Since the De:link//Re:link research consortium formed in April 2021, there have been dramatic political changes in (Eur)Asia. Among them the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan later that year, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The expansion of the BRICS group of nations added to significant shifts in international relations. These shifts have affected how China views, steers and talks about its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and how the addressees in the target countries see and interact with the infrastructure projects. Our work during the second phase will focus on exploring these changes in detail from an area studies perspective.
Global Shifts
In the first phase, research conducted by the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC) on the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) showed that Afghanistan represents a “gap” in the establishment of transnational trade corridors: The connection from Central Asia to South Asia and from West Asia (Iran) to China would need to run through the country. Yet Afghanistan remains unconnected to the rail and pipeline networks of neighboring countries. China continues to support the country politically following the Taliban’s takeover, and given the precarious humanitarian and economic situation there – frozen currency reserves, drought, no international recognition – Chinese investments in the Afghan infrastructure, production and raw materials sector (oil, lithium, copper, iron) likely represent an important building block for the economic survival of the new government. The changes on the ground will be explored further by the BICC over the coming months and years.
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine means that China is stepping up its efforts to expand the so-called Middle Corridor through parts of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. The route links Asia and Europe, bypassing Russia. This reorientation is accompanied by the fact that China is increasingly participating in infrastructure projects with multilateral financing (a subject outlined in the podcast ‘Not just China: Regional Actors and the BRI in Pakistan, Georgia and Hungary’). Valentin Krüssmann, Julia Langbein, and Gwendolyn Sasse at the Centre for Eastern European and International Studies (ZOiS) will keep track of these developments.
East Africa will remain a central component of De:link//Re:link’s research during the second phase. The work of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) aims to capture the social impact of the BRI projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Domestic political debates around China’s activities and investments will be front and centre. In this context, De:link//Re:link fellows at the ZMO will examine anti-Western reorientations for both the political elite and the local population. The expansion of BRICS to BRICS+ serves the developments in local attitudes towards China on the one hand and the West on the other hand to a considerable extent. Aside from the African continent, Asian countries are becoming increasingly visible as influential actors in contexts such as the BRICS+. The De:link//Re:link consortium will address this from various perspectives.
The “Chinese Dream”
The BRI projects are most obvious in terms of their economic and political dimensions (visible of course in roads, railways and ports). However, they are also intensively flanked, underpinned and accompanied by activities in the fields of art and culture. On the one hand, these endeavours establish the narrative of the New Silk Roads as part of the “Chinese Dream” – within the People’s Republic in particular – while on the other hand they are intended to transport certain perspectives and understandings of Chinese activities in Africa, Asia and Europe by means of “heritage making”.
During the first phase of funding, our research consortium looked at the effectiveness of Chinese cultural foreign policy (for example by establishing Confucius Institutes) in states along the BRI. There has been a noticeable political sensitivity towards such cultural projects. As a result, the addressees in the target countries have had room for maneuver – which Beijing has repeatedly accepted. Overall, though, the art industry in these countries has reflected an asymmetrical distribution of power in cultural–political relations with China.
As Jamila Adeli argued in New Silk Road Narratives, artworks and exhibitions have aided the (de)construction of specific narratives while at the same time driving regional development both inside and outside China. These activities – intended to nurture so-called people-to-people bonds – have not yet been thoroughly researched in terms of local reactions to China’s infrastructure initiatives.
Education and academe are also affected by China’s cultural moves. Southeast Asia is an illustrative case in point for tracing the prevalence of, for instance, Chinese elements in language and communication, particular literature genres, comics, film productions and the like in Southeast Asian countries. Language contact is a revealing indicator in this regard. The complex topic of language and linguistic (de)colonization in East and Southeast Asia forms a central aspect of the HU group’s work in the second phase of De:link//Re:link.