Here in Beijing, the buzzword on everyone’s lips is “OBOR.” That’s short for the “One Belt, One Road” Initiative being assiduously pushed by the Chinese government. It’s also being called “Belt and Road,” which, perhaps not by accident, reduces the hegemonic tone of “one this, one that.”
OBOR is China’s gargantuan plan to build a transport network across land and sea that interconnects the Asian mainland from North to South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. There’s a lot of route variety in the maps I’ve seen, but there are broadly just two main corridors.
Over land is the “New Silk Road Economic Belt,” which generally retraces the old Silk Road that brought Venetian Marco Polo to the heart of the Middle Kingdom in the 13th century. It starts in Xian in central China, traverses the Central Asian “stan” republics, crosses the Mediterranean from Turkey, takes a hard right upward to Moscow, hangs a left through eastern and central Europe before coming back down to terminate in Venice.
Over the sea is the “New Maritime Silk Road,” which starts from Venice, crosses the Mediterranean into the Suez Canal, and spills out into the waters of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. By various routes, this maritime corridor landfalls in Africa (Nairobi), South Asia (Kolkata and Colombo), and various coastal cities of Indochina and Indonesia before terminating in Fuzhou in southern China.
There are various spurs here and there. One spur sweeps south from the Belt to connect to Pakistan and Iran. Another one wends its way down the Malayan peninsula through Indonesia and may, hopefully, terminate in the Philippines through the newly opened overnight RoRo service between Davao City and Bitung. It is likely that there will be new spurs to be discovered as the momentum of the project picks up.
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There are many reasons that can be adduced to a project of this size and scale.
One is commercial: China flexing its muscle as the world’s foremost trading nation. Opening up all this transport connectivity allows the OBOR participants to scale up the movement of people and commodities between each other.
In the case of China, people often forget that it has never annexed territory as aggressively as the old Western colonial powers did. Trade and commerce were always its main influencers, then and now. Even during the long decades under Chairman Mao, the mischief-making that China instigated abroad was always for the sake of exporting ideological revolution, not claiming colonies.
A second reason is financial: By co-investing in all the projects that will make up OBOR, the Chinese ought to be able to realize asset yields far beyond what they’re seeing in their home market, where there’s too much export-generated liquidity chasing after too little domestic demand from a population that traditionally saves a lot more than it spends.
A third is diplomatic: More intimate and regular contact between countries (what the Chinese like to call “people to people” relations) tends to encourage friendship and minimize the incentive and opportunities for mutual hostility to break out. China in particular faces an uphill battle against often racially motivated Sinophobia.
A fourth reason, from the Chinese viewpoint, may be strategic. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the same roads over which container cargo may be travelling today can also carry tanks, if necessary, tomorrow. What history may teach us is never a guarantee of what the future can bring.
It was interesting to catch a TV panel interview one night that featured, among others, the defense ministers of Pakistan and India. The former country has always been friendly to China, and the minister waxed eloquent about the benefits of OBOR. On the other hand, India, a rival of both Pakistan and China, was much more circumspect, “for reasons that we all understand,” as the minister put it.
Even now, sovereignty and security issues are rapidly becoming the main bone of contention. This ought to be expected from a transnational project of this magnitude that wants to cross so many boundaries.
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I’m writing this piece the night before President Duterte goes through his paces at the opening tomorrow of the OBOR Forum here in Beijing.
I have no idea what he’ll be saying, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to guess: A call for Asian unity, especially since he’s this year’s Asean chair. Words of respect for China’s leadership, and appreciation for its reengagement with the Philippine economy. Perhaps cautionary words again about the regional drug scourge that, ironically enough, counts Chinese meth manufacturers among its biggest promoters.
But whether he says so or not, the OBOR project is one that’s bound to resonate loudly with his own Dutertenomics brand of governance. Though very different in size, they’re tied together by a common expansiveness of ambition, some very practical conjoining of connectivities, and a shared resolve to assert the Asian view in one case—the Philippine view in the other—against stereotypes whose exponents, sadly enough, too often are we ourselves.
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.