balancing against a potential or existing hegemon.
While neorealists and neoliberalists underline ‘war and power’ and ‘interest and cooperation’ respectively, constructivists take into consideration two key elements shaping the international order: identity and norm. Constructivist scholars have argued that creating political identity and promoting certain ‘normative values’ seem to be of primary importance for the states to establish regional multilateral regimes and institutions. The interaction between actors, states or institutions helps create, promote and justify political identities which legitimize the power of those actors, states and institutions in the existing international system. International cooperation amongst and between actors and states also promotes international norms as international institutions or regimes possess a set of rules, processes and principles to facilitate the convergence of interest, objective and action. Accordingly, we contend that the interaction between Beijing and other Eurasian actors within the BRI helps to promote alternative ideas and norms, build Beijing’s soft and normative power and enhance the legitimacy of its rising power in the international society.
China’s Strategy Towards Eurasia and the BRI
During his state visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed establishing the BRI, including the land-based and the sea-based Silk Roads, to promote regional connectivity and multilateral cooperation. The land routes start in China’s Central and Western regions, pass through Central Asia, West Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and end in Western Europe. The maritime routes connect China’s coastal regions and Europe through the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea. The BRI involves 65 countries across Asia, Europe and Africa, and represents 70% of the world’s population and more than 40% of the world’s GDP. The Initiative offers not only a multilateral mechanism to enhance economic, political and cultural ties between China and other Eurasian countries, but also a venue to strengthen cooperation with the existing regional multilateral groups such as the SCO, ASEAN, European Union, Asia-Europe Meeting, Eurasian Economic Union, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The BRI sets up an ambitious agenda to deepen multilateral cooperation across the Eurasian continent and promote prosperity and development of all countries along the BRI. According to a statement released by the National Development and Reform Commission, the BRI will enhance regional multilateral cooperation on five pillars: ‘(i) strengthen policy dialogue; (iii) strengthen trade facilitation; (iv) strengthen financial cooperation; (v) strengthen people-to-people exchanges’. Along with the BRI, China created the AIIB and the Silk Road Fund to provide financial support to the BRI projects. In May 2017, Beijing formalized the BRI by hosting the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing that resulted in a large number of cooperation agreements signed by more than 50 countries. China’s efforts to promote multilateral cooperation through the BRI are motivated by a desire to advance its geoeconomic, geopolitical and geostrategic interests in Eurasia and beyond.
China’s Geoeconomic Interests
The BRI is strongly driven by geoeconomic factors. First, the Western Development Strategy, which was enacted in 1999 to accelerate economic development in China’s western regions, is given a priority by Chinese leaders. Poor infrastructure, inadequate investment and development imbalance have not only impeded economic development but also posed a threat to political stability in China’s western regions. Second, China’s economic growth has suffered a slowdown since 2012 and unprecedentedly declined to 6.7% in 2016, recording a historic low level in the past 25 years. In this respect, the problem of how to sustain stable economic growth is placed at the top of Chinese policymakers’ agenda. In November 2013, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided to build a more open economic system by deepening market integration and developing a new trade strategy, and promote multilateral cooperation by constructing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road.
Through the BRI, China seeks to establish closer economic ties between its western regions and Central Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia by developing infrastructure, promoting trade and enhancing interconnectivity. China has proposed to set up seven economic corridors along the BRI: China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor; New Eurasian Land Bridge; China-Central and West Asia Economic Corridor; China-Indo-China Peninsula Economic Corridor; China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor; and China-India-Nepal Economic Corridor. This not only creates huge investment opportunities for Chinese firms and tackles China’s industrial overcapacity, but also stimulates development of China’s western regions and revives its sluggish economy. Until May 2017, a total of 1,676 infrastructure projects involving highway, high-speed rail, electricity grid, port facilities, and gas and oil pipelines have been contracted to consolidate regional connectivity, which is clearly a geoeconomic imperative.
