Prof. Min Ye Writes in FP on China’s Silk Road Strategy
As Beijing hosts the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, Assistant Professor Min Ye of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University publishes an online piece in ForeignPolicy.com discussing ‘China’s Silk Road Strategy’ Nov. 10, 2014), arguing that this is Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s real answer to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She explains this, thus:
The United States and China are locked in behind-the-scenes competition over free trade agreements. The United States is promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free trade agreement including 12 nations but excluding China. Beijing, in a move many see as a push against the U.S. rebalance to Asia, hopes to garner support for the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), a less sweeping agreement that would include China.
However, she adds that ” the modest FTAAP isn’t China’s real answer to the immense TTP:
Instead, it’s the “New Silk Road strategy,” a sprawling set of trade and infrastructure agreements proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which aims to foster free trade — and bolster Chinese soft power — with China’s neighbors to the west and southeast. The plan, a reference to the trade route connecting China to Europe via Central Asia in the seventh to tenth centuries, aspires to deepen linkages between China and its neighbors via trade, investment, energy, infrastructure, and internationalization of China’s currency, the renminbi.
The Silk Road strategy’s ambitious vision aligns with Beijing’s goals much more closely than the TPP, which is a reflection of the U.S. international trade model writ large… It’s not only that the Silk Road plan is a better fit for China. Leading Chinese political thinkers also see the TPP as an enterprise with the potential to weaken China economically and politically.
Prof. Min Ye concludes by pointing out that:
This year’s APEC may seem to present a dramatic push-and-pull between Obama’s TPP and Xi’s FTAAP, but for the real battle for influence over global trade, look to China’s new Silk Road strategy.
Read the full article by prof. Min Ye: China’s Silk Road Strategy.