Understanding China

The Silk Road and the Communist Manifesto

Peter Nolan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138743298
• eBook ISBN: 9781317372998
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

If the West wishes to understand China better, it needs to appreciate the depth of thought and range of debate that is taking place within the Chinese political system. China is entering a new and complicated phase in its development. From a minnow in the 1970s it has become a mighty player on the global stage. It is likely that its role in the global economy and international relations will continue to expand. Today, despite its vast size, China is still a developing country. The country's leaders in the Communist Party of China face innumerable policy challenges. Two key issues facing the Party are its role in the Asia-Pacific region and the ideological legacy from Karl Marx. The CPC is engaged in deep research, debate and reflection on both of these questions. This study provides a unique, in-depth insight into these critically important issues for the evolution of China's political economy.

1 The Silk Road by Land and Sea¹ Yi Dai Yi Lu （一带一路）

DOI: 10.4324/9781315672380-2

In 1987, twenty exquisite pieces of colored glaze were excavated at the underground chamber of Famen Temple in Shaanxi, China. These East Roman Islamic relics were brought into China during the Tang Dynasty. Marveling at these exotic relics, I thought hard and concluded that as we approach the world’s different civilizations, we should not limit ourselves to just admiring the exquisiteness of the objects involved. Rather, we should try to learn and appreciate the cultural significance behind them. Instead of only satisfying ourselves with their artistic presentation of people’s life in the past, we should do our best to breathe new life into their inherent spirit.

(President Xi Jinping, Speech at the UNESCO headquarters, 28 March 2014)

Introduction

In 2011–12 the United States announced a major shift of strategic direction towards an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region:

US economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, while the US military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.

(US Department of Defense, 2012: 2)(emphasis added)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton affirmed that ‘the twenty-first century will be America’s Pacific century, just like previous centuries have been’ (Clinton, 2012). She expanded on the shift in US strategic direction:

The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq and the United States will be right at the centre of the action … One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise – in the Asia Pacific region.

(Clinton, 2011)

Constructing a network of Asian political and military alliances is a critically important part of US international relations strategy in the decades ahead. The United States believes that its renewed involvement in Asia is vital to the region’s future:

The region is eager for our leadership and our business – perhaps more than at any time in modern history. We are the only power with a network of strong alliances in the region, no territorial ambitions and a long record of providing for the common good … Our challenge now is to build a web of relationships across the Pacific that is as durable and as consistent with American interests and values as the web we have built across the Atlantic.

(Clinton, 2011)

Until around 200 years ago Europe’s knowledge of Central and Southeast Asia, as well as China itself, was extremely limited and mainly acquired second-hand through the intermediary of trade with East Asia via the Silk Road by Land and Sea. When Captain Cook made his famous voyages of exploration between 1768 and 1779 the Asia-Pacific region was hardly known to Europeans. When Britain’s North American colonies announced their independence from Britain in 1776, the United States consisted of a small group of colonial settlers huddled together in the eastern fringes of the vast continent of North America.² The west coast state of California, which looks out on the Pacific Ocean, only became part of the ‘United States’ in 1850.

China’s President Xi Jinping has made the policy of ‘The New Silk Road by Land and Sea’, which connects China with the West, a key part of China’s international relations. On 7 September 2013, President Xi proposed to build a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ during his speech at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. On 3 October 2013, he proposed to build a ‘Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road’ during his speech at the Indonesian House of Representatives. For over 2,000 years China has had a deep inter-relationship with the surrounding regions of Asia. China has had extensive long-term trade and cultural interactions with Central Asia through Xinjiang and with Southeast Asia through the Southern Sea (Nan Hai). Xinjiang and the Southern Sea constitute China’s ‘doorway’ into Central and Southeast Asia, respectively.

In 2013 President Xi visited Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The visit was especially significant, as no US president has visited the post-Soviet states of Central Asia. President Xi also visited Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Indonesia. In spring 2014 he visited Europe. In a sequence of speeches during these visits he clarified China’s conception of the bridge between China and Europe along the New Silk Road by Land and Sea. He paid close attention to the importance of infrastructure development, including ports, airports, roads, rail, water, electricity and telecommunications. These are vital in order to stimulate commercial relations, which are the foundation of enhanced mutual understanding.

In each of his visits President Xi Jinping stressed the importance of an appreciation of history for mutual understanding:

For any country in the world, the past always holds the key to the present and the present is always rooted in the past. Only when we know where a country has come from, could we possibly understand why the country is what it is today, and only then could we realize in which direction it is heading.