With the BRI, China also intends to forge a stronger Eurasian linkage between Asia and Europe, two of the world’s most dynamic markets. As of May 2017, the Eurasian rail network has connected 28 Chinese cities directly with 29 cities in 11 European countries. Meanwhile, China also proposed establishing a land-sea express route linking the port of Piraeus, one of the largest container ports in Europe and a gateway between the Middle East, the Balkans, European markets and Xinjiang. That enables Beijing not only to increase access to regional markets, promote Renminbi internationalization, diminish excessive foreign reserves and diversify energy suppliers and routes, but also to translate its growing economic power into political power.
China’s Geopolitical Interests
In 1904, the British geographer Halford Mackinder wrote a paper on ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, arguing that the country ruling the heartland of Eurasia would dominate the world. Along the same lines, the American geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:
… How America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates ‘Eurasia’ would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over ‘Eurasia’ would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 percent of the world’s people live in ‘Eurasia’, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. ‘Eurasia’ accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.
China, one of the two Eurasian great powers (namely China and Russia), not only has a stake in Eurasia but also possesses great advantage to win friends, build power and expand influence across the continent. As an integral part of China’s peripheral strategy, the regional multilateral mechanism serves as a vital diplomatic tool for Beijing not merely to ensure access to resources and markets but also to advance its key geopolitical objectives. By enhancing regional multilateral cooperation within the ASEAN Plus Three and SCO, Beijing has established its prominent role in East Asia and Central Asia. The BRI allows Beijing to further expand its influence in other parts of Eurasia such as South Asia, West Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Given China’s historic role in Eurasia, the fundamental purpose of rebuilding the ancient Silk Road through the BRI is to reaffirm its geopolitical interests in the Eurasian space, revive the ‘Moment of Glory’ of Chinese civilization and regain its great power status.
The BRI is vital to advance China’s geopolitical interests in three aspects: energy security; geopolitical influence; and maritime interests. First, since China is heavily dependent on energy imports from the Persian Gulf, the New Eurasian Land Bridge and China-Central and West Asia Economic Corridor allow it to forge stronger energy ties with Russia and Central Asian states and reduce its reliance on energy imports from the Persian Gulf. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor will facilitate China’s energy imports from the Persian Gulf and Africa via gas and oil pipelines and reduce its dependence on the Malacca Strait where the US can exert great influence. Second, the Land Silk Road helps expand Beijing’s geopolitical influence across the continent. Regional connectivity and multilateral cooperation that help enhance asymmetric interdependence enable Beijing not only to leverage its power and influence over other Eurasian partners to its strategic interests, but also to broaden its strategic hinterland and geopolitical space. Third, the Maritime Silk Road helps Beijing to build its maritime power and expand influence in the Indian Ocean for improving maritime security and advancing its maritime interests. For example, China’s heavy investment in Hambantota Port (Sri Lanka), Gwadar Port (Pakistan) and Kyaukpyu port (Myanmar) allows Beijing to reinforce its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, ensure the security of its trade and energy routes, and foster its role as a maritime power.
China’s Geostrategic Interests
The BRI is also shaped by rising geostrategic competition in the Asia-Pacific. Traditionally, China regarded East Asia as its primary geopolitical focus and sought to build its power and influence in the region. When Beijing’s growing economic and military power was perceived as a challenge to American preponderance, Washington announced a ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy to reaffirm its strategic interests in Asia and contain China’s rising influence. Washington sought to build a ‘C-shaped ring of encirclement’ around China by linking the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, Malacca Strait and Indian Ocean for limiting China’s influence in the first island chain and constraining China’s expansion into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Washington also set an aggressive economic agenda to counter China’s rising economic power through the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has however been abandoned by US President Trump. In this context, the BRI can be seen as a ‘Pivot to Europe’ strategy to counterbalance the US’s ‘Pivot to Asia’, breaking US containment of China and undermining its dominance. Wang Jisi, a prominent International Relations scholar at Peking University, argued that the BRI is not merely a ‘Marching West’ strategy to advance China’s geostrategic interests in Eurasia, but also a geostrategic rebalance to the US’s ‘Pivot to Asia’.
