China is setting up for a return as a superpower under Xi Jinping. By all definitions, Beijing cleverly demonstrates greater economic and political power in Asia to establish itself as a great global actor. The Chinese road to global supremacy runs through ambitious but articulate strategies like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is worth noting here that China has successfully triumphed over colonial exploitation moving from a Soviet-style Communist state to an independent socialist regime with a mixed economic system.

The mammoth economic growth over the last 70 years has allowed China to achieve great economic and political success both at home and abroad; however, this hasn’t been sufficient to ensure China a place of global leadership. Today, China is truly a global player: it is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC); a factory of world products; a center of the world supply chain; and a major part of the global political economy. Yet, China is not a comprehensive power of the U.S. or the Soviet style.

Although Beijing has achieved colossal economic weight to pursue its interests abroad, it seeks more than economic power and desires to restore its lost glories known as “Chinese Dreams” and to become a superpower. Beijing’s SCO and BRI framework should be studied within this perspective to understand its grand strategy in Central Asia, an important zone of world geopolitics.

How China uses the SCO

Let’s discuss the SCO framework first. For China, the SCO has been conceptually used both as an institution and a region. Initiated as “Shanghai Five,” the necessity of the SCO became quite apparent for China by the end of the 20th century. China initiated the foundation of the first multilateral organization named the “Shanghai Cooperation Organization” in 2001.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of newly independent states with porous borders of around 3,000 kilometers had largely worried China, which had virtually no connections with the region until 1992. This organization at times was defined by external observers such as Matthew Brummer and Richard Weitz as “the world’s least-known and least analyzed multilateral group, an OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] with [nuclear] bombs and a prospective anti-American Asian NATO.”

Shanghai Cooperation Organization was created to cater to Chinese needs for creating “New Regionalism.”

Others like Stephen Blank and Simon Tisdall have dubbed the organization as “either an ineffectual and shallow regional talk-fest or a transparent cloak for the maintenance and expansion of malignant Russian and Chinese influence in Central Asia.”

However, those who understand its significance and the process of its evolution trace its roots to Chinese initiatives taken in the 1990s. The advocators of this perception, such as Chung-Chian Teng and Niklas Swanstrom, were quick to unravel the Chinese design behind the SCO’s foundation. For them, China is the principal driver of the SCO, and the organization was created to cater to Chinese needs for creating “New Regionalism, establishing vassal relations between China and Central Asia or as geopolitical maneuverings.”

Scholars like Shirley Z. Yu have put forth the notion that the world would witness a paradigm shift in three decades and have attributed this to the successful operation of the BRI. In 2018, Yu wrote that the “BRI will serve as the transitory grand strategy between 2013 and around 2050 when China reaches its modernity according to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘Two Centenaries Plans’, China would govern the world with its version of world order and will establish a Sino-centric world i.e., Pax Sinica.”

China needs to develop strong regional leadership with the help of its political relations with Central Asian states.

For that, China needs to develop strong regional leadership with the help of its political relations with Central Asian states and the economic infrastructure Belt and Road Initiative as a mechanism to assert its position abroad and influence on a global scale.

Therefore, it is obvious that the Chinese observers are busy providing a very rosy picture of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative as announced by Xi Jinping at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan in 2013 depicting the “Belt” as the land trade route connecting China with Central Asia, Russia, and Europe, and the “Road” as the maritime route via the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific.

To be precise, unrest in China’s western province Xinjiang and its bordering with the Islamic republics of Central Asia, which are rich in oil and gas; the vacuum created in the region with the retreat of Moscow; and the military withdrawal of Washington from Afghanistan prompted the Chinese to come up with a developmental strategy through which they can address the country’s core concerns of threat of terrorism, instability in the wider region, and effective exploitation of the regional hydrocarbon resources.

In a nutshell, the BRI can be viewed as China’s geopolitical power play under President Xi rather than an economic and infrastructural development project. By pumping massive money to attain geopolitical advantages for Beijing, this initiative is intended to influence the emerging world market, to secure energy resources, to promote the Chinese currency, to create a Sino-centric Asian order, to counter other great powers’ influence, and to strengthen ties with neighboring countries.

As far as Sino-Russian cooperation in Central Asia is concerned, it is merely symbolic and largely U.S.-centric. The cooperation is, in fact, governed by the spirit of “the rival of my rival is my partner.” Although Sino-Russian collaboration through two non-western cooperative initiatives like the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the BRI have overshadowed the American influence in the region, the unprecedented rise of China in the region has certainly unsettled Moscow in its hinterland. Central Asia was the backyard of Russia until the arrival of China, and Moscow enjoyed enormous strategic advantages from this arrangement.

The Sino-Russian cooperation in Central Asia is merely symbolic and largely U.S.-centric and is governed by the spirit of “the rival of my rival is my partner.”

But with massive Chinese economic investments and integrative infrastructure projects making inroads into Central Asian countries, Moscow slowly but steadily has started losing ground in its so-called near abroad. In fact, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has strengthened Beijing’s position in Central Asia and unprecedentedly improved its rule-making ability in the region.

China is moving forward under the leadership of Xi Jinping with the “Chinese Dream” as its thrust to establish an ever-stronger Chinese nation characterized by wealth and power in military terms. The Chinese agenda of a Sino-centric Asian order on the premise of “Two Fronts and One Circle” will definitely irk Russia if not now very soon.

