10 ms·

China's Silk Road Illusions

82 points by cageface 9y ago

erikb 9y ago
TL;DR it's not like it was in the past. TL;DR it's not what they promise. But where is the news in this? I think the interesting facts are that (a) they still manage to influence countries with their plan (and might for instance gain more influence over Afganistan than both US and Russia have achieved), (b) they still manage to increase internal growth through their projects. Both are really good things for China. That you need to tell a story of historical values with such a big plan is normal and should be expected. Sadly the article doesn't discuss that and instead just focusses on showing the obvious. Also it vastly underestimates the middle east. There's a reason why there's so much fighting in this area. And it's not just oil.
- dualogy 9y ago
  > There's a reason why there's so much fighting in this area. And it's not just oil. Well, do share that non-oil reason you had in mind there!
  - fspeech 9y ago
    As GP said it is easy to underestimate the Middle East because of all the oil. Israel is obviously a high tech powerhouse. Iran alone has over 80 million people. Despite the tense relationship with the US, there are close to 10 thousand postgraduate Iranian students in the US, one of the largest after China and India. https://wenr.wes.org/2017/02/educating-iran-demographics-massification-and-missed-opportunities https://wenr.wes.org/2017/02/educating-iran-demographics-mas...
    - dualogy 9y ago
      True enough, doesn't explain his "there's another reason than the oil for the fighting" suggestion. Germany is also "a high-tech powerhouse and has over 80 million people".. =) Now readers are bound to come up with common tropes like "sectarian strife" or "tribal rivalry", but again.. he made it sound like there's a transdimensional portal hidden in the ME or something.. clearly had a non-obvious aspect in mind, that I wanted elaboration on. =)
      - fspeech 9y ago
        If you read the article, OP was obviously responding to the silly claim that "More likely, however, China’s dependence on trade, and particularly its interest in Middle East oil, may fall almost as fast as it has risen over the past thirty years." I think OP was just pointing out that there is more than oil in the Middle East.
- dang 9y ago
  > But where is the news in this? The existence of an interesting article is news enough.
  - nejenendn 9y ago
    While I agree with that sentiment, the idea that large investments are risky is not in itself interesting. What does this add to the conversation?
  - erikb 9y ago
    The question basically says "this article is far from interesting" and you answer with "because this article is so interesting"?
remind_me_again 9y ago
Article is not as negative as its title though.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
Of course such projects have risk. Of course there is historical baggage. But while China is building an infrastructure legacy, the USA et al are using its resources to wages multiple wars. It's likely the USA's ROI (if you will) will be increased debt and enemies for years to come. China on the other hand seems hardly interested in such things. The outlook for their ROI is much brighter.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > The outlook for their ROI is much brighter I agree that American ROI on military spending is negative, though the degree to which this is true is debatable. (The American defense industry doubles as a federal jobs and R&D program.) I do not see how China building an expensive, low-throughput transportation mode that is uncompetitive, even without a traversable Arctic Ocean, is productive.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    Stills orders of magnitude more productive than killing people and destroy nations.
    - meric 9y ago
      Fifty cents on the dollar versus negative fifty cents on the dollar. With the first approach, you lose 50 cents but you still have 50 cents.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    If it helps, think of it as China's man on the moon. It's a trophy the gov can point to. Think of it as a single point of (financial) focus with long term commitment. Now imagine what the USA would do with that money. How is China's choice not productive
- thablackbull 9y ago
aaron695 9y ago
The author seems to think because it Silk Road 2.0 won't directly ship to China it has little value? All the railways, shipping ports etc also add value to the countries they are in. The same as China is building so many dams around the world. There's a lot of power being played here benefiting China and locally. Do these countries really care is there's a border dispute in the Caucasus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_rail...
aclsid 9y ago
Other than the historical facts, this article is kind of a weird read. The author seems to be guilty of the same thing he's accusing the Chinese president, namely using history to support their version of how this might play out.
- thablackbull 9y ago
