Geocultural power: China's quest to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century

Summers, Tim

doi:10.1093/ia/iiaa015

Cited by 9 publications

(16 citation statements)

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Section: Bri As Discourse: Knowledge Map‐making and Critical Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It underlines the importance of economic connectivity for the BRI and China's strategic attempt to reduce spatial barriers for the facilitation of capital flows both rhetorically and materially. What it also signals is a Sinocentric geo-cultural discourse of a 'Silk Road spirit' and a 'community of shared destiny', fashioning multicultural exchange, civilizational dialogue and global connectivity, at the heart of which sits the Chinese civilization (Winter, 2019). Indeed, the spatial frames of a Eurasian interior, criss-crossed by multi-scalar, transnational, infrastructure connectivity projects underpinned by strategic urban nodes, pivots and networks are vastly circulated within Chinese academia, think tanks, foreign policy professionals, and popular media (Cui & Lv, 2022).…”

Section: Bri As Discourse: Knowledge Map-making and Critical Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locating the Belt and Road Initiative's spatial trilectics

Cheng

Apostolopoulou

2023

Geography Compass

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In this paper, we survey the expanding body of literature on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Chinese and Anglophone geography, and locate the main lines of development. The emerging scholarship approaches the BRI as a spatial discourse and examines the production of geographical reasoning in statecraft. It also links up with studies of the BRI as both a material project and an everyday experience. We argue that it is in this combined understanding of BRI's multiple registers, as discourse, project, and experience, that a trilectical approach for future geographical engagement can be identified as the BRI edges to its second decade.

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Section: Bri As Discourse: Knowledge Map‐making and Critical Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Bri As Discourse: Knowledge Map-making and Critical Geopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locating the Belt and Road Initiative's spatial trilectics

Cheng

Apostolopoulou

2023

Geography Compass

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“…In Japan, the concept of the 'Silk Road(s)' (as Shiruku R ō do シルクロード, a transcription of the English term) became popular after the Second World War as a way 1 A recent analysis of the BRI is Freymann (2020). Tim Winter (2019) has examined the initiative from a 'geocultural' perspective. Winter (2019: 17) defines 'geocultural power' as the use of the past as a 'mechanism of great power diplomacy'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This China-centric conceptualization of Indian Ocean interactions frequently appears in Chinese academic and state discourses in the modified form of 'China's Maritime Silk Road' (Zhongguo Haishang Sichou zhi lu 中國海上絲綢之路; emphasis added). More recently, as part of the BRI project, the term, used in conjunction with 'Silk Road', has been interpreted as a way of 'smoothing' (Winter 2019) and 'rebranding' (Pu 2019) the PRC's image in foreign relations. This incorporation of the 'Silk Road' and the 'Maritime Silk Road' under the BRI rubric, where 'Belt' denotes the former term and 'Road' the latter, has blurred (especially for those unfamiliar with the discourse within the PRC 5 ) the distinct origins, connotations, and applications of the phrase 'Maritime Silk Road'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A recent analysis of the BRI isFreymann (2020). TimWinter (2019) has examined the initiative from a 'geocultural' perspective.Winter (2019: 17) defines 'geocultural power' as the use of the past as a 'mechanism of great power diplomacy'.2 On the use of these terms prior to Richthofen, seeChin (2013) and Mertens (2019). A critical examination of the term and its relevance to the 'realities' of trans-Eurasian exchanges is found inRezakhani (2010).…”

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Inventing the ‘Maritime Silk Road’

Sen

2023

Mod. Asian Stud.

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Although inspired by the nineteenth-century term ‘Silk Road(s)’, the phrase ‘Maritime Silk Road’ has its own origins, connotations, and applications. This article examines the emergence of the latter term as a China-centric concept and its various entanglements since the early 1980s, involving the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) political bodies, academia, the ‘open door’ policy, the pursuit of World Heritage listings, and the current ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. These entanglements, the article contends, have resulted in the emergence of what could be called a ‘Maritime Silk Road’ ecosystem in the PRC. The analysis of this ecosystem presented in the article reveals not only the processes through which a narrative on China’s engagement with the maritime world has been constructed over time, but also its association with issues of national pride, heritage- and tradition-making, foreign-policy objectives, and claims to territorial sovereignty. As such, the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ must be understood as a concept that is intimately entwined with the recent history of the PRC and distinct from its nineteenth-century antecedent, which was used as a label for overland connectivity.

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Chinese power in the World Heritage Committee: From learning the game to shaping the rules

Langendonk,

Drieskens

2024

Global Policy

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Despite growing interest in China's use of heritage in its domestic and foreign policies, little is known about how its evolving power affects the multilateral core of the heritage regime. To tackle this gap, we apply Barnett and Duvall's four‐power framework to China's role in the World Heritage Committee (WHC) and heritage issues in UNESCO since the early 2000s. To parse power shifts across the four ideal types of compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive power, we analyse the domestic and international developments that shaped China's relationship with the regime and highlight two episodes of Chinese power at work: the WHC's Suzhou (2004) and Fuzhou (2021) sessions. We argue that China's power potential rose across all four power types and that its potential for exercising structural and productive power is buoyed by the Belt and Road Initiative and the integration of heritage into its foreign policy. We note that China's exercise of power rarely transgresses organisational norms and that it has followed, rather than spurred, the shift to a culture of thinly veiled power politics in the WHC. Nevertheless, we argue that, as an ambitious power in heritage, China shares the responsibility for this outcome and the future of the heritage regime.

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Geocultural power: China's quest to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Locating the Belt and Road Initiative's spatial trilectics

Locating the Belt and Road Initiative's spatial trilectics

Inventing the ‘Maritime Silk Road’

Chinese power in the World Heritage Committee: From learning the game to shaping the rules

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