When you’ve been punched in the face, it’s a good idea to gather your wits before returning to the fray. Still dazed from the Afghan war, the Biden team is already speeding toward even more dangerous confrontations in multiple directions—this time, with China in their sights instead of the older jihadist foes. American strategists are focusing on bigger targets across a wide arch of distant lands and waters—South and Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, and the western Pacific. As Washington struggles to regain its footing, we should try to point its leaders toward a better path—one leading to global development and cooperation instead of endless brinkmanship and more pointless wars. The name of that path is the New Silk Road.

The New Silk Road is an audacious vision that might have originated in the United States. Its spirit is American to the core: a transcontinental and transoceanic venture, marshalling the energies and resources of billions of people around the world in an astonishing effort to unite societies and markets in a single human community. Breathtaking. Foolhardy. Utopian. Exactly—that’s why it’s American to the core.

So, to our shell-shocked comrades in Washington: Pause a while, open your well-trained minds to a bit of brainstorming that can advance fundamental American dreams that, today, are universal yearnings and help turn them into concrete achievements. Join the New Silk Road, share in the credit of leading the greatest humanitarian enterprise of our time, and take your turn in steering it in the best possible direction.

Follow our European and Asian allies in making the New Silk Road a broader partnership that embraces international standards of human rights, environmental protection, and transparency. Present the developing countries of the global South with a stunning array of world-class technology and finance that transcends ideology and Great Power politics.

In other words, work to improve China’s Belt and Road Initiative instead of trying to subvert it, duplicate it or ignore it. The venture has gained too much momentum to be stopped and a competing effort won’t muster adequate resources, either economic or political. Forget about trying to mount a hostile takeover. Buy into an ongoing concern that has a promising future, but is still malleable enough to serve collective interests instead of the imperial ambitions of the Beijing bureaucrats who launched it.

Work to improve China’s Belt and Road Initiative instead of trying to subvert it.

The Chinese may have originated the project, but they don’t own it. In fact, the faster it spreads the more it defies their control and spawns demands for wider participation in decision-making—not just from other governments and international bankers, but from ordinary citizens and civil society groups around the world. Many of China’s showcase projects have been stymied or revamped in the face of well-organized protests from myriad local groups—tribes in Pakistan, fishermen in Indonesia, miners in Zambia, farmers in Myanmar, urban youth in Nigeria, shopkeepers in Iran, engineers in Mexico, and many others.

Since the project’s inception, Beijing has insisted that the New Silk Road is open to every country that wants to participate. The United States should hold China to that pledge and encourage America’s friends to do the same. This would be a welcome about-face from years of futile efforts by presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden to discourage European and Asian countries from partnering with the multinational banks and consortiums that have sprung up to support New Silk Road projects. Washington’s blocking tactics have failed; it’s time to follow in the path of the many allies who took their own counsel and left America on the sidelines.

If the United States wants to display a new willingness to collaborate with neighbors and adversaries alike, there is one enterprise with a potential impact—both symbolic and practical—that supersedes all others. Chinese engineers are drawing up plans for a high-speed rail corridor connecting the entire coastal rim of the north Pacific.

The proposed route starts in northeast China, passing along the shores of Siberia into Alaska and, then, down the west coast of Canada and the U.S. all the way to California. The most spectacular feature is a possible tunnel across the Bering Strait—a fifty-mile underwater link, nearly twice the length of the Channel Tunnel between England and France.

Many Siberia-Alaska ventures have been floated since the nineteenth century, usually dismissed as fantasies worthy of Jules Verne or Ferdinand de Lesseps. Today, however, there is greater interest than ever. Trans-Arctic shipping is gradually emerging as a realistic shortcut between Pacific and Atlantic ports. Air travel is falling in favor because of rising cost and alarm over pollution. High speed trains are commonplace and an inter-hemispheric railway is just one of several megaprojects competing for attention and financing on every continent.

Many nations have concrete reasons to be cautious in joining the New Silk Road—particularly concerns over debt service, human rights, labor practices, and the environment.  However, for the United States, the chief hang-up is psychological and ideological. How can Americans feel they are still number one in the world if they have to rub shoulders with so many other chefs in the same kitchen? Wouldn’t it be admitting defeat to sign up for an enterprise they didn’t start and can never dominate?

Self-doubt should not stand in the way. Americans know perfectly well how to use their power to advance the greater good. They’ve demonstrated that many times before and they are more than equal to the task of showing it again in even more convincing ways. By combining their talents with those of others, they can multiply that force and aim it at higher goals and more inspiring ideals.

Westerners who have lived in Pacific Asian countries and absorbed their daily rhythms feel the pervasive electricity in every nerve. The sense of optimism and confidence in the future is something they internalize and learn to take for granted—until they return to the United States and Europe where they’re quickly jolted by the seemingly unnatural rust, gloom, and obesity that creeped ahead in their absence.

For Americans, participating in the New Silk Road should not be seen as a defeat or loss of standing in the international order but rather as a chance to lead in bettering the world. The task of managing the New Silk Road should not be left to a single society. By encouraging partnerships instead of hierarchies, the developed and developing countries can share both benefits and burdens more equitably and, we hope, more peacefully.