Abstract
China’s strategy towards South Asia (SA) presents a patchwork of bilateral relations rather than a holistic policy due to the lack of a SA identity and China’s policy preferences. China has pursued a subtle balance in SA with the exception of the antagonism that exists between it and India. China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) objectives, while hardly excluding strategic concerns, mainly flow from economic considerations: for example, restructuring industries, updating China’s growth model, securing resource supplies, finding new markets, and so on, while increasing participants’ benefits. For China, supplying collective goods like the Silk Road Fund and technical and financial resources is both a cost of and a means to realize the MSRI. The implementation of MSRI, because of challenges such as India’s indifference to the MSRI, is stirring China to shape an integrated SA strategy.
The author would like to express his gratitude to Drs. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, Gregory J. Moore, and Colin Flint for their help in improving this chapter. He can be reached at xmsui@cfau.edu.cn
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Notes
- 1.
See Xi Jinping, “Follow the Trend of the Times and Promote Global Peace and Development,” MGIMO University, March 23, 2013; “Build a New Model of Major-Country Relationship between China and the United States,” main points of the speech at the press conference with US President Barack Obama, Annenberg Estate, California, June 7, 2013; “Diplomacy with Neighboring Countries Characterized by Friendship, Sincerity, Reciprocity and Inclusiveness,” Seminar on China’s Neighborhood Diplomacy, October 24, 2013; “Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,” Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan , September 7, 2013; “Work together to Build a Twenty-First-Century Maritime Road,” People’s Representative Council of Indonesia, October 3, 2013. These speeches and talks can be found in Xi Jinping, The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 297–308, 315–329.
- 2.
People’s Republic of China, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce, “Vision and Proposed Actions Outlined on Jointly Building OBOR,” 2005,http://www.sdpc.gov.cn/gzdt/201503/t2015328_669091.html.
- 3.
Lin Guangliang, Ye Zhengjia, and Han Hua, Relations between China and SA (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2011), 127.
- 4.
Wang Taiping, ed., The History of Diplomacy of China 1957–1969 (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 1998), 85–90.
- 5.
Zhang Li, “China’s Diplomacy of South Asian and Kashmir Dispute,” South Asia Studies Quarterly 22, no. 1 (2006), 42–43.
- 6.
Wang, The History of Diplomacy of China, 88.
- 7.
Pei Jianzhang, ed., The History of Diplomacy of China: 1949–1956 (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 1998), 145–47.
- 8.
Wang Taiping, ed., The History of Diplomacy of China 1970–1978 (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 1999), 129–130.
- 9.
Sun Shihai, ed., South Asia (Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House, 1998), 141.
- 10.
Zhang Li, “China’s Diplomacy of South Asian and Kashmir Dispute,” 42.
- 11.
To put it briefly, geo-polinomics is equivalent to geographical political economy. It initially derives from the concept of “geo-economics” introduced by Edward N. Luttwak in the early 1990s (see his “The Theory and Practice of Geo-Economics,” in The International System after the Collapse of the East-West Order, edited by Armand Clesse et al. (Leiden, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publisher, 1994). Subsequently George J. Demko and William B. Wood refined “Geo-polinomics” to focus on states’ concern over political and economic gains under anarchy in the twenty-first century (see their Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the Twenty-First Century (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). Chinese scholar Wang Zheng goes further to classify states as finance-centralized states, manufacture-oriented states, and resource-oriented states.
- 12.
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 65–84.
- 13.
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
- 14.
Joseph Grieco, “Anarchy and Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” in Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, ed. David A. Baldwin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 116–142.
- 15.
E. Sridharan, “International Relations Theory and SA: Security, Political Economy, Domestic Politics, Identities, and Images,” in International Relations theory and South Asia, Vol. I, edited by E. Sridharan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 6.
- 16.
A predominant factor shaping relative gains concerns is a state’s perceptions of the strategic setting.
- 17.
Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: an Analysis Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, edited by Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3–30.
- 18.
Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 89.
- 19.
Wang Zheng, “A Speech on an Idea of Geopolitical Economy”(May 31, 2015). http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-2211-925674.html.