  I get a similar impression that the article was a little odd - I think the author seems to be confusing the intent of the message coming from China's leadership. China is saying, here is a 'story' to help you understand what we're trying to do with the Belt & Road Initiative. In essence, the focus is not on the truth claims of history, but it is a guidepost of what they want to do in the future. The author on the other-hand seems to be saying, because the history is inaccurate, the corollary is that the Belt & Road initiative will not succeed (which is not a logically consistent argument).
- salqadri 9y ago
  Agreed. Definitely a very one-sided and biased presentation of even the "facts".
- MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  Also its all a matter of interpretation: you can look at aid to central Asia and Africa as a long term investment. If these regions take off then that would be beneficial to China - it would create markets and natural allies. Creating a win win situation with foreign aid is also a bit novel (so far it was more an attempt get them into neocolonialist dependency, let's see if the Chinese do any better than that)
dmix 9y ago
I read the entire article and it's a great read. It's fascinating how much we romanticize about past cultures and how much if it is wrong. I love reading history and this almost always turns out to be the case. Digging into any topic reveals they are always far more complex and multilayered than the the common caricatures you find in media and in generalized accounts. China's popular understanding of the Silk Road seems to be way off, which is inspiring bad policy descisions. WW2 is another great example of this, no topic has had more books and films than WW2 yet the perception vs reality is incredibly wide in popular US culture. Particularly with how Germany really lost the war to the Soviets in late 1942 when they failed to subdue Russia in the early invasion. The west (US/UK/Canada) largely just cleaned up the mess from 1943-45, as the Nazi's were fighting an impossible war after that point. Even then Russia did most of the work in terms of raw combat. But even when this is noted in history books Russia's success is largely dismissed as merely due to their fortunate geography and willingness to treat their soldiers like expendable fodder. But it was in fact largely due to Russia having better technology than Germany (specifically better tanks/armour [1]) and the geography was far less of an issue to the Nazi's in 1942, who unlike Napolean had highly mobile tanks, aircraft, trains, and Blitzkrieg tactics. The silk road and China's alleged cultural dominance seems to be no different. Being of far less importance in actual trade volume and influence than is commonly understood. [1] particularily the KV-1 tank, which grinded Operation Barbarossa to a halt https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank > In certain situations, even a single KV-1 or KV-2 supported by infantry was capable of halting large German formations. German tank armament was too poor to deal with the "Russian Colossus".
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  > WW2 is another great example of this, no topic has had more books and films than WW2 yet the perception vs reality is incredibly wide in popular US culture. Well, the winner writes the history books.
  - rb808 9y ago
    > Well, the winner writes the history books. Russia was the winner.
salqadri 9y ago
This is not a very scholarly article, and very disparaging to say the least. It claims that Zheng He "did little to develop trade" and "contributed nothing to navigational knowledge" and that all he effectively did was assist in "the gradual spread of Islam". Have we considered to evaluate ourselves, on how we perhaps may be suppressing the reality of Chinese historical accomplishments by elevating such articles? It ignores many of his tangible accomplishments, like clearing the waters of pirates that plagued Chinese maritime trade.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
fspeech 9y ago
I don't know how much culture China exported along the ancient silk road but I do know that China imported a lot of culture along it (e.g. Buddhism and other religions), so its importance on the Chinese culture can hardly be over-emphasized. The problem with the author's critiquing of Chinese propaganda is that he adopted a chauvinistic framework. In reality for the Chinese people cultural import is likely more important than cultural export. Again if we remove the fixation on Chinese export and view the situation more objectively: Pakistan and the Middle East have the youngest populations in the world. If they can develop into manufacturing centers, it will not only alleviate the potential for radicalism. It will also compensate for the aging demographics of China, whether that is what China intends or not.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JackPoach 9y ago
Somehow I believe that Chinese will be able to pull this off and the author will regret his wishful thinking.

