The Chinese Are Coming

Beijing is laying out a grand economic design aimed at global supremacy. The one belt, one road initiative is just a part of it

- Ananth Krishnan

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of strategy”

—Sun Tzu in The Art of War

A PROJECT FOR THE CENTURY was how China’s leader Xi Jinping described on May 14 his grand plan to remake the world. In the presence of 29 foreign leaders in Beijing, Xi unveiled his pet initiative, the rather harmless-sounding One Belt, One Road (OBOR), which seeks to establish Beijing at the centre of the world’s economy through a series of massive infrastructure projects linking China with the world. India was the only major absentee—the opacity surrounding China’s goals, coupled with India’s concerns over China’s projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), prompted Delhi to boycott the summit.

If OBOR was named so with the hope of signalling to the world China’s benign intentions, the country’s leading thinkers in Beijing are aware that a lot more is at stake. Through OBOR, China is for the first time staking claim to global leadership. With the United States, under Donald Trump, distracted, many in Beijing see a China moment, and for the rest of the world a decision to be made.

“Two alternatives await us,” says leading Chinese thinker Zheng Bijian. “One is trade protectionism. The other is to guide globalisation into a new phase and reform the economic and political order. The first alternative takes the world back to square one and is unthinkable. We are at a historical turning point, and we must embrace this new phase.”

China is careful enough to state it doesn’t aspire for global leadership. But the view among diplomats and China-watchers is that the ‘guiding globalisation’ that Zheng speaks of is merely a euphemism for reshaping the world order and placing China firmly at its summit.