- 20.
Susan Strange argues that transnational investment and production play a more important role than a league of transnational communication does in creating a security community. States and Market: An Introduction to the International Political Economy (London: Pinter Publishers Ltd., 1988). John G. Ruggie advanced the term “embedded liberalism” to elaborate a compromise between safeguarding one’s domestic economic objectives and opening one’s domestic market to the outside world for restoration of international investment. John Gerald Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” in International Regimes, edited by Stephen D. Krasner (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
- 21.
John Ravenhill, “The Study of Global Political Economy,” in Global Political Economy, 4th ed., edited by John Ravenhill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 13.
- 22.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1937), 462.
- 23.
See endnote 3 above.
- 24.
CNCP Economics & Technology Research Institute, “The Development Report of Oil & Gas Industry 2014,” http://etri.cnpc.com.cn/etri/qydt/201502/da730b1a55cd492d9a13b1b9ac30afa9.shtml.
- 25.
David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4–23.
- 26.
The viewpoint was expressed at 2015 Conference of National Policy Consultation by Zhao Jinping, Director of the International Cooperation Department, Development Research Center of the State Council, http://www.chinairn.com/news/20150213/095820540.shtml.
- 27.
Saul Bernard Cohen defines SA as one of three existing geostrategic areas: the North Atlantic-North Pacific Area, which is dominated by the USA; the Eurasia heartland area, which is dominated by Russia ; and the East Asian area, which is dominated by China. See Geopolitics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), Introduction.
- 28.
Jeffrey Paine criticized China’s policy towards South Asia in a paper originally published on the website of The National Interest (August 19, 2013). Here see The Global Times (August 21, 2013).
- 29.
China cannot have a holistic strategy towards SA partly because of a lack of integrated identity in SA. To a certain extent, this lack of a regional identity is attributable to India’s strategic thinking as well as various impediments to the integration of SA politics, economy, and society. So, China’s policy towards SA mainly remains at the level of bilateral interaction between China and relevant states.
- 30.
Cohen, Geopolitics, 7–9.
- 31.
Zhao Gancheng, “On OBOR Strategy from South Asia Perspective and India’s Choice,” The Contemporary World no. 6 (2015): 20–21.
- 32.
- 33.
- 34.
Here, the so-called “triple dependence dilemma” refers to three aspects on which China’s security deeply depends: the importing of basic resources; SLOCs from China’s coast through the South China Sea , the Strait of Malacca, and across the Indian Ocean; and foreign oil-tanker fleets.
- 35.
On the String of Pearls, see Christopher J. Pehrson, “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral,” The Strategic Studies Institute (2006). On the presence of PLAN in the Indian Ocean, see Sudha Ramachandran, “China Moves into India’s Backyard,” Asia Times, March 13, 2007, www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IC13Df01.html. Additional information on both these topics can be found in Brewster’s contribution to this volume (Chap. 3).
- 36.
Juthathip Jongwanich et al., “Trade Structure and the Transmission of Economic Distress in the High Income OECD Countries to Developing Asia,” ADB Economics Working Paper Series no. 161 (2009), http://www.adb.org/sites/defult/files/pub2009/Economics-WP161; and Doughyun Park and Kwanho Shin, “Can Trade with the People’s Republic of China Be an Engine of Growth for Developing Asia?” ADB Economics Working Paper Series no.172 (2009), http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2009/Economics-WP172.
- 37.
Ye Hai-lin, “Does China Need India’s Participation in MSR?” 2015, http://www.thepaper.cn/newsdetail_fora=ward_1295387.
- 38.
World Bank, South Asia: Growth and Regional Integration 2006 (Washington, DC: 2006). See also Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Sovereignty Tradeoffs and Regional Integration: Theoretical and Comparative Reflections,” in International Relations Theory and South Asia, Vol. I, edited by E. Sridharan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 46.
- 39.
Asian Development Bank, “Asian Economic Integration Monitor,” (2014), http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefwebs.int/files/reliefweb_pdf/node-654319.pdf.
- 40.
