Hugo Abrial, GA.
Previously called the One Belt, One Road, the Belt and Road Initiative is defined by the Worldbank as “an ambitious multi-year Chinese effort to improve international transport infrastructure and increase economic integration”, and entails building infrastructure projects (such as highways, railroads, and ports) to encourage investment and trade as well as to advance cultural exchanges and interpersonal ties among the participating nations.[1] Interestingly, Xi Jinping has made extensive use of the Silk Road’s historical narrative as an element of comparison, both in his founding BRI speech in Kazakhstan in 2013 and in his speech at the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum in 2017. Indeed, China uses a well-oiled reinvented historical narrative of the Silk Road in his rhetoric to explain and legitimize the new BRI. This is a manipulation of history for policy purposes.
For many, the Silk Road evokes a familiarity and understanding thanks to history lessons. The comparison firstly helps familiar foundation were upon the BRI can be explained. The Silk Road comparison is used as a method of explaining the aims of the new project. It allows us to better grasp the abstract essence of BRI. Which paradoxically has been done by alienating the historical reality of the Silk Road on the ground into an invented abstract essence of it, reinventing an idealized abstract version of the Silk Road.
Indeed, the Silk Road is presented as a pre-modern, globalized Afro-Eurasian trade network, starting in Beijing and travelling to Byzantium, Europe and North Africa, linking the world as the ancestor of globalization, transcending traditional (religious) divisions and promoting tolerance and peace, cooperation, openness and inclusion, among many other values. It is an idealization (and therefore a reinvention) of the historical reality of the Silk Road, invented and adapted to fit a contemporary Chinese political narrative.
The reinvention of the historical narrative allows China to take control the Silk Road narrative in two ways. It allows Xi Jinping to reinforce China’s association with the Silk Road as initiator, promoter, benefactor and protector; and to reinvent a set of positive values and attributes accredited (by China) to the Silk Road, presenting it as China’s best historical gift to the world and as one of the best the world has ever received. Secondly, the reinvention of the historical narrative of the Silk Road sends the message that it was the source for extraordinary progress, transformation and changes, enriching materially and spiritually the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa; and that China was responsible for it, something that historians would, at least, attenuate. With the comparison China sends the message that with the BRI it now re-takes its responsibilities to illuminate the world once again.
So, China uses this idealized concept of the Silk Road and its new set of values to explain and legitimize the BRI, something we can note in Xi’s speeches. The use of the comparison has great benefits on a practical level. This use of the concept of the Silk Road as comparison material serves two main purposes.
First, it intends to show China’s benevolence to the world with the BRI. Indeed, the idealized Silk Road, through commercial and diplomatic ties, has brought different communities closer together, fostering world peace and prosperity. The idealized Silk Road created a better, more harmonious world, both economically and in human terms. The message of China is that the Belt and Road Initiative will do the same.
Second, the comparison legitimizes the fact that China took the initiative in creating the BRI, once again posing as the initiator, promoter, benefactor and protector of all the attributes and values embodied in this reinvented Silk Road. By making it seem as if the point of origin of the Silk Road was China, it is assumed that China had, at the time, a visionary pre-globalized policy promoting peace and prosperity, rather than merchants and sailors from all nations trading Chinese goods around the world, with government approval and support, applying the basic economic rule of supply and demand. In short: this sets a legitimating role for China’s government to relaunch the Silk Road, the Chinese benevolent anomaly of history, in the 21st century.
Ending his 2017 speech with “History is our best teacher”, Xi invites other countries to join China in this new extraordinary romantic adventure of success and integration; and it shows that his invented abstract historical narrative is essential to explain and legitimize BRI.
The benevolence of the BRI is often disputed. Some point to the “diplomacy of the debt trap,” others see it as total theoretical chaos[2] and still others see in the BRI a calculated attempt to dethrone the world hegemon, the US. What can be said is that the historical narrative whereupon the BRI is rhetorically build is untrue and manipulated.
This well-oiled narrative is thus a manipulation of history. Look at it too closely, and the narrative will fall apart. This is just one of many examples of historical manipulation in (international) societies. This analysis shows the importance of history for international relations, and the relevance of a historical perspective. It enables the avid reader to know when he or she is being rhetorically manipulated, and thus to be better informed, which is crucial in international relations.
[1] Worldbank, ‘The Belt and Road Initiative Kazakhstan Country Case Study’ (Worldbank, June 2020), https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/471731593499938164/pdf/South-Caucasus-and-Central-Asia-The-Belt-and-Road-Initiative-Kazakhstan-Country-Case-Study.pdf.
[2] In short as Yuen Yuen Ang in Foreign Affairs described it in 2019: “There is one problem with the current hysteria surrounding BRI: nobody, including in Beijing, knows what BRI really is. Theoretical vagueness translates, on the ground, into practical confusion.” Yuen Yuen Ang, ‘Demystifying Belt and Road. The Struggle to Define China’s “Project of the Century”’, Foreign Affairs, 22 May 2019, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-05-22/demystifying-belt-and-road.
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