(Xi Jinping, 2014b)

He emphasized the contribution that commercial relations make to cultural inter-action and peaceful development. He repeatedly drew attention to the importance of enhanced mutual understanding of culture for peaceful development:

History tells us that only by interacting with and learning from others can a civilization enjoy full vitality. If all civilizations can uphold inclusiveness, the so-called ‘clash of civilizations’ will be out of the question and the harmony of civilizations will become reality.

(Xi Jinping, 2014a)

China and Europe stand at either end of the New Silk Road. His speeches drew attention to the long connections between China and Europe from ancient times along both the land and the sea routes: ‘We need to build a bridge of common cultural prosperity linking the two major civilizations of China and Europe. China represents in an important way the Eastern civilization, while Europe is the birthplace of the Western civilization’ (Xi Jinping, 2014a). In his visit he emphasized the contribution that the spread of ideas from China along the Silk Road had made to European development:

China’s Four Great Inventions, namely, papermaking, gunpowder, movable-type printing and compass, led to changes in the world, including the European Renaissance. China’s philosophy, literature, medicine, silk, porcelain and tea reached the West and became part of people’s daily life. The Travels of Marco Polo generated a widespread interest in China.

(Xi Jinping, 2014a)

President Xi stressed the importance of Central Asia and Southeast Asia as bridges to link China and Europe: ‘A bridge not only makes life more convenient; it could also be a symbol of communication, understanding and friendship. I have come to Europe to build, together with our European friends, a bridge of friendship and cooperation across the Eurasian continent’ (Xi Jinping, 2014b).

The Land Route: Xi Yu, the Western Region

In the second century BC, China began working on the Silk Road leading to the Western Regions. In 138 BC and 119 BC, Envoy Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty made two trips to those regions, spreading the Chinese culture there and bringing into China grape, alfalfa, pomegranate, flax, sesame and other products. The Tang Dynasty saw dynamic interactions between China and other countries. According to historical documents, the dynasty exchanged envoys with over seventy countries, and Chang’An, the capital of Tang, bustled with envoys, merchants and students from other countries. Exchanges of such a magnitude helped the spread of the Chinese culture to the rest of the world and the introduction into China of the cultures and products from other countries.

(Xi Jinping, Speech at the UNESCO Headquarters, 2014)

Economic Geography

The ‘Western Region’ (Xi Yu), or ‘Greater Turkestan’, is the heartland of the Silk Road by Land. It spans a territory that stretches for around 1,000 miles from Yu Men Guan (‘Jade Gate’) in China’s Gansu province to the Oxus River (Amu Darya) in western Uzbekistan. The source of true jade stone (nephrite) is in the mountain slopes and river beds around Khotan, in the heart of Xinjiang. The Western Region is divided in two by the Tian Shan-Kun Lun Mountain Ranges. ‘Inner Turkestan’ in Xinjiang and ‘Outer Turkestan’ in Central Asia have been intimately inter-connected for over 2,000 years through trade and inter-mingling of the diverse people who live in the ‘Greater Turkestan’ region. The key vehicle of trade for over 2,000 years was the Bactrian two-humped camel. Large camel caravans typically had 2–3,000 camels in each.

Xinjiang forms the main part of ‘Inner Turkestan’. Owen Lattimore called it ‘China’s front door to the heart of Asia’ (Lattimore, 1950: ix), at its core is the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin. Water from the surrounding mountain chains feeds a series of oases around the perimeter of the Basin. China’s first systematic knowledge of Central Asia came through the Emperor Wu Di’s envoy, Zhang Qian, who made a thirteen-year journey (from 138–126 BC) through Xinjiang into Central Asia in order to report on the ‘Western Regions’. The First Great Wall was constructed in 221–206 BC, in order partly to protect the trade routes through Xinjiang to Central Asia. China’s entrance to the ‘Western Region’ was made through the ‘Jade Gate’ that was erected under the Han Dynasty emperor Wu Di, who ruled from 141–87 BC. The Jade Gate is located at the terminus of the Great Wall, at the western end of the Hexi Corridor, which is squeezed between the Gobi Desert to the north and the Tibetan massif to the south.