82 points by cageface 9y ago

TL;DR it's not like it was in the past. TL;DR it's not what they promise. But where is the news in this? I think the interesting facts are that (a) they still manage to influence countries with their plan (and might for instance gain more influence over Afganistan than both US and Russia have achieved), (b) they still manage to increase internal growth through their projects. Both are really good things for China. That you need to tell a story of historical values with such a big plan is normal and should be expected. Sadly the article doesn't discuss that and instead just focusses on showing the obvious. Also it vastly underestimates the middle east. There's a reason why there's so much fighting in this area. And it's not just oil.

dualogy 9y ago
> There's a reason why there's so much fighting in this area. And it's not just oil. Well, do share that non-oil reason you had in mind there!
- fspeech 9y ago
  As GP said it is easy to underestimate the Middle East because of all the oil. Israel is obviously a high tech powerhouse. Iran alone has over 80 million people. Despite the tense relationship with the US, there are close to 10 thousand postgraduate Iranian students in the US, one of the largest after China and India. https://wenr.wes.org/2017/02/educating-iran-demographics-massification-and-missed-opportunities https://wenr.wes.org/2017/02/educating-iran-demographics-mas...
  - dualogy 9y ago
    True enough, doesn't explain his "there's another reason than the oil for the fighting" suggestion. Germany is also "a high-tech powerhouse and has over 80 million people".. =) Now readers are bound to come up with common tropes like "sectarian strife" or "tribal rivalry", but again.. he made it sound like there's a transdimensional portal hidden in the ME or something.. clearly had a non-obvious aspect in mind, that I wanted elaboration on. =)
    - fspeech 9y ago
      If you read the article, OP was obviously responding to the silly claim that "More likely, however, China’s dependence on trade, and particularly its interest in Middle East oil, may fall almost as fast as it has risen over the past thirty years." I think OP was just pointing out that there is more than oil in the Middle East.
dang 9y ago
> But where is the news in this? The existence of an interesting article is news enough.
- nejenendn 9y ago
  While I agree with that sentiment, the idea that large investments are risky is not in itself interesting. What does this add to the conversation?
- erikb 9y ago
  The question basically says "this article is far from interesting" and you answer with "because this article is so interesting"?

remind_me_again 9y ago

Article is not as negative as its title though.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

Of course such projects have risk. Of course there is historical baggage. But while China is building an infrastructure legacy, the USA et al are using its resources to wages multiple wars. It's likely the USA's ROI (if you will) will be increased debt and enemies for years to come. China on the other hand seems hardly interested in such things. The outlook for their ROI is much brighter.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The outlook for their ROI is much brighter I agree that American ROI on military spending is negative, though the degree to which this is true is debatable. (The American defense industry doubles as a federal jobs and R&D program.) I do not see how China building an expensive, low-throughput transportation mode that is uncompetitive, even without a traversable Arctic Ocean, is productive.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- justicezyx 9y ago
  Stills orders of magnitude more productive than killing people and destroy nations.
  - meric 9y ago
    Fifty cents on the dollar versus negative fifty cents on the dollar. With the first approach, you lose 50 cents but you still have 50 cents.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  If it helps, think of it as China's man on the moon. It's a trophy the gov can point to. Think of it as a single point of (financial) focus with long term commitment. Now imagine what the USA would do with that money. How is China's choice not productive
thablackbull 9y ago

aaron695 9y ago

The author seems to think because it Silk Road 2.0 won't directly ship to China it has little value? All the railways, shipping ports etc also add value to the countries they are in. The same as China is building so many dams around the world. There's a lot of power being played here benefiting China and locally. Do these countries really care is there's a border dispute in the Caucasus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_rail...

aclsid 9y ago

Other than the historical facts, this article is kind of a weird read. The author seems to be guilty of the same thing he's accusing the Chinese president, namely using history to support their version of how this might play out.

