Written by: R. James Ferguson, Director, Centre for East-West Cultural and Economic Studies and Assistant Professor, Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Australia Publication.He conducts research and publishes in the areas of Asian,Eurasian, European and Australasian International Relations,Chinese cultural systems,human and comprehensive security, Islamic governance, environmental politics, and regional organisations.

Recent work has included an emphasis on international regimes, China's view of regional and global order, and new patterns of global governance.

 

Themes include:

-International regimes, competition and cooperation

-China's engagement in regional and global order

-New patterns of international and regional governance

-Chinese, Russian and European interactions across Eurasia

-ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific region

-Analysis of identity politics and power networks

-History trends shaping foreign and security policies

Published:31 August 2018

ISBN:9781786433817

eISBN:9781786433824

Extent:352 pp

Review

This book provides an overview of China’s engagement with Eurasia, focusing on 21st century challenges that will need careful management over coming decades. China’s emerging role goes well beyond the standard ‘geopolitics’ of the Eurasian ‘chess board’.

 

China is seeking to evolve new agenda and relationships that avoid the dilemma posed by its slowing economy and potential containment by the United States. This will be a challenging task given divergent perceptions of global issues by the EU, Russia and China, and the changing Eurasian balance of power only partly moderated by bilateral dialogues and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Here the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be a necessary but complex task, forcing China into intensified engagement with conflict prone regions across Eurasia, thereby posing several environmental, developmental and strategic dilemmas. PRC has a tight time-frame to establish itself as an essential arbiter in Eurasian integrative processes and emerge as a sustainable global power.

A brief reference to the first chapter

 China, Eurasia and Global Order This book provides and overview of the background of China’s engagement with Eurasia, focusing on major issues that are emerging in the 21st century - issues that will need careful management over the next two decades. The Eurasian aspects of China's evolution into a global power (and its attendant risks) have not been systematically or sufficiently analysed in popular or academic publications, owing in large measure to a tendency to position these debates alongside recurring China-threat narratives. China’s emerging role goes well beyond the standard ‘geopolitics’ of the Eurasian ‘chess board’. China is seeking to evolve new agenda and relationships that avoid the dilemma posed by its ‘maturing’ (and slowing) economy and potential containment by the United States. Likewise, China’s current leadership has no wish to be captured by Russia’s assertive security policies. This gives the People’s Republic of China (PRC) a tight time-frame to establish itself as an essential arbiter in Eurasian integrative processes.

Ongoing tensions between the United States and China have overshadowed the great drama that will be played out to mid-century: China’s potential evolution from an Asian regional player to a ‘new type’ of global power. The sustainability of this transition rests largely on how well China manages its ‘Eurasian footprint’, including economic, environmental and security factors. This will be a challenging task given divergent perceptions of global issues by Russia and China and a changing balance of power only partly moderated by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The integration of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road into ‘One Belt, One Road’ – now officially translated into English as the Belt and Road Initiative (see B?rzi?a-?erenkova 2016) – will be a complex task, forcing China into intensified engagement with conflict prone regions including wider Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. This is complicated by the failure of any single organization to manage Eurasian affairs as a whole: the SCO’s leadership potential is reduced by different visions of the organization by China and Russia, while Russia’s key regional organizations (the Collective Security Treaty Organization, CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, EEU) are largely aligned towards the west of the Eurasian landmass.

Improved relations with other developing powers are central to China’s future agenda. China has been keen to use a nuanced vision of functional multipolarity as a way of not only reducing tensions with the United States but also positioning its future relations with Russia in a wider context. The BRICS grouping, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), is useful in this agenda, but by itself is not enough to ensure a multipolar Eurasia. Here, a new wave of positive diplomacy towards the European Union (EU) and key European states, including Germany, the UK and France, has provided a more comprehensive approach to Eurasian cooperation. In spite of past tensions (over human rights and trade issues), China is increasingly seen as a potential partner in dealing with a wide range of governance issues which are central to Europe, e.g. global economic growth, sustainable development, environmental management, the continued stabilization of Afghanistan, and future energy security. However, a more active phase of managed and interdependent multipolarity may need to emerge before a balanced multilateral system can emerge in wider Eurasia, let alone on the global stage.