Although Xinjiang has ‘lain within China’s political horizon for more than two thousand years’, China’s control over Xinjiang has been intermittent (Lattimore, 1950: 5). During the Han (206 BC–220 AD), Tang (618–907 AD), Yuan (1271–1368) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, there were periods of direct Chinese control over Xinjiang, in which there was a ‘Pax Sinica’ in the relationship between Xinjiang and Central Asia. China only once made a serious effort to establish control over territories to the west of Xinjiang. In 751 AD the army of the Muslim Abbasid caliphate defeated the Chinese army in the battle of Talas, which is in today’s Kyrgyzstan. Thereafter, China did not attempt to expand its frontiers beyond the Tian Shan mountain range into Central Asia.

The Western Region has been linked by trade for millennia with the Middle East, Russia and India:

The pre-history of Inner Asia can now be traced all the way back to the Stone Age migrations and trade over the whole territory between Europe and China … Between the Black Sea and the Yellow River a very ancient line of travel, trade and culture diffusion traversed Inner Asia.

(Lattimore, 1950: 6)

The ancient trade routes survived successive political and religious upheavals. The inter-connected regions of Xinjiang and Central Asia constituted a ‘valve’ between China, India, the Middle East and Europe, ‘through which pulsated the movements of trade, migration and conquest’ (Lattimore, 1950: 7).

Transoxiana (ancient Sogdiana) is the core of Central Asia. It lies between the Amur Darya (Oxus) and Sri Darya (Jaxartes) Rivers, which contain the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, which are at the heart of the Silk Road. A wider definition of the ‘broad cultural zone’ of Central Asia includes Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and Xinjiang. At an early point in its history the region developed a complex irrigation system and urban settlements. In the first century BC, the Greek geographer Strabo described Central Asia as a ‘land of 1,000 cities’, including great urban trading and manufacturing centres surrounded by rich agricultural regions, such as Balkh, Merv and Afrasaib (Samarkand) (Starr, 2013: 29). The trade links of these cities reached India, the Middle East and China:

The distinctive achievement of Central Asia cities [in late antiquity] was to have combined the organizational sophistication required by large-scale irrigation systems with export-oriented agriculture and manufactures and to have nurtured large cadres of traders who travelled the world and businessmen who managed their trade.

(Starr, 2013: 35)

There were prosperous kingdoms around Transoxiana, which included Chorasmia (to the west), Bactria (to the south) and Ferghana (to the east). The region was open to invasion from all directions and has only intermittently been united under a single ruler. However, powerful common influences affected the whole region, mainly spread through trade. The most important of these were Buddhism and Islam, but they included also Zoroastrianism and Sufism.

The Buddhist Era

Trade

In a series of military campaigns in 73–49 BC China established complete control over the Tarim Basin, occupying the main cities around the Taklamakan Desert. Through the conquest of Xinjiang China became the ‘undisputed master of the Tarim’, which allowed the caravan route linking China to the West to be brought into regular use (Talbot-Rice, 1965: 175). The introduction of Chinese agricultural technology and irrigation techniques helped the development of a series of ‘oasis kingdoms’ on either side of the desert, including Hami, Turfan, Urumqi, Aksu, Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan. By the first century AD they were already important trading centres. The Silk Road followed routes to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert, as well as through Dzungaria, to the north of the Tian Shan Mountains.

The Silk Road developed during the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), when Europe was united under Roman rule.³ China’s imports from Central Asia consisted of a wide variety of goods, including warhorses, spices, fragrances, wine, precious stones (e.g., lapis lazuli), gold and silverware and glassware. Although silk textiles were for a long period China’s main export to Central Asia, the region had its own ancient textile industry, much of it for export. It developed its own silk textile industry, learning from Chinese technology. Moreover, Central Asia developed its own paper industry based also on Chinese technology, which Central Asia improved upon, substituting cotton fibre for silk (Starr, 2013: 46–7). The main body of China’s exports consisted of silk yarn and silk fabrics. By the end of the Zhou Dynasty (221 BC) the art of glass-making had spread to China from the West (Sullivan, 1964: 187).

In the final centuries of the Roman Empire, much of the trade across Central Asia passed through the Kushan kingdom. At its peak in the first to the third centuries AD, the kingdom united much of Central Asia as well as north-western India. A network of roads linked the Kushan kingdom with India, China and the Middle East: ‘By these means the Kushan Empire was brought into contact with the world’s great cultural centres. And wherever caravans and, more espe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Series Page 01
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Dedication 01
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• 1 The Silk Road by Land and Sea
• 2 Imperial archipelagos
• 3 The Communist Manifesto in the twenty-first century
• 4 Translating the term ‘class struggle’ into Chinese
• Index