The Rise Of "New Silk Road" Between China And The Islamic World

Until the rise of the West, the ancient Land and Maritime Silk Roads, as a channel of trade, cultural and faith communication connecting the Middle Kingdom and the Islamic world, had linked the most important geo-economic groups and been the chief cultural-religious ties in the world. However, time had witnessed a sharp decline of their importance for centuries. Since the inception of the21st century, the trade channel between China and the Islamic World has been reactivated: commodities, personnel and capitals are flowing quickly; strategic infrastructures, including transborder highways, railways and pipelines, have been built up; businessmen from the Middle East as well as new foreign communities(Fanfang) and mosques appear/revive in the China’s Coastal cities such as Yiwu and Guangzhou; the northwestern provinces like Xinjiang and Ningxia attain great potentials from the national policy of "Opening to the West"; China is also increasingly dependent on oil and gas from the Islamic World... All these indicate that the "New Silk Road" is emerging in both land and maritime spaces.If that is the case, how do we understand the conditions, logics and impacts of these important advances? This is the research question of this dissertation. Through the in-depth investigation of the geo-political conditions (maritime and land), trade flows (commodities and currencies), religious communication (Islamization) along the ancient Silk Roads, this dissertation obtains the historical vision and research perspectives which help perceive and take care of the rise of the New Silk Road. After consulting with the extant research achievements, this dissertation widely cites the original literatures, interviews and field study reports, and sketches and analyzes the external presentation and internal mechanism of the New Silk Road.This dissertation argues that the rise of the New Silk Road are both promoted and constrained by a dual logic:1) the global circulation of oil, US dollars and China-made products; and2) the existent structure and adjustment of China’s regional and geopolitical strategy. It is in this sense that the New Silk Roads are not simply the representation of the history, but are deeply embedded in the national development strategy of modern China and power structure of international political economies. Against this backdrop, the legacies of the ancient Silk Roads have been reactivated and reshuffled. The micro-investigation to Yiwu, Guangzhou, Xinjiang and Ningxia suggests that the faith bond between China and the Islamic World have greatly enhanced their economic ties and is good for the internal adjustment of China’s region and geopolitical strategy. At the same time, the double embedment of religious factors in the New Silk Roads also indicates that economic power and political territory are still among the elements that activate or constrain religious territory.The political influences of the New Silk Road include:1) with the deepening of strategic interests, the future China will inevitably involve in the complicated relations between different religious sects and between various political powers in the Islamic World. At the same time, the internal nation building and ethnic-religious issues of the Central Asian countries and the Middle East countries may also impose some spill-over effects on China’s growing overseas interests; and2) with the reorganization of demand-supply structure in international energy market and the rebalance of China and the US strategic focuses, China is increasingly facing challenges in terms of how to strategically interact and coordinate with the US on their Islamic strategies. Therefore, in this sense, this study of the New Silk Roads is just a preliminary and limited exploration of the globalization of China’s national interests.