China’s prosperity and security rests on its ability to moderate these aspects of the ‘Eurasian process.’ The sustainability of China’s global role depends on how well it can manage new cooperative relationships that have so far eluded Russia and the United States. The book addresses these issues by first assessing how well China’s ‘Eurasian footprint’ can serve as a basis for its evolution as a cooperative global power without ensnaring it into security dilemmas attendant on the need to reform regional and global institutions (see Chapter 1). Chapter Two assesses two crucial organizations that provide important but limited security roles, the Russian-lead CSTO and the SCO, where China has more influence. The need for these groups, and their operational insufficiency, is demonstrated in Chapter Three, where great power miscalculations have led to ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, uneven or fragile governance across Central Asia, and set limits on Eurasian economic integration. These limits are influenced by different visions of future order held by China and Russia, in spite of their strategic partnership and evolving leadership dynamics (as explored in Chapters 4 and 5). Chapter Five analyses the BRI as an economic and geopolitical project, now linked to security, sustainability and environmental concerns in an expanded network that will have enduring influence on the future global economy. An important aspect of this dynamic is the deepening engagement with Europe as a potential co-balancer in Eurasian affairs, thereby reducing tensions that have emerged with both Russia and the US (Chapter 7). The outcomes of these processes are explored in Chapter Eight and Chapter Nine, with China needing to engage in serious institutional learning to avoid a dystopic Eurasian future or a new bipolar order dividing Eurasian networks from US-alliances. If Eurasia is not merely a Chinese affair, then in turn China’s interests and needs have now become a global concern.

Book chapters

Chapter 1 - China’s Eurasian Footprint

- China as the Emerging Eurasian Power

- Xinjiang and the West: China’s Problematic Path to Wider Central Asia

- China’s Strategic Choices and Eurasian Dilemmas

Chapter 2 - Dangerous Frontiers: Beyond the CSTO and SCO

- The Risk of Unfrozen Conflicts - The CSTO: An Unbalanced Russian Security Framework

- The SCO: From Security Dialogue to Enhanced Cooperation

- Partial Pivots and Limited Eurasian Integration

Chapter 3 - Great Power Miscalculations in Wider Central Asia

- The Superficial Stability of Central Asian Regimes

- The Afghanistan Debacle - Non-Traditional Security Threats Become the Norm

- Competing Narratives of Empowerment

Chapter 4 - China and Russia: Divergent Visions of Multipolarity

- China’s Shift to Dynamic Multilateralism

- Russia’s Dream of a Multipolar World Order

- Interdependent Multilateralism Versus Dysfunctional Multipolarity

Chapter 5 - The Putin Timeframe: The Limits of Geopolitics

- Putin’s Governance Revolution: Once More From the Top

- The Emerging Course for a ‘New Old Russia’

- Sino-Russian Relations: Beyond Xi and Putin

- Strategic Leverage: Changing Sino-Russian Dynamics

Chapter 6 - Linking the Silk Roads: The Belt and Road Initiative as the Driver of Eurasian Integration

- From Geo-Economics to Geopolitics

- Over-Funding or Under-Funding the Belt and Road Initiative - Security and Sustainable Development

- Twenty-First Century Supra-Regionalism

Chapter 7 - China and the EU: The Hidden Balancer

- Different Powers, Converging Agenda

- EU-China Dialogues and Dynamics

- Germany, Eastern Europe, and the PRC

- Europe as the Capstone of BRI

Chapter 8 - The Eurasian End-Game: From Regional Roles to Sustainable Global Power

- The Global Risks of Failure - China’s Institutional Learning

- The Eurasian Heartland versus the Euro-Atlantic Order

Chapter 9 - Conclusion: Dystopic China or Balanced Order-Building? Bibliography Index