The BRI illustrates a profound shift in Chinese foreign policy from ‘Keeping a low profile’ to ‘Striving for achievement’. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Keeping a low profile’ was a basic principle guiding Chinese foreign policy and played a crucial role in fostering a favorable international environment for China’s modernization process. Some Chinese scholars argue that such a strategy has become outdated when Washington’s containment policy has not only endangered China’s security environment but also limited China’s ability to project power in its periphery. In particular, the decline of American power provided an opportunity for China to play a greater role in global affairs. After Xi Jinping took power, Beijing adopted a more assertive foreign policy to advance its regional and global interests. Thus, the BRI is strongly driven by three factors: first, China makes use of the BRI as a vehicle of soft balancing to undermine American power by establishing asymmetric interdependence, enhancing strategic reassurance over its Eurasian partners, and deterring the formation of any anti-China coalition and ‘anyone but China’ club. Second, China seeks to promote soft power and build its role as a normative power, increasing the legitimacy of its rising power. Third, China intends to reshape global governance and transform the existing international system in a way that reflects its values, interests and status.
Soft Balancing Against the US
Soft balancing theorists point out that secondary power may adopt a soft balancing strategy to counter the perceived threats from the hegemon through economic, political, diplomatic and institutional means, since the traditional hard balancing is too costly and risky. As regional multilateral regimes help overcome collective action problems and facilitate cooperation towards common interests and objectives, secondary powers have a strong incentive to initiate, utilize or dominate regional multilateral institutions and cooperation to counter coercion and threat from a superior power. This especially applies to Sino-US competition. With limited military capabilities, it would be quite unwise for Beijing to undertake traditional hard balancing against the American hegemony. Accordingly, China is strongly motivated to pursue a soft balancing strategy against the US through institutional methods.
While China’s rise is seen as a challenge to American dominance in the Asia-Pacific, Washington’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy is a direct response to China’s growing role. The TPP and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that don’t include Beijing can be seen as an updated version of US strategic containment of China, since Washington attempts to build an ‘anyone but China’ club by forging Transatlantic and Transpacific links to interconnect East Asia, North America and the European Union. As China’s economy is heavily dependent on Asian, European and American markets, the US’s intention to reshape the global trading regime through the TPP and the TTIP is to limit China’s access to those markets, ‘choke’ its economic growth, undermine Beijing’s ability to expand its influence regionally and globally, and constrain its continued rise. According to Richard Baldwin, a country or region that has been excluded from a preferential agreement is strongly motivated to join a similar bloc or build a new bloc to counterbalance the negative effect of being excluded. Therefore, the BRI is considered a response to Washington’s attempt to create new trading blocs that exclude China.
The BRI that goes far beyond a pure trade agenda can be seen as a bold geoeconomic initiative to advance Beijing’s geopolitical and geostrategic goals. Thus, this initiative keeps its relevance even if Trump decided to withdraw from the TPP. As regional multilateral cooperation provides a new approach to establish an interests-based coalition between China and other Eurasian partners, the BRI can serve as a vehicle of soft balancing for Beijing to counterbalance American preponderance without provoking it directly. The logic of undertaking a strategy of soft balancing against the US through the BRI lies in establishing strategic interdependence, reassuring Eurasian partners of the peaceful intention of China’s rising power, deterring the formation of any form of anti-China coalition or ‘anyone but China’ club.
China’s increasing economic power is the key to understand how the BRI is used by Beijing as a means of soft balancing against the US. Given the size and dynamism of the Chinese economy, promoting regional economic cooperation and integration within the BRI will enhance asymmetric economic interdependence between Beijing and other Eurasian countries, making those countries much more dependent on Beijing economically than vice versa. Such asymmetric economic interdependence enables Beijing to translate its economic power into political power, leverage its influence over those Eurasian countries to its strategic interests, and undermine the US dominance in Eurasia and beyond.
