China's Choices For Strategic Pivots In The Belt And Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative(Also short for B&R Initiation)is one of the greatest pioneering works in China's strategic planning for development.Since proposed,it has attracted heated discussion and close attention from the media at home and abroad as well as International Politics,with academic papers growing to be prosperous and flourishing.But through reading and sorting out some related papers,I noticed that these studies are mainly confined in the perspective of Geopolitics while strategic theory is rarely used to explain.As a national grand strategy,the Belt and Road still has great academic potential worth of further exploitation,especially in the perspective of strategic theory.More than 60 countries have committed themselves on the participation of jointly building of the B&R Initiation until now.With limited strategic resources,China should fully consider how to make targeted resource allocation and effective docking with domestic policies and strategies of the countries alone the B&R so as to produce a lager geopolitical influence for mutual benefit and common security.Faced with this problem need to be solved urgently,policy promoters and executors may find some inspire and thoughts with the concept of strategic pivot states.To deal with the strategic resources of allocation along the B&R,my research starts form bilateral relations between China and pivot states and to analyze its necessity and strategic importance,the principles to choose proper pivot states based on China's strategic targets and the advantages and potential risks of these states.The ending point of this research is to bring forward some valuable suggestions for the establishment of China's strategic pivot states in the B&R Initiation.As a heritage of the definition made by Sir Halford Mackinder and Zbigniew Brezinski,my research combines some viewpoints of Chinese scholars,this paper defines strategic pivot states as countries with vital strategic resources,common interests and stable,predictable and risks resistant cooperative relationship with China.Other than another name for allies or bilateral partnership in general sense,strategic pivots share the same idea that China proposed to build strategic states in its neighborhood diplomacy.In terms of feasibility,strategic significance,cooperative willingness and potential risks,a proper strategic pivot should be sufficient to satisfy three fundamental requirements,namely strategic values,coordinative coherence with China in national interests and cooperative capacity and willingness.According to these three requirements,seven countries are candidates of China's strategic pivots,which are Russia,Indonesia,Thailand,Pakistan,Kazakhstan,Turkey and Germany.They are all influential states in its region and shares common appeal with China in upholding regional stability,speeding up investment facilitation and promoting infrastructure construction.More important is that there exit no territorial disputes or any structural conflicts between China and the seven countries.Just as every coin has two sides,there are more or less risks and challenges in the process of building up strategic pivots.In order to avoid potential risks and disadvantages,China should follow basic principles such as differentiation and long-term principle to respect sovereignty of pivot states and make full and balanced use of public diplomacy and formal diplomacy.Targeted measures for fostering pivot states and effectively manage risks may be divided into political,institutional,economic and cultural dimensions.China should make flexible combination of measures in different dimension in order to ensure that pivot states will give full play of its role in the joint construction of Belt and Road Initiation.Pivot states will provide strong support and guarantee for the construction of B&R initiative and prosperity of areas and countries alone it.On one hand,policy coordination of pivot states will save time and manpower cost for policy communication and enforcement and mobilize the enthusiasm to participate of other regional countries with the tremendous achievements of flagship and demonstration projects in pivot states.On the other hand,besides its positive influence on the realization of five major goals in policy coordination,facilities connectivity,unimpeded trade,financial integration and people-to-people bonds,pivot states can protect the security of energy transportation lines and Chinese oversea interests as well as bring out a broad new look for China's neighborhood diplomacy.In that way,the effects of pivot states will finally spill over its region and produce a positive chain reaction in the global scope.Furthermore,to apply the concept of pivot state in the research of B&R Initiation will bring a novel perspective for academic research and find more theoretical basis with strong explanation strengths for the reasonableness and feasibility of the Belt and Road Initiation.