Gold at the end of the Rainbow? The BRI and the Middle East
| Author | Anoushiravan Ehteshami |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12552 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
Gold at the end of the Rainbow? The BRI and
the Middle East
Anoushiravan Ehteshami
Durham University
Abstract
In 2013 China embarked on a new path of engagement with its Asian neighbours, a process which just three years later
resulted in Asia’s most daring and ambitious macro-economic undertaking –an ‘initiative’now known as China’s Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI has the potential to transform Asia’s political economy and the level of political, institutional and
financial support from Beijing is underlining the importance of this major initiative to the world’s fast-emerging largest econ-
omy. The success of the BRI will place China at the heart of the international system and help it build strong organic networks
across Asia, and into Europe and East Africa. But it is in the outlying regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East that the
BRI’s metal will be tested, as indeed China’s resilience as a major power. If China is able to overcome the geopolitical, cultural,
institutional and socio-economic barriers of these Asian regions then it will have made some headway towards creating Asia’s
first international community, arguably an ‘Asian international society’.
Policy Implications
•China’s BRI is going to create new conditions for Asian regionalism.
•The BRI will affect the balance of power in the Middle East as it will likely enhance uneven development of the Middle
East and Central Asia.
•If China is able to deliver on its lofty aims then it will have made headway in creating Asia’sfirst ‘Asian international
society’, unique outside of the Western world.
•BRI will generate counter-forces as it traverses Asia’s subregions, and nowhere more so than in South Asia, where both
Middle East countries and China are actively engaged in developing security and economic links.
China and the BRI
China’s‘New Silk Road’and ‘Maritime Silk Road’concepts,
launched in 2013, offered the opportunity to create new
transport hubs across the countries of Southeast, Central
Asia, the Middle East. What started out as a tentative
attempt to extend China’s economic relations with its Asian
hinterland had ballooned, just two years later, into a major
national priority of the People’s Republic to change the
political economy of Eurasia. China now has developed the
vision, narrative, as well as the tools for a substantial global
presence (Horesh, 2017). Thus, in May 2017 President Xi Jin-
ping hosted the ‘Silk Road Summit for International Cooper-
ation’, and in front of dozens of heads of state in Beijing he
underlined China’s resolve to proceed with the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI). With $1 trillion already allocated and
‘several more trillion [to] follow in the coming decade’,no
doubt has been left regarding the financial viability of the
BRI and Chinese commitment to it (Cafiero, and Wagner,
2017). Making it ‘a priority’and ensuring its inclusion in the
Party’s amended constitution at the 19th Congress of the
Communist Party of China in October 2017, the Chinese
leadership has left little doubt as to the centrality of this ini-
tiative to its redefining of China’s global role (Panda, 2017).
The construction of the transport routes, ports and other
infrastructural facilities, across over 65 sovereign countries,
offers the promise of a new Eurasian order in which China
provides the hub and its Silk Road partners the spokes of
an integrated post-Western economic order. The BRI agenda
is multifaceted; it is political (designed to enhance the legiti-
macy and valour of the Party at home –to build the ‘China
Dream’); it is economic (in not only aiming to spread eco-
nomic growth to Chinese western regions but also consoli-
dating China’s place at the centre of the global supply and
manufacturing networks); it is geostrategic (in transforming
China into Eurasia’s great power); and it is strategic (in creat-
ing interdependencies which not only give Chinese corpora-
tions a comparative advantage but also enable China to
broaden its soft power across Asia as it champions ‘shared
growth’and ‘common interest’. Just as the United States’
$13 billion ($132 billion in current dollars) Marshall Plan
shaped post-War Europe and with it the West, so China’s$1
trillion BRI will arguably reshape Eurasia and with it the
place of China in the world. To appreciate the true ambition
of this project, its full and successful implementation will
‘connect 65 countries that represent 55 per cent of the
world’s GDP, 70 per cent of global population, and 75 per
cent of known energy reserves’(Hong, 2016, p. 6). The
Global Policy (2018) 9:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12552 ©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 3 . September 2018 387
Research Article
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