Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies

Abstract

This article offers a different theorization of the commercial geographies and economic networks that connect China to the Middle East from those associated with the metaphor of the ‘Silk Road’. Many accounts of the recent and ongoing internationalization of the Chinese trade in small commodities through the well‐known market city of Yiwu describe the increasingly significant flows of commerce between China and the Middle East in these terms. In this article, I propose an alternative theoretical frame, arguing that the commercial geographies fashioned by Arab traders in Yiwu are, rather, formed through a dynamic relation of competition and cooperation between a series of distinct but overlapping Eurasian political geographies which have been in process from the 1970s onwards. Analysts have also often highlighted the Muslim and Arab ethnic nature of the transnational economic networks that connect Yiwu to markets across the Middle East. But rather than adopting a network governance approach, which sees these networks as embedded in a shared culture or ethnicity that furnishes the possibility of trust, I adopt a structural analysis approach in which traders act as brokers, moving and mediating between different geographies. I argue that they act strategically to keep several contexts in play at once because they are faced with an unforeseeable future and marginal citizenship rights.

Transnational, translocal, and transient: Economic communities of Arab entrepreneurs in Yiwu, China

“…In addition to kinship networks, Geo‐relationship networks also interact with religious and professional networks. The tenets of religious faith with commonly understood roles, rules, obligations, and entitlements, form the foundation and basis of Arab business transactions in Yiwu and its associated transitional networks (Anderson, 2020). As such, religious networks promote communication and exchange of Arab businessmen and effectively enhance mutual trust and interaction among members.…”

“…Centred on religion and family with solidarity embedded in shared culture, Arab entrepreneurs' broad and hierarchical networks afford them possibilities for calculative and strategizing behaviour under different contexts (Anderson, 2020). As such, power is produced through making asymmetrical relationships with the various groups involved in their transnational commercial activities which have significantly transformed their powerless and marginal status in Yiwu (Wen, 2020).…”

“…Later, the Chinese central government launched the “Silk and Belt” initiative in 2013 to increase China's connections to the world through a series of large infrastructure projects, starting from Central and South Asia (Chan, 2018). Sensitive to these developments, Yiwu local authorities have successfully positioned their city as a Muslim‐oriented marketplace and cultural intermediaries for merchants visiting from the Islamic world (Anderson, 2020; Marouda, 2019).…”