Figure 1 shows how China’s trade volume with 65 BRI countries has risen much more dramatically than the US’s trade volume with them. The share of China’s trade with the BRI countries in its total trade jumped sharply from 19% to 26% between 2005 and 2014, whereas the share of the US’s trade with those countries in its total trade only experienced a small increase from 13% to 15%. In the meanwhile, China has replaced the US as the world’s largest trading nation in 2012 and almost become the largest trading partner of all the BRI countries. The picture is quite similar when looking at Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). According to the World Investment Report 2016 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), China became the world’s second largest investor in 2015. China’s outward FDI into the BRI countries has constantly risen from only 9.08 billion in 2006 to 109.77 billion in 2015, constituting 75% of its total outward FDI for that year. After the launching of the BRI, China’s outward FDI into the BRI countries has increased from 75.94 billion in 2013 to 109.77 billion in 2015 while its outward FDI into the rest of the world almost remained unchanged during the same period.
Despite its repeated commitment to peaceful rise, China’s growing power and influence has generated a great deal of mistrust, anxiety and fear in the region. Those who perceive China’s rise as a threat are more likely to shape a balancing coalition or ‘anyone but China’ club to contain China’s expanding influence through isolation, marginalization and boycotting. In this context, Beijing’s efforts to enhance regional multilateral cooperation within the BRI can not only reassure Eurasian countries of the peaceful nature of its rising power but also deter those countries to form an anti-China coalition or join the US-led alliance against China. Therefore, the BRI provides a pragmatic way for China to reassure its partners, deter its rivals, and undermine the US power and influence without stirring up a war.
The South China Sea issue offers a good example of how the BRI serves as a means of soft balancing for China to undermine US power and influence. In July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) issued a ruling in favor of a US-backed Philippine challenge to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea despite strong opposition from Beijing. Meanwhile, Washington’s Asian and European allies who have close economic ties with Beijing are unwilling to endorse the PCA ruling. For example, the EU failed to issue a timely statement on the ruling as Athens and Budapest blocked such a EU statement criticizing Beijing. These two countries’ growing dependence on Chinese investment and their eagerness to play a pivotal role in the BRI caused them reluctantly to annoy Beijing. Although the EU finally reached a common position after three days of difficult negotiation, Brussels only issued a vague and neutral statement acknowledging the PCA ruling without direct reference to Beijing. Similarly, ASEAN failed to issue a joint statement upholding the PCA ruling as the stances of ten ASEAN countries were deeply divided: (1) Laos and Cambodia opposed the ruling; (2) Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia (as one of claimants), Brunei (as one of claimants), Indonesia (as one of claimants) and Singapore (as the US’s ally) maintained a neutral position; (3) the Philippines and Vietnam supported the ruling. After Rodrigo Duterte took power, the Philippines’ stance on the South China Sea disputes experienced a stunning reversal. While Manila desires to gain Chinese investment and aid and join the Maritime Silk Road for improving infrastructures and boosting growth, Duterte not only decided to suspend the PCA ruling but also agreed to resolve disputes through a bilateral dialogue, accommodating Beijing’s strategic interests at the expense of Washington.
Building Soft and Normative Power
As China’s rapid economic growth has facilitated a dramatic increase in its military might and international security presence, its growing hard power has fueled the perceptions of the ‘China Threat’ that make it difficult to expand its influence regionally and globally. Chinese policymakers realized that China’s rise to great power status relies not only on formidable hard power but also on soft power. Thus, Beijing is keen to promote its soft power through various means, including not only culture and public diplomacy but also economic and diplomatic levers such as aid, investment and participation in or creation of regional multilateral organizations and institutions. Enhancing soft power through regional multilateral cooperation does not merely assist Beijing in increasing its global image and international prestige as a peaceful, benign and responsible power, but also helps persuade others to accept and recognize its rising power status in the international community, facilitating its peaceful rise.
Jay Jackson defined normative power as the potential influence over others’ activity and behavior through the power of norms and stressed the ‘domain and range‘ of legitimate behavior. While power shifts often prompt normative transformation in the international system, China, as a rising power, has a strong motive to promote political identity and legitimacy of its rising power and build its role as a normative power through the promotion of alternative ideas, rules and norms in international fora. More importantly, Beijing’s efforts to construct its identity as a normative power will increase its normative authority and legitimacy at the expense of Washington and consolidate its role as a great power in the international system.