thablackbull 9y ago
I get a similar impression that the article was a little odd - I think the author seems to be confusing the intent of the message coming from China's leadership. China is saying, here is a 'story' to help you understand what we're trying to do with the Belt & Road Initiative. In essence, the focus is not on the truth claims of history, but it is a guidepost of what they want to do in the future. The author on the other-hand seems to be saying, because the history is inaccurate, the corollary is that the Belt & Road initiative will not succeed (which is not a logically consistent argument).
salqadri 9y ago
Agreed. Definitely a very one-sided and biased presentation of even the "facts".
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
Also its all a matter of interpretation: you can look at aid to central Asia and Africa as a long term investment. If these regions take off then that would be beneficial to China - it would create markets and natural allies. Creating a win win situation with foreign aid is also a bit novel (so far it was more an attempt get them into neocolonialist dependency, let's see if the Chinese do any better than that)

dmix 9y ago

I read the entire article and it's a great read. It's fascinating how much we romanticize about past cultures and how much if it is wrong. I love reading history and this almost always turns out to be the case. Digging into any topic reveals they are always far more complex and multilayered than the the common caricatures you find in media and in generalized accounts. China's popular understanding of the Silk Road seems to be way off, which is inspiring bad policy descisions. WW2 is another great example of this, no topic has had more books and films than WW2 yet the perception vs reality is incredibly wide in popular US culture. Particularly with how Germany really lost the war to the Soviets in late 1942 when they failed to subdue Russia in the early invasion. The west (US/UK/Canada) largely just cleaned up the mess from 1943-45, as the Nazi's were fighting an impossible war after that point. Even then Russia did most of the work in terms of raw combat. But even when this is noted in history books Russia's success is largely dismissed as merely due to their fortunate geography and willingness to treat their soldiers like expendable fodder. But it was in fact largely due to Russia having better technology than Germany (specifically better tanks/armour [1]) and the geography was far less of an issue to the Nazi's in 1942, who unlike Napolean had highly mobile tanks, aircraft, trains, and Blitzkrieg tactics. The silk road and China's alleged cultural dominance seems to be no different. Being of far less importance in actual trade volume and influence than is commonly understood. [1] particularily the KV-1 tank, which grinded Operation Barbarossa to a halt https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank > In certain situations, even a single KV-1 or KV-2 supported by infantry was capable of halting large German formations. German tank armament was too poor to deal with the "Russian Colossus".

dna_polymerase 9y ago
> WW2 is another great example of this, no topic has had more books and films than WW2 yet the perception vs reality is incredibly wide in popular US culture. Well, the winner writes the history books.
- rb808 9y ago
  > Well, the winner writes the history books. Russia was the winner.

salqadri 9y ago

This is not a very scholarly article, and very disparaging to say the least. It claims that Zheng He "did little to develop trade" and "contributed nothing to navigational knowledge" and that all he effectively did was assist in "the gradual spread of Islam". Have we considered to evaluate ourselves, on how we perhaps may be suppressing the reality of Chinese historical accomplishments by elevating such articles? It ignores many of his tangible accomplishments, like clearing the waters of pirates that plagued Chinese maritime trade.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

fspeech 9y ago

I don't know how much culture China exported along the ancient silk road but I do know that China imported a lot of culture along it (e.g. Buddhism and other religions), so its importance on the Chinese culture can hardly be over-emphasized. The problem with the author's critiquing of Chinese propaganda is that he adopted a chauvinistic framework. In reality for the Chinese people cultural import is likely more important than cultural export. Again if we remove the fixation on Chinese export and view the situation more objectively: Pakistan and the Middle East have the youngest populations in the world. If they can develop into manufacturing centers, it will not only alleviate the potential for radicalism. It will also compensate for the aging demographics of China, whether that is what China intends or not.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

JackPoach 9y ago

Somehow I believe that Chinese will be able to pull this off and the author will regret his wishful thinking.