The poor infrastructure and the initial stage of industrialization in SA have seriously impeded cooperation both among between intra-regional states and between the SA countries and extra-regional economies. According to a World Economic Forum ranking of infrastructure development, the overall level of infrastructure in SA is low or middling. Of 133 countries, Sri Lanka , India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal rank, respectively, the 64th, the 76th, the 89th, the 126th, and the 131st. It is predicted that the total investment in infrastructure in SA in 2010 through 2020 will reach USD $2.549 trillion, and accounts for nearly 11 percent of the region’s GDP. It is much higher than the average 6.5 percent in Asian economies. See Biswa Bhattacharyay, “Estimating Demand for Infrastructure in Energy, Transport, Telecommunications, Water and Sanitation in Asia and the Pacific: 2010–2020,” ADB Working Paper Series no. 248, http://www.adbi.org/working-paper/2010/09/09/4062.infrastructure.demand.asia.pacific.
- 41.
The existing regional cooperative regime includes SAARC and SAFTA, established in 1985 and 1997 respectively. Due to India’s incapacity to give preferential treatment to goods and services produced by other members, Indian-Pakistani conflicts , and disputes rooted in diversity, neither the intra-regional liberalization of trade and investment nor mutual confidence-building has reached the predicted objectives. See Li Xiangyang, “The Diversified Cooperation Mechanism of MSR,” World Economics and Politics 35, no. 11 (2014), 14; and Mehta, “Sovereignty Tradeoffs and Regional Integration,” 49.
- 42.
There is a debate on China’s strategy towards SA in the Chinese academic and strategic communities. It focuses on whether Pakistan or India should be selected as the strategic pivot-point in China’s chessboard of grand strategy. So far the strategy towards SA is ambiguous.
- 43.
For further information on the evolution of China–Maldives relations, please see Srikanth Kondapalli’s contribution to this volume (Chap. 7).
- 44.
- 45.
Ruhal Mishra, “What China Must Do to get India on Silk Route,” 2014, http://www.rediff.com/news.
- 46.
http://www.silkroadfund.com.cn/enweb/23809/23812/318098a4/index4.html. CPEC is the focus of Jacob Jabin’s piece in this edited volume (Chap. 5).
- 47.
Pradeep Srivastava, “Regional Corridors Development in Regional Cooperation,” ADB Economics Working Paper Series, No. 258 (2011), http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2011/Economics-WP258.pdf.
- 48.
BIMSTEC, covering India, Sri Lanka , Nepal , Bhutan , Bangladesh, Myanmar , and Thailand, was established in 1997. Its final objective is to set up a Bay of Bengal rim FTA. So far, however, there has been no substantial progress because of disputes about tariff concession.
- 49.
Li, “On the Diversified Cooperation Mechanism of MSR,” 15.
- 50.
See “Joint Statement of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of India on the Construction of a More Closely Related Development Partnership,” published in New Delhi by the Chinese and Indian governments on September 19, 2014.
- 51.
For a detailed discussion of the MSRI’s challenges, see Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, “Probing China’s Twenty-First-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI): An Examination of MSRI Narratives.” Geopolitics 22, no. 2 (2017): 246–268 and his introduction in this book.
- 52.
Keohane, After Hegemony, 34.
- 53.
Ibid., 49–64.
- 54.
Xi Jinping, “Towards a Community of Common Destiny and a New Future for Asia,” keynote speech delivered at the 2015 Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, 2015, http://www.en84.com/nonfiction/remarks/201503/000161043.html.
- 55.
http://www.mhwmm.com/Ch/NewsView.asp?ID=8652. Geographically Myanmar is located in Southeast Asia. I discuss events in Myanmar because Myanmar is a member of BCIM and more importantly China takes it into account when calculating its strategy towards SA and the Indian Ocean.
- 56.
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Sui, X. (2018). China’s Strategy Towards South Asia in the Context of the Maritime Silk Road Initiative. In: Blanchard, JM. (eds) China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia. Palgrave Studies in Asia-Pacific Political Economy. Palgrave, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5239-2_4
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