Regional multilateral initiatives such as the BRI are essential to produce common rules, promote alternative norms and socialize ideas of interactive cooperation for bolstering Beijing’s soft power and building its role as a normative power. In November 2014, at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of building the BRI in the following terms:
We should seek other countries’ understanding of and support for the Chinese dream, which is about peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcomes. What we pursue is the wellbeing of both the Chinese people and the people of all other countries … We should make more friends while abiding by the principle of non-alignment and build a global network of partnership. We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world.
Since the end of World War II, the principle of Westphalian sovereignty has become the cornerstone of contemporary international relations and the liberal international order. However, the norms of Westphalian sovereignty were eroded by the global competition between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. These norms have also been undermined in the post-Cold War era when Washington sought to create an American-led liberal hegemonic order, and have undergone a normative shift in international relations from a Westphalian to a post-Westphalian model. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence that China initiated together with India and Myanmar in 1954 are not only a basic norm governing China’s foreign policy and international relations, but also a major source of China’s normative power. At the 60th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that:
These five principles, as an integrated, interconnected, and indivisible concept, capture the essence of today’s international relations, and can apply to relations among all countries regardless of their social system, stage of development or size. Principles have effectively upheld the rights and interests of the developing world and have played a positive role in building a more equitable and rational international political and economic order.
Promoting the Five Principles of Peaceful coexistence is not only an effort to oppose any imposition of norms and values on others and interference in other countries’ domestic affairs, but also an attempt to enhance China’s role as a normative power that champions an international order based on the concept of Westphalian sovereignty and peaceful coexistence. Establishing and enhancing regional multilateral cooperation within the BRI is part of Beijing’s efforts to diffuse those norms and ideas across the continent. The vision and action plan for the BRI upholds the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and adds:
The Initiative is harmonious and inclusive. It advocates tolerance among civilizations, respects the paths and modes of development chosen by different countries, and supports dialogues among different civilizations on the principles of seeking common ground while shelving differences and drawing on each other’s strengths, so that all countries can coexist in peace for common prosperity.
More recently, in his speech at the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, Xi Jinping underlined the importance of upholding the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in implementing the BRI:
China will enhance friendship and cooperation with all countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence. We are ready to share practices of development with other countries, but we have no intention to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, export our own social system and model of development, or impose our own will on others. In pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative, we will not resort to outdated geopolitical maneuvering. What we hope to achieve is a new model of win-win cooperation. We have no intention to form a small group detrimental to stability, what we hope to create is a big family of harmonious co-existence.
The BRI provides Beijing with great opportunities to promote those norms among countries and regions along the Silk Road. In a joint statement issued by Chinese and Serbian leaders in June 2016, the two countries not only agreed to promote regional connectivity between China and Central and Eastern European countries (CEEs) within the BRI, but also ‘pledged to respect and support each other in choosing development paths and policies according to their national conditions, and in issues of core interests and common concern, based on the principles of mutual respect, equality and non-interference in internal affairs’. One week later, at a trilateral meeting of leaders of China, Russia and Mongolia in Tashkent, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj agreed to boost trilateral cooperation within the BRI and construct the China-Russia-Mongolia Economic Corridor. And Putin said: ‘Russia, China and Mongolia are friendly neighbors based on equality, respect and mutual benefit’ that certainly conforms to the spirit of the Five Principles. Also during Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to Beijing in August 2016, the two leaders issued a joint statement saying that the two sides agreed to push forward China-Myanmar ‘Paukphaw’ friendship, China-Myanmar comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor within the BRI on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.
In line with the Five Principles, China also proposed new ideas and concepts such as Peaceful Rise, Peaceful Development, Harmonious World and Community of Common Destiny to enhance its soft power. The concepts of peaceful rise and peaceful development were first proposed by Chinese scholar Zheng Bijian and then reiterated by Chinese President Hu Jintao to rebut against the ‘China Threat’ theory. Hu Jintao also proposed the idea of building a harmonious world to enhance Beijing’s normative narrative and its role as a peaceful power. Along with the BRI, Xi Jinping proposed the concept of a community of common destiny, underlining that ‘the world has increasingly grown into a community where one’s destiny is interwoven with that of another’ and China is working to promote common development and prosperity of all countries towards building a community of shared interests, destiny and responsibility. It helps Beijing to build its soft and normative power and strengthen its role as a responsible global power.
