Стратегия «жемчужной нити» как мера для реализации инициативы китайского морского шелкового пути

Chinese Maritime Silk Road of the 21th Century

"All rivers flow into the sea; everything returns to its owner."

This old Chinese saying is the key to the Chinese strategy of the New Silk Road (NSR) or One Belt, One Road (OBOR), with the official goal of creating a public good for all of humanity, the main beneficiary of which is, above all, the creator [Алиханов, 2017]. The strategy was officially renamed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or Belt and Road (B&R)) in 2016 and was written into the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, showing how dedicated Beijing is to developing the project as a way to ensure China’s economic influence [EFSAS, 2019, P. 3].

BRI was launched by President of People’s Republic of China (PRC) Xi Jinping in 2013, which aims to connect Asia and Europe via the Middle East (ME), Africa and Central Asia (CA) through a series of vast networks of transcontinental railways, pipelines, ports, airports and other infrastructure projects [Molavi, 2018]. The idea of the NSR is to create both the Economic Belt of the Silk Road (EBSR) - rail and roads running through CA and onto Europe complemented by the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century (MSR) - ports and shipping lanes that will connect Southeast Asian States and countries which border the wider Indian Ocean. Together, both sections make up the BRI - an extensive global trade project that will potentially encompass a region of over 70 countries with a total population of 4.4 billion people [ISDP, 2016, P. 1]. The funding pledged for this ambitious project is an additional US $124 billion including assistance, grants, and loans to countries within the BRI. Various estimates for the capital needs of the projects under the BRI range from US $ 2 trillion to US $ 8 trillion for an indefinite period [Sharma, A., 2019, P. 2].

At the Chinese B&R forum in 2019, it was announced that Chinese companies had invested US $ 90 billion in B&R countries, which is a lot, but this is only a drop in the ocean. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) New Development Bank have US $ 150 billion at their disposal, and the Silk Road Fund (SRF) for infrastructure – US $ 40 billion. Chinese companies can gain access just under US $ 600 billion from the state-controlled financial sector [Sharma, M., 2019].

The idea of establishment the MSR was revealed during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s attendance at the 16th ASEAN+China summit in Brunei (9-10 October, 2013) and Xi Jinping’s speech in the Indonesian parliament (3 October, 2013) [Szczudlik-Tatar, 2013, P. 3]. At the Indonesian legislature, Chinese President particularly talked about the sea path of the Silk Road (SR) [Bai, 2013, P. 12] and called for establishing a MSR adapted to the needs of the 21st century. Premier Li said that since ancient times, Southeast Asia has been an important center of the ancient sea Silk Road, China will strengthen maritime cooperation with the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and use the China-ASEAN Maritime Cooperation Fund, founded by Government of China, for the active development of maritime partnerships under the MSR [Ruan, 2014]. This coincides with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s pledge to upgrade the Gold Decade (2000-2010) of China-ASEAN cooperation into a Diamond Decade [Zhou, 2014].

Relying mainly on ASEAN countries, the MSR should contribute to the development of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and further strengthen China's commitment to supporting the implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity [Rahardjo, 2015, P. 13].1 As part of its comprehensive transport strategy, China intends to solve the problems of financing the ASEAN railways with the help of the SRF, creating transport corridors through Asia [Beauchamp-Mustafaga, 2015, P. 3].

MSR covers more than 20 countries, varying in size, development, history, religion, language and culture, and passes through the regions that are sensitive to international strategy and has complex geopolitics [Li, C., 2014, P. 9]. The main attention in the planning of MSR was `paid` to close cooperation in the field of finance and economics, infrastructure projects (joint construction of roads and railways), expansion of cooperation in the field of security, technology and science [Szczudlik-Tatar, 2013, P. 3].