The Railroad Economic Belt: Grand strategy, economic statecraft, and a new type of international relations
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120940938 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Chinese foreign policy: A Xi change? |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120940938
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2021, Vol. 23(2) 262 –279
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120940938
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The Railroad Economic Belt:
Grand strategy, economic
statecraft, and a new type of
international relations
Karl Yan
Abstract
China’s grand strategy is evolving towards greater activism under Xi Jinping – from ‘keeping a low
profile’ to ‘striving for achievement’. New initiatives such as forging ‘a new type of international
relations’, ‘a community with a shared future for mankind’, and the Belt and Road Initiative have
become marked features of the ‘Xi-change’ in China’s grand strategy. From an economic statecraft
perspective, this article hypothesises that the Xi-change led to a power centralisation in the
implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Railroad Economic Belt. To support its
geopolitical and geoeconomic objectives, the Chinese state has replicated the domestic state-
industrial complex. In the context of the Jakarta–Bandung High-speed Rail Corridor, the domestic
roles of the National Development and Reform Commission and the China Railway Corporation
have been internationalised to ensure the globalisation of China’s high-speed rail industry could be
conducted in a concerted and choreographed fashion.
Keywords
a new type of international relations, Belt and Road Initiative, China, economic statecraft, high-
speed rail export
Introduction
The call for a healthy external environment has been the objective of Chinese foreign
policy since the 1970s. While Chinese leaders in the past had been committed to ‘keeping
a low profile’ (韬光养晦 in Chinese), the Xi Jinping-led Party-state adopted a new grand
strategy of ‘striving for achievement’ (奋发有为in Chinese). This Xi-change called for
the building of a ‘new type of international relations’ (新型国际关系 in Chinese) and ‘a
community with a shared future for mankind’ (人类命运共同体 in Chinese). In Xi’s
report to the 19th National Party Congress, those two foreign policy goals were enshrined
as the historical missions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the same speech, Xi
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Corresponding author:
Karl Yan, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada.
Email: karl.yan@mail.utoronto.ca
940938BPI0010.1177/1369148120940938The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsYan
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Yan 263
(2017) also announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a national strategy and the
‘coordination of the domestic and international situations’ (统筹国内国际两个大局 in
Chinese, or the ‘two coordinations’ in short) as an important way to achieve those inter-
national objectives.
In 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MOFA), and the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) jointly published the
Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century
Maritime Silk Road. The document explained the purpose of the BRI as the promotion of
win-win co-operation, common development, and prosperity. To achieve those lofty
goals, Xi Jinping told his comrades at the 19th National Party Congress that China must
‘give equal emphasis to “bringing in” and “going global” . . . [and] . . . make new ground
in opening China further’ (Xi, 2017). Prior to Xi’s (2017) speech, the Chinese state had
already begun to use its powers to create opportunities for its centrally owned state enter-
prises (SOEs) to penetrate foreign markets. By December 2014, China had recentralised
the export of its high-speed rail (HSR) industry by internationalising the domestic coor-
dinating capacities of the NDRC and the China Railway Corporation (CRC). The choreo-
graphing of HSR export, along with the China Railway Express and other overseas
railway projects, culminated in the coining of the Railroad Economic Belt (REB).1
This article tries to answer the following analytical questions. First, why did the
Chinese state decide to recentralise the export of China’s HSR industry, and who were the
main drivers behind this round of recentralisation? The absence of a central coordinating
body between 2011 and 2014 allowed SOEs in the railway non-transport sector to export
China’s HSR industry in a decentralised manner. Second, what was the new structure of
China’s HSR export? And third, how was the new structure put in motion? This article
adopts the economic statecraft perspective to answer those questions.
The Jakarta–Bandung HSR project was chosen to be the case study, among other simi-
lar cases. It was the flagship project as Indonesia became the first country to adopt all
aspects of the ‘China Standard’. Despite China’s global reach in the export of its HSR
industry, the same export structure has been applied consistently, including the Bangkok–
Nong Khai project and the Vientiane–Boten project. Therefore, selecting this flagship
project has the potential to generalise the roles, responsibilities, and actions of major
stakeholders across China’s overseas HSR projects. This choice fits with the methodo-
logical orientation of matching politics on the ground with theories of economic
statecraft.
In addition to primary and secondary sources, 14 interviewees were recruited through
the snowball method during my fieldwork in China, Japan, and Indonesia between 2017
and 2019. Some of them served in Indonesian and Japanese government agencies, and
Chinese, Indonesian, and Japanese railway operators and research institutes. Most of the
interviewees were directly involved in the development and export of HSR in those three
countries. Interviews are coded throughout the text. For example, SN22TF18 indicates an
interview conducted with TF on 22 November 2018.
There have been several studies on the Jakarta–Bandung project, as scholars have
highlighted the significance of railroads from the perspectives of geopolitics and hegem-
ony. For example, Wu and Chong (2018) examined the implications of ‘developmental
railpolitics’ and concluded that the Jakarta–Bandung project aimed to improve Sino-
Indonesian economic ties. Similarly, Yu (2017) argued that Southeast Asia served as an
anchor for the implementation of the BRI. Scholars also situated the project in the broader
context of Sino-Japanese competition in Southeast Asia. Although such competition
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