Reshaping Global Governance
Robert Gilpin argues that ‘as its relative power increases, a rising state attempts to change the rules governing the system’. Indeed, while China grows more powerful, the country becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo. As a result, Beijing seeks to reshape global governance and transform the existing international system in a way that reflects its values, interests and status. Many realist scholars believe that the Sino-US power competition will inevitably lead to a war and thus China cannot rise peacefully. This article will challenge this viewpoint by illustrating how China attempts to transform the US-dominated global system and promote its international status in a peaceful way, which is embedded in regional multilateralism. Randall Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu contend that a peer competitor that does not possess the military capabilities to directly challenge the US hegemony through hard balancing seeks to create a new international order by shaping a revisionist counter-hegemonic coalition and delegitimizing the hegemon’s global authority. Therefore, China has a strong motive to forge an interest-based coalition to reshape the global governance system by either joining existing multilateral institutions or initiating new multilateral institutions.
Since the end of World War II, the Western-dominated global multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, have played a central role in global governance. However, the Bretton Woods system has become increasingly problematic when the balance of global economic power is shifting from established powers to emerging powers. The creation of the G-20 after the 2008 global financial crisis not only symbolized a relative decline of US global economic power, but also reflected a growing consensus on reshaping the existing global governance system. China and other emerging powers have a strong desire to promote the fundamental transformation of the US-dominated global system towards a more inclusive and equitable international order. At a work conference on foreign affairs in November 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping said:
We should strengthen unity and cooperation with other developing countries and closely integrate our own development with the common development of other developing countries. We should advance multilateral diplomacy, work to reform the international system and global governance, and increase the representation and say of China and other developing countries.
Given that China is still too weak to challenge the US’s global leadership alone, the BRI spanning 65 countries across Asia, Europe and Africa allows Beijing to form a bargaining coalition and shape a ‘community of shared interests’ towards reshaping the global governance system. As an integral part of the BRI, the AIIB has offered a good example of how China seeks to reshape global financial governance through the creation of new multilateral institutions. In 2013, China announced plans to launch the AIIB in order to meet enormous investment demand in BRI infrastructure projects, making it the first developing country seeking to create a multilateral financial institution. While Washington heavily lobbied its allies not to join the bank, George Osborne, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, surprisingly announced in March 2015 that the UK would join the AIIB. That astonished the whole world including Washington and triggered a domino effect. When the AIIB started operations in January 2016, the bank had 57 founding members, including Washington’s closest allies such as the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Israel and South Korea. After only six months, Canada, as the US’s closest ally, also announced its decision to join the AIIB. Currently, the AIIB has expanded its membership to 80 and become the world’s third largest multilateral financial institution after the IMF and the World Bank.
For a very long time, Western countries have dominated the agenda-setting, veto authority and discourse in global financial institutions. Beijing persistently pushed for quota reforms of the IMF and the World Bank giving China and other emerging economies more voting power to better reflect the changes in global economic power, but failed. Soon after the launching of the AIIB, everything began to change. In December 2015, the IMF conceded to include the Renminbi as the fifth currency in its Special Drawing Rights basket. Two weeks later, the US congress finally approved the IMF quota reform after five years of blocking. As a result, China’s voting power in the IMF increased from 2.98% in 2006 to 6.11% in 2016 and ranked in third place after the US (16.53%) and Japan (6.16%). Meanwhile, China’s voting power in the World Bank also increased from 2.77% to 4.64% in 2016 and ranked in third place after the US (16.63%) and Japan (7.19%). The AIIB is not merely a response to the poor governance of global financial institutions, but also a catalyst for shaping a new global financial order, enabling Beijing to play a greater role in the global financial system.
