Geo-economic strategy for Eurasia

The Chinese government can strive for the vision of establishing the Silk Road economic belt by making further efforts to build mutual trust and overcome doubts, such as making clear the difference between China's vision and those of Russia and the US, and stressing development and cooperation without economic integration; and by taking into consideration the different concerns of different countries and actively seeking converging economic interests with regional countries.

China welcomes Russia participating in the construction of the Silk Road economic belt. During the Sochi Winter Olympics, President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached a strategic consensus on the issue of connecting Russia's Trans-Eurasia railway with the Silk Road economic belt and the maritime Silk Road. This would lift China-Russia economic cooperation to a new level.

However, China must attach great importance to the actual effects and tangible benefits generated by the Silk Road economic belt, and work out detailed content and objectives and specific programs, starting with areas that can quickly reap benefits and face the least resistance, such as developing logistics and infrastructure and simplifying the visa system. On joint development programs, countries that have the capabilities should take the initiative and help underdeveloped countries.

China has been adhering to the principle of separating political and economic issues in the process of overseas economic cooperation and does not try to combine economic might and political influence. This is why China has already played an important role in Kyrgyzstan's economy, but failed to exert influence on its two consecutive political upheavals.

For China, the policy is beneficial to reassure target countries and facilitate the access of Chinese economy to these countries. But it also means there are uncontrollable political risks, such as those stemming from Ukraine, where China has invested billions of dollars in the special economic zone in Crimea and prepared Sevastopol to be the largest harbor in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the most important transport hub of the Silk Road economic belt. In order to realize its vision of a Silk Road economic road, China not only needs to do more in coordinating regional countries, it also needs to formulate its own top-level design.

Establishing the Silk Road economic belt does not just require simple economic cooperation, as a geo-economic concept it must be promoted to the level of national foreign economic strategy. It involves not only assessment and prevention of political risk, but also a rethinking of the basic principles for China's diplomacy. After all, security is the premise of all successful investment, and also the guarantee for all gains.

The author is a research assistant at the Institute of Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

(China Daily 06/19/2014 page8)