Language, entanglement and the new Silk Roads
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891118762521 |
| Author | KM Fierke,Francisco Antonio-Alfonso |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2018, Vol. 3(3) 194–206
Language, entanglement
ª The Author(s) 2018
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and the new Silk Roads
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891118762521
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KM Fierke
School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, UK
Francisco Antonio-Alfonso
Arts Faculty Building, University of St Andrews, UK
Abstract
Observers have tended to place the Silk Road proposals in the context of ‘China’s rise’, and its
increasing influence and interests in Central, South and South-East Asia. From a realist perspective,
China, like any expanding state, poses a potential threat. From a liberal angle, it is expanding the
space for cooperation. Both models rely on an individualist ontology that highlights the interests of
individual states. The potential of the Silk Roads looks somewhat different if approached from the
perspective of a more relational ontology and a concept of entanglement. We draw on a few claims
from Alexander Wendt’s (2015) recent book as a framework for examining the emerging reality of
the new ‘Silk Roads’. What are the implications of this ontological shift for thinking about the
Chinese ‘Silk Road’ proposal? We develop three specific claims as part of a reflection on this
context: first, language use is a form of measurement that shapes and transforms reality; second,
language use is an expression of entanglement; and third, leaders have a large role in ‘collapsing
wave functions’ around specific potentials. While some of the themes that arise in this discussion
are compatible with other arguments about the role of language, the quantum angle provides a
more explicit point of departure for discussing the ‘physical’ dimensions of language use, the
multiple layers of meaning within which the OBOR is embedded and its relational ontology.
Keywords
entanglement, language, OBOR, Silk Road, Wendt
On 7 September 2013, at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, Chinese president Xi
Jinping proposed to build an ‘economic belt along the Silk Road’ (China Daily, 2013a). Later, on
2 October, in a speech to the Indonesian Parliament, he announced an effort to build ‘the Maritime
Corresponding author:
KM Fierke, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, The Scores, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 8SP, UK.
Email: kf30@st-andrews.ac.uk
Fierke and Antonio-Alfonso
195
Silk Road of the 21st century’ (China Daily, 2013b). Both projects have since acquired significant
political momentum. In May 2014, the city government of Fuzhou signed an agreement with the
China Africa Development Bank and the Fujian branch of the China Development Bank to jointly
set up a US$1.6 billion fund for a ‘Maritime Silk Road’ plan, for the purpose of building ports and
to boost maritime connectivity with South-East Asia and countries along the Indian Ocean (Shang-
hai Daily, 2014). In November, at the Beijing APEC summit, President Xi announced that China
would contribute US$40 billion to set up the Silk Road fund, which would be used to provide
investment and financial support to facilitate infrastructure and industrial and financial cooperation
(China.org, 2014). As of January 2015, US$100 billion had been authorized for the Asian Infra-
structure Investment Bank (AIIB), which now has 82 members (AIIB, 2018), to supply the capital
for infrastructure construction (People’s Daily, 2015). What has since been more formally named
the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (OBOR) will include a free trade zone to link coastal areas,
‘infrastructure construction’ in countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (Krishman,
2014) and high-speed rail negotiations with 28 nations, most along the ancient trade routes, with a
total length of track over 5000 km on the agenda.
