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China and the Twenty-First-Century Silk Roads: A New Era of Global Economic Leadership?

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China's Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

Amid heightened uncertainty in the wake of Washington’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in early 2017, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is drawing increased attention and scrutiny. Xi Jinping’s defense of economic globalization at the 2017 World Economic Forum meeting and China’s hosting of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in May 2017 attest to Beijing’s growing determination to assume an increased global economic leadership role. Against the backdrop of China’s call for a “new great power relationship” with the United States and its quest for “national rejuvenation,” Chap. 2 outlines how and to what extent the BRI might herald the emergence of a new global economic order. Is it reflective of a new era of geoeconomics or is it merely a disguise for a deeper geostrategic move?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is a widely accepted fact that there is no actual Chinese expression that literally translates into this widely quoted English expression. The closest Chinese approximation—Níng wèi tàipíng quǎn mò zuò luànlí rén (宁为太平犬莫做乱离人), translated as “Better to be a dog in a peaceful time than to be a human in a chaotic (warring) period”—is traced to Stories to Awaken the World (醒世恆言, Xǐng shì héng yán), a collection of stories published by Feng Menglong in 1627.

  2. 2.

    Having originally used the term “peaceful rise” (和平崛起, hépíng juéqǐ), the Chinese authorities subsequently opted for “peaceful development” (和平发展, hépíng fāzhǎn) as a way of deflecting concerns about the comparatively more aggressive and assertive connotation of the term “rise” and reassuring other nations of Chinese intent to emerge peacefully and integrate into the existing international order.

  3. 3.

    According to a 2017 Brookings Institution study, the global middle class will increase by 160 million people per year for the next five years. By 2028, the global middle class is expected to reach 5.2 billion (up from 3.2 billion in 2016, and a projected 4.2 billion in 2022). Based on this upward growth trajectory, the study projects that by 2020 the majority of the global population will, for the first time in history, be part of the global middle class, which is expected to increase its annual spending (in real terms) from US$35 trillion to US$64 trillion by 2030, accounting for a whopping one-third of the global economy. For more details, see Kharas (2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science & International Studies, University of Mount Union, Alliance, OH, USA

    Francis Schortgen

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  1. Francis Schortgen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Rollins College, Winter Park, FL, USA

    Wenxian Zhang

  2. School of Business & Law, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway

    Ilan Alon

  3. Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany

    Christoph Lattemann

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Schortgen, F. (2018). China and the Twenty-First-Century Silk Roads: A New Era of Global Economic Leadership?. In: Zhang, W., Alon, I., Lattemann, C. (eds) China's Belt and Road Initiative. Palgrave Studies of Internationalization in Emerging Markets. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75435-2_2

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