Squaring the circle: China’s “belt and road initiative” (BRI) and the ancient silk roads

Abstract

This chapter takes seriously the assumption that theory is very important in framing how one sees the world. The “China threat” thesis, for instance, arises out of Western fears. Moreover, US/Western views dominate via discursive acts of “epistemicide” that fix real-world problems via analyses of threats to Western dominance. In Asia, daily life and politics are about fluid problem solving. Time, space, knowledge, and identity need to be problematized. Armed with this spirit, Ling invites her readers to treat the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (or its earlier moniker “One Belt One Road”) as creative open political space. She begins with the premise that both the Silk-Road spirit and BRI hegemony operate simultaneously. Furthermore, this apparent contradiction can produce measures not only to evaluate the BRI but also to check it. These measures apply to the Chinese government as much as BRI recipients. Her methodology draws on Buddhism’s five-rank protocol for non-duality with duality. To have the former without the latter, Buddhism points out, would simply reinstate another duality. Here, the concept of Interbeing (??, tiep hien, attributed to philosopher Thich Nhat) figures crucially as a means of demonstrating and achieving non-duality with duality.