The AIIB is the first multilateral financial institution created and ruled by emerging and developing countries. Although the environmental and social framework of the AIIB is inspired by the best practices of multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, there exists a difference in norms and rules between them. At the 2015 China Development Forum in Beijing, China’s Finance Minister Lou Jiwei commented on the governance and operational rules of AIIB, saying that ‘the AIIB is a multilateral institution led by developing countries. We need to consider their needs and sometimes the West puts forwards some rules that we don’t think are optimal’. Indeed, the Western-dominated multilateral financial institutions have long been criticized for imposing additional conditions such as privatization and liberalization on loans to developing countries. The China-led AIIB not only provides an alternative to the existing Western-dominated multilateral institutions, but also serves as a promising instrument to shape a bargaining coalition to transform the existing global governance system and boost Beijing’s global role from rule-taker to rule-maker.
While Obama stressed the importance of the TPP by stating: ‘we can’t let countries like China write the rules of the global economy’, China is playing a key role in shaping a new international economic order. As a rule-taker, China has benefited enormously from the existing international order and its rules and norms. When China’s interests become global, China desires to play a greater role in global governance. As the US-dominated global system has no space left for any emerging power which might challenge its hegemonic status, it presents Beijing with a real dilemma on how to advance its global interests, transform the existing international system and establish its role as a global rule-maker. Establishing the BRI and AIIB is part of Beijing’s efforts not only to reshape global governance and strengthen its global leadership role, but also to delegitimize the US-dominated system and create a fairer and more inclusive international order. Thus, China is neither a pure status quo power nor a revisionist power, since Beijing, as the largest beneficiary of the existing international order, has no intentions or capabilities to replace the US hegemonic position and overthrow the existing order. Instead, China struggles for a revision of the US-established international order through the transformation of the global governance system, achieving its peaceful rise to great power status.
Conclusion: Big Ideas, Great Opportunities, and Potential Challenges
China’s approach towards the BRI is strongly motivated by a multifaceted grand strategy in search of security, influence and status. As regional multilateral cooperation provides a peaceful way to transform the existing international system and avoid a classic ‘Thucydides Trap’, the BRI serves as a strategic maneuver for Beijing to advance its foreign policy goals. First, the BRI is strategically and tactically used by Beijing as a vehicle of soft balancing against the US, as regional multilateral cooperation allows Beijing to establish asymmetric interdependence over other Eurasian partners, to reassure those partners of the peaceful nature of its rising power and to deter the formation of any anti-China coalition or ‘anyone but China’ club. Second, China seeks to promote alternative ideas and norms and build its role as a normative power through the BRI for enhancing the legitimacy of its rising power at the expense of US normative authority and legitimacy. Third, China attempts to form a bargaining coalition through the BRI and AIIB for reshaping the global governance system and enhancing its global leadership role in the existing international order.
Although the BRI will significantly strengthen China’s role on the world stage, this ambitious initiative faces potential challenges including geopolitical rivalry, security threats, territorial disputes and political risks. First, the geopolitical rivalry arising from China’s expanding global role may pose a potential challenge to the BRI. New Delhi’s negative position towards the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and its boycott of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation illustrates this point. Second, potential security threats might impair regional connectivity and cooperation in the Eurasian space as the BRI covers unstable regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia. Third, territorial disputes, especially in the South China Sea, could undermine Beijing’s efforts to promote regional multilateral cooperation among the countries along the BRI. As the South China Sea is at the core of the Maritime Silk Road, overlapping sovereignty claims over the disputed islands and waters might pose a great obstacle to multilateral cooperation between China and other Asian countries. Fourth, political turbulence in the conflicted and failed states along the BRI brings political risks and uncertainty to the implementation of the BRI projects.
While the world order is undergoing a dramatic change, the recent Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, attended by more than 1,500 representatives from over 130 countries and 70 international organizations, demonstrates Beijing’s ambition for a more prominent global leadership role. As the Trump Administration’s anti-globalization sentiment and ‘America first’ doctrine have raised doubts about the US’s leadership role in the liberal economic order, the BRI provides the impetus for a new wave of globalization that enables China to play a greater global role in the new international economic order. The BRI that aims to promote the common development and prosperity of all the countries not only manifests China’s commitment to a peaceful rise, but also presents a Chinese vision for a new world order based on harmonious and peaceful coexistence.