Silk Roads and cultural routes (original) (raw)
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The Silk Road: Connecting histories and Futures
Oxford University Press, 2022
rom the Great Game to the present, an international cultural and political biography of one of our most evocative, compelling, and poorly understood narratives of history. The Silk Road is rapidly becoming one of the key geocultural and geostrategic concepts of the twenty-first century. Yet, for much of the twentieth century the Silk Road received little attention, overshadowed by nationalism and its invented pasts, and a world dominated by conflict and Cold War standoffs. In The Silk Road, Tim Winter reveals the different paths this history of connected cultures took towards global fame, a century after the first evidence of contact between China and Europe was unearthed. He also reveals how this remarkably popular depiction of the past took hold as a platform for geopolitical ambition, a celebration of peace and cosmopolitan harmony, and created dreams of exploration and grand adventure. Winter further explores themes that reappear today as China seeks to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century. Known across the globe, the Silk Road is a concept fit for the modern world, and yet its significance and origins remain poorly understood and are the subject of much confusion. Pathbreaking in its analysis, this book presents an entirely new reading of this increasingly important concept, one that is likely to remain at the center of world affairs for decades to come.
Geopolitical Dimension of the Old and the Modern Silk Road
The Journal of International Civilization Studies , 2023
The old Silk Road, that connected the West and East, was a center of cultural and trade interaction in the Asian continent from China to the Mediterranean Sea, but in 2013 it was referred by the Chinese president Xi Jinping as "One Belt, One Road" (OBOR), which announced that China would fund a New Silk Road Economic Belt across Eurasia to connect China with Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Different from the old Silk Road, current Silk Road includes the flow of financial services, information, technology as well as the Chinese initiative to strengthen connectivity in Central Asia and beyond. Comparing the modern Silk Road with the old Silk Road, in this paper we focus on China's regional and international expansion, and the relevance of new Silk Road as one of the current largest programmes of economic diplomacy. Thereby, by using the qualitative descriptive methodology and interdisciplinary approach, this paper demonstrates that the new Silk Road comprises a new global order; therefore, it must be seen as the link between the past, present, and future. That is why its concept must be analyzed with reference to the old Silk Road, but also in wider geopolitical context.
Peter Frankopan The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World, 2019
Cappadocia Journal of Area Studies, 2022
Peter Frankopan's New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World is a thoughtprovoking study of global politics and economic transformation since the 1990s. Frankopan investigates the contemporary concept of the "new Silk Roads" and China's Belt and Road Initiative and what interconnectedness means for the world community. So, what does the term Silk Road mean? The author says: "In fact, the Silk Roads serves as a term that describes the ways in which people, cultures and continents were woven together", and he clarifies how people, ideas, and resources spread, "and explains the contexts and motivations for expeditions across deserts and oceans that helped fashion the rise of empires", (p. 2). Additionally, the book looks at what this means for Western societies and economies and their evolving response to the new opportunities and challenges posed. Frankopan also explores tensions and fears among the governments associated with the new Silk Road. His sources are government documents, international newspapers and scholarly journals (pp. 291-342). Frankopan's study emphasises the (re-)emergence and growth of the socalled Eastern societies-under the influence of Beijing.
Revitalising the Silk Road: China's Belt and Road Initiative
Revitalising the Silk Road: China's Belt and Road Initiative, 2017
2023 is the tenth anniversary of the launching of China's Belt and Road initiative. This was one of the frist books published in the English language to analyse the initiative
China's 'Silk Road': A drive for Global Integration or simply a Metaphor for Hegemonic Quest
The Silk Road or Silk Route was an ancient network of trade routes that were central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent connecting the West and East from China to the Mediterranean Sea. The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in Chinese silk carried out along its length, beginning during the Han dynasty. One of the most acclaimed Silk Road projects is the One Belt, One Road initiative put forward by China, a project, which was first formulated in 2013 during a trip to Central Asia, has resonated with both the region and the wider globe. It spans almost the entire Asian continent, even extending as far as East Africa and Europe and a Maritime Silk Road, covering Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Africa, and Europe. Beyond being a simple transport corridor, it envisages economic integration of the countries along its path. The first of the five basic areas of cooperation envisioned in the project is based on the integration of transportation (railways, highways, airways, and ports) systems and the joint use of energy and natural resources as well as their extraction operations. China's One Belt, One Road initiative has received the support of countries throughout the region, but some important players consider the project as an attempt by China to snatch regional and global hegemony, stemming from worries that Beijing wishes to increase its political influence by using its economic power. It is obvious that if the project becomes successful, the Chinese economy will be the first to benefit. If it fails, it becomes a disaster for China. In all this, Africa needs to assemble the required mettle to change power relations in its dealings with China. 