Observers have tended to place the Silk Road proposals in the context of ‘China’s rise’, and its
increasing influence and interests in Central, South and South-East Asia. Many foreign analysts
have referred to the OBOR as ‘a comprehensive strategy’ or a ‘geopolitical and diplomatic
offensive’ (Pop, 2016). Realists have argued that China intends to use its robust infrastructure
programme to create overseas bases to threaten India’s perceived sphere of influence and increase
Chinese influence by challenging the regional order. For example, Kanwal Sibal (2014) argues that
the ultimate goal of the Chinese rhetoric of the Maritime Silk Road is to ‘create a strategic space
for itself in the western Pacific and then move into the Indian Ocean gradually’. Nicholas (2015)
found somewhat stronger evidence to support a liberal argument regarding the opportunities for
common development, multilateral growth and addressing the failures of current global and
regional institutions. Tiezzi (2014a, 2014b) puts a realist spin on the liberal economic perspective,
noting that even if China only envisions economic movement as its rationale for building the Silk
Roads, this by itself represents a strategic action, not least because investment can be translated
into a ‘potential weapon’. From a realist perspective, China, like any expanding state, poses a
potential threat. From a liberal angle, it is expanding the space for cooperation. Both models rely
on an individualist ontology that highlights the interests of individual states. Neither perspective
can shed light on the conceptual challenges that Chinese proposals present for world politics,
assuming instead that China either wants to cooperate (the liberal argument) or conquer (the realist
argument). Neither can accommodate the possibility that China’s rise may not only alter the
world’s distribution of power, but may also reconfigure the way that global politics work. In so
far as both liberalism and realism assume a world ‘out there’, fully formed, there is little recog-
nition of the conceptual underpinnings of different world orders. China’s new Silk Roads, as a
constitutive element of its rise as a world power, are not only a material phenomenon but part of a
conceptual reorganization that will impact on the norms, institutions and behaviour of diplomacy
(Callahan, 2016).
The potential of the Silk Roads looks somewhat different if approached from the perspective of
a more relational ontology and a concept of entanglement.1 Language, as an expression of entan-
glement, both enables and constrains precisely because of its relationality. While the notion of
entanglement and its implication might be unpacked from the perspective of quantum physics, or a
Buddhist or Daoist ontology,2 given space constraints we draw on a few claims from Alexander
Wendt’s book, Quantum Mind and Social Science, which provides a concise, if rather dense,
196
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 3(3)
formulation for a social science audience (Wendt, 2015). The book does not address the empirical
implications of a relational ontology, or its significance for the political context explored here.
What follows is an attempt to grapple with the significance of a small part of Wendt’s argument as
a framework for understanding the emerging reality of the new ‘Silk Roads’.
Wendt argues that the social sciences, and the dominant frameworks of International Relations,
whether realism, liberalism or constructivism, rely on assumptions of materiality, atomism,
mechanism, determinism and objectivism, which have their origins in classical physics. When
applied to the Chinese OBOR, this view, as expressed by realists, would see a great power
expanding its material and strategic interests, perhaps influenced by a mechanistic balance of
power, and a deterministic relationship between capability and success, all of which can be
assessed by an outside objective observer. Quantum physics expands the space within which the
materiality of classical physics is understood, thereby opening possibilities to resolve otherwise
intractable problems. Wendt’s approach to the relevance of quantum physics for the social sciences
highlights the entanglement of wave functions, language as an expression of entanglement, a
holistic universe, the possibility of non-local causation and a norm of indeterminism, all of which
provides a physical basis for mutual constitution that is otherwise untenable (Wendt, 2015).
What are the implications of this ontological shift for thinking about the Chinese ‘Silk Road’
proposal, and is this metaphor or reality? While doing justice to his complex argument would be
a very large task, in this short piece we develop three claims from the book as part of reflection
on a particular context: first, language use is a form of measurement that shapes and transforms
reality; second, language use is an expression of entanglement; and third, while leaders have a
large role in ‘collapsing wave functions’ around specific potentials, the realization of these
potentials is fundamentally dependent on practice on the ground. While some of the themes
that arise in this discussion are compatible with other arguments about the role of language, the
quantum angle provides a more explicit point of departure for discussing the ‘physical’ dimen-
sions of language use.
Language use is a form of measurement
While Xi Jinping’s reference to the ancient ‘Silk Roads’ can be understood as either metaphor or
analogy, given their link to an historic past, Wendt’s quantum argument rests on a claim that
language use transforms reality. As he states, ‘[i]n language, what brings about a concept’s
collapse from potential meaning into an actual one is a speech act, which may be...
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