China’s New Silk Road

The Shanghai Co-operation Organization, originally Five -- now six countries, which takes in China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan can serve several important functions. A regional bloc that can act as a counterpoise to the US-dominated alliances in the region and Muslim religious extremism. In Urumqi, China, through which the Silk Road runs, Islam has been the dominant religion for over 1,000 years. The organization may eventually incorporate other countries in the region including Turkmenistan, and even Mongolia and other members of the former Soviet Union -- conceivably, even Turkey if it is shunned by Europe.

China is taking over the role held by Russia in Central Asia and is now the region’s rich and powerful benign leader. China’s authoritarian politics and central planning have a strong appeal for many of the former Soviet republics of the region. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan all prefer dealing with China than the West and adopting economic models more suited to their future development. The Chinese are concerned about the U.S. military base in Uzbekistan and the Indian base in Tajikistan because all three countries are competing to secure access to the region’s oil. China is portrayed and perceived in the region as a new superpower lacking aggressive intent.

Bates Gill, a China specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said: “The Chinese are sending people all the time to meet prime ministers and presidents and generals and all the way down the diplomatic ladder. This is all about soft power, and strategic and diplomatic relationships. Central Asia is a fantastic lens, or model, for what China is trying to do all over its periphery: reaching out and settling old scores, and trying to establish a benign kind of hegemony.”

China is updating its old Silk Road relationships and catapulting them into the 21st century. In 2004 it established the China-Arab Co-operation Forum, marking a new milestone in the history of close ties between China and Arab states.

China-Latin America

China has become Brazil’s No. 3 export destination after the U.S. and Argentina. These include iron ore, airplanes, soy beans and pulp. China also plans to invest over $3 billion in Brazilian infrastructure – ports, roads and railways -- while Brazil’s foreign ministry has hinted at some $5 billion in direct investment in China.

The link between Brazil and China connects the biggest emerging markets of the western and eastern hemispheres. In the words of Celso Amorim, brazil’s foreign minister, it could be part of a “certain reconfiguration of the world’s commercial and diplomatic geography.”

The long-standing friendship between China and Cuba only got warmer when China’s Hu Jin-tau and Cuba’s Fidel Castro announced after the 2004 APEC meeting in Chile that China will mine Cuba’s nickel as Castro cut off the use of dollars in Cuba.

In 2005 China joined the Inter-American Development bank, giving its construction companies access to the bank’s infrastructure projects.

China is able to develop its relationships in Latin America because of U.S. neglect and alienation of goodwill in the region. America’s relations with Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela are anything but cordial – something the Latin American commodity and natural resource rich countries and China have decided to exploit to their mutual benefit.

While America has been squandering its goodwill and alienating its neighbors China has moved into its hemispheric backyard.