1. Introduction The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative Chinese silk trade, a major reason for the connection of trade routes into an extensive transcontinental network. The German terms Sei-denstraße and Seidenstraßen (the Silk Road/Route) were coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen, who made seven expeditions to China from 1868 to 1872. Some scholars prefer the term Silk Routes because the road included an extensive network of routes, though few were more than rough caravan tracks. The Silk Road or Silk Route was an ancient network of trade routes that were central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent connecting the West and East from China to the Mediterranean Sea. The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in Chi-nese silk carried out along its length, beginning during the Han dynasty (207 BCE – 220 CE). The Central Asian sections of the trade routes were expanded around 114 BCE by the Han dynasty, largely through the missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy, Zhang Qian. The Chinese took great interest in the safety of their trade products and extended the Great Wall of China to ensure the protection of the trade route (Wikipedia, 2016). Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe, the Horn of Africa and Arabia, opening long-distance, political and economic relations between the civilizations. Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and religions, syncretic philosophies, and various technologies, as well as diseases, also travelled along the Silk Routes. In addition to economic trade, the Silk Road served as a means of carrying out cultural trade among the civilizations along its network. The main traders during antiquity were the Chinese, Arab, Indians, Persians, Somalis, Greeks, Syrians, Romans, Armenians, and Bactrians, and from the 5th to the 8th century the Sogdians. In June 2014, UNESCO designated the Chang'an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site. The Eurasian Land Bridge (a railway through China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia) is sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road. The last link in one of these two railway routes was completed in 1990, when the railway systems of China and Kazakhstan connected at Alataw Pass (Alashan Kou). In 2008, the line was used to connect the cities of Ürümqi in China's Xinjiang Province to Almaty and Astana in Kazakhstan. Starting in July 2011 the line has been used by a freight service, which connects Chongqing, China with Duisburg, Germany, which cuts travel time for cargo from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train. As of 2013, Hewlett-Packard is moving large freight trains of laptop computers and monitors along this rail route. China has shifted from a centrally planned to a market based economy and experienced rapid economic and social development. It has lifted more than 500 million people out of poverty. The political economy of Chinese reforms and the shared gains between political elites and the private sector can be partially transplanted to the African context. Rural reforms in China helped accelerate economic takeoff through a restructuring of property rights and a boost to both savings rates and output. China has experimented with a degree of decentralization that could yield benefits for many Sub-Saharan African countries. Africa can learn from China " s policies toward autonomous areas and ethnic minorities to stave off conflict and China " s experiences and conduct developmental experiments for poverty alleviation goals. There are four developments in particular that merit attention: a focus on quality and not just price, the push to employ more local talent, greater interest in building local capacities and diversifying risk (World Bank, 2010). Today, a more vigorous debate has begun about the nature of ties with China. Hyperactive Chinese involvement is undoubtedly helping address the infrastructure shortcomings that hold up growth. Considering the drive, characteristics and dynamics of the Chinese economic assault, the fundamental question facing nations is not whether they have options for participating in the process of balanced benefits in the spirit of true globalism; it is indeed how they wish to integrate into the process and at which speed, to be partners and actors. Africa needs to assemble the required mettle to change power relations in its dealings with China. The continent " s relations with China must be tailored to yield commensurate benefits. African countries must use existing safety valves, like constitutional clauses and parliamentary agreements, to their advantage (Khalid, 2016:2).
There is considerable debate over how and in what form Central Asian (CA) states should conduct relations among each other and with other post-Soviet states. The notion of the “Silk Road” has become one of the symbols of extended economic and political cooperation. Notably, however, Japan (Silk Road Diplomacy, 1996–1999), China (One Belt, One Road [OBOR] or the Belt and Road initiative [BRI]) and South Korea (Silk Road Strategy, 2011) have used the rhetoric of reviving the Silk Road to imply closer engagement with the CA region but with different connotations. This paper focuses on the formation of this discourse of engagement with the CA region through the notion of the Silk Road in China, South Korea and Japan and raises the following questions: What are the approaches that facilitate the most effective ways of engaging CA states under this “Silk Road” rhetoric? What are the principles that have detrimental effects on the successes and failures of the engagement of China, Japan and South Korea? The primary objective of this paper is to address these questions and to stimulate debate among both academics and policy makers on the formats of engagement and cooperation in Eurasia.
The Silk Route: A New Development Model?
Journal of Globalization Studies
This article is about the significant development actually and visibly shown by the Popular Republic of China which, since several decades ago, has shown to the world, through its government and people, that orderly and wellplanned work, with concrete goals and through several reforms along with a permanent strife against corruption, always looking towards future, has transformed China into a fully undeniable global power, an object of admiration in some cases, of concern in other cases and, always, an object of won-dering… What has this millenary nation done to be regarded, in the 21 st century, as the second (maybe the first, already) economy in the world?