
China's Silk Road Illusions - cageface
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/10/25/chinas-silk-road-illusions/
======
chiefalchemist
Of course such projects have risk. Of course there is historical baggage. But
while China is building an infrastructure legacy, the USA et al are using its
resources to wages multiple wars.

It's likely the USA's ROI (if you will) will be increased debt and enemies for
years to come. China on the other hand seems hardly interested in such things.
The outlook for their ROI is much brighter.

~~~
thablackbull
What we're witnessing today is a chicken-and-egg problem.

USA: America is the chicken. To be a modern country, it is hypothesized that
the developing country needs immediately adopt American systems, laws,
behavior & structures (the Washington consensus, etc.). In essence, and to
keep it short, the 'free-markets' will take over, and standards of living will
boom.

China: China is the egg, because they view modernization more or less
independent (i.e., democracy is not a necessary). As long as people are given
economic opportunities, the rest will evolve around it, systems and laws will
adapt and be in sync with the development. That is, it is willing to offer
lots of infrastructure and development opportunities to very poor countries,
and it is up to those countries to take the opportunity to exploit it.

As someone who enjoys studying economics, I think we're at one of the most
important points in time. USA & China, under two diametrically different
systems have been able to grow extremely large economically - that means more
data points to understand how to modernize other parts of the world.

~~~
ant6n
I'm not sure who's hypothesizing that a modern country has to emulate the US.
That's a kind of cold war point of view.

Many modern countries these days don't adopt the American system, but are
striving towards being modern, pluralist democracies with functioning social
systems, good governance, and sane judicial systems.

~~~
coldtea
> _I 'm not sure who's hypothesizing that a modern country has to emulate the
> US. That's a kind of cold war point of view._

It's also the de facto point of view of western countries, and the yardstick
by which they judge other countries.

(Including various "NGOs" and "world organizations" that measure the world
with the same yardstick and are influenced by the same ideologies and even
follow the same political goals).

~~~
ant6n
You're just repeating the point by the GP. So I'll simply repeat my point: the
US is becoming so dysfunctional that it cannot be called a modern democracy.
You have to look to other countries, who are becoming the guide.

If the US is the yard-stick for good governance, then we're all in big
trouble.

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dmix
I read the entire article and it's a great read.

It's fascinating how much we romanticize about past cultures and how much if
it is wrong. I love reading history and this almost always turns out to be the
case. Digging into any topic reveals they are always far more complex and
multilayered than the the common caricatures you find in media and in
generalized accounts.

China's popular understanding of the Silk Road seems to be way off, which is
inspiring bad policy descisions.

WW2 is another great example of this, no topic has had more books and films
than WW2 yet the perception vs reality is incredibly wide in popular US
culture.

Particularly with how Germany really lost the war to the Soviets in late 1942
when they failed to subdue Russia in the early invasion. The west
(US/UK/Canada) largely just cleaned up the mess from 1943-45, as the Nazi's
were fighting an impossible war after that point. Even then Russia did most of
the work in terms of raw combat. But even when this is noted in history books
Russia's success is largely dismissed as merely due to their fortunate
geography and willingness to treat their soldiers like expendable fodder. But
it was in fact largely due to Russia having better technology than Germany
(specifically better tanks/armour [1]) and the geography was far less of an
issue to the Nazi's in 1942, who unlike Napolean had highly mobile tanks,
aircraft, trains, and Blitzkrieg tactics.

The silk road and China's alleged cultural dominance seems to be no different.
Being of far less importance in actual trade volume and influence than is
commonly understood.

[1] particularily the KV-1 tank, which grinded Operation Barbarossa to a halt
[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kliment_Voroshilov_tank)

> In certain situations, even a single KV-1 or KV-2 supported by infantry was
> capable of halting large German formations. German tank armament was too
> poor to deal with the "Russian Colossus".

~~~
jcranmer
> Particularly with how Germany really lost the war to the Soviets in late
> 1942 when they failed to subdue Russia in the early invasion. The west
> (US/UK/Canada) largely just cleaned up the mess from 1943-45, as the Nazi's
> were fighting an impossible war after that point. Even then Russia did most
> of the work in terms of raw combat. But even when this is noted in history
> books Russia's success is largely dismissed as merely due to their fortunate
> geography and willingness to treat their soldiers like expendable fodder.
> But it was in fact largely due to Russia having better technology than
> Germany (specifically better tanks/armour [1]) and the geography was far
> less of an issue to the Nazi's in 1942, who unlike Napolean had highly
> mobile tanks, aircraft, trains, and Blitzkrieg tactics.

That greatly overstates the USSR's role. While the USSR and the Germany were
basically locked in a massive conflict hemorrhaging manpower, the USSR's side
was largely propped up by the US lend-lease program, which supplied crucially
needed supplies of logistics, particularly trucks. Without such support, the
USSR would have faced the same problem that Germany did: a critical inability
to properly supply their front-line troops.

Also, Russian geography also killed the Germans. Blitzkrieg, where every 30
miles you have to wait a week for supplies to be brought up, doesn't work when
you're traversing 600 miles of terrain. It works even less well when the
railroad is a single-track feature that's incompatible with your rail system,
even the major roads are barely passable in the best times and impassable in
the season of mud, and all of your supplies are being carted by horses (which
have this nasty habit of dying in -30° weather).

~~~
mcv
There are no easy shortcuts to explaining the balance of war afford in WW2.
The vast majority of the fighting did happen on Russian soil. The sacrifice of
Russian soldiers is enormous. It's true that the Russian command had little
problems with sacrificing the lives of Russian soldiers, but it's also likely
that that sacrifice may have been necessary to stop the German advance.

Lend-lease may well have been the most important US contribution to the
European theatre, because it helped the USSR to mobile their forces and move
them around faster.

And the Russian tanks absolutely did matter. Russia had the best tanks in the
early war, and those sufficiently stumped the weaker German tanks to make them
rush the overly expensive and inefficient but powerful Tiger into production.

But it was absolutely a case where every bit helped. British intelligence and
bombing, taking Italy out of the war, Overlord, it all mattered. But most of
the blood was spilled in Russia.

~~~
dmix
> And the Russian tanks absolutely did matter.

Exactly, the entire German gamble of invading Russia was a repeat of their
(genius) invasion of France: highly mobile overrunning of tanks combined with
lethal Luftwaffe air support.

The problem was entirely the fact the Germans were completely caught off guard
by the quality of Russian tanks and anti-tank guns.

The Nazi's should never have invaded Russia, but their baises against the
slavs made them feel superior. Likewise in these biases still exist in North
American / European accounts of WW2, where Russia's technological and
industrial dominance is downplayed.

It makes sense in the context of the Cold War but in 2017 it saddens me this
is still up for debate. Although the fact anti-Russian sentiment is still
highly politicized in mass media this might be expecting too much from popular
culture on my part...

------
aclsid
Other than the historical facts, this article is kind of a weird read. The
author seems to be guilty of the same thing he's accusing the Chinese
president, namely using history to support their version of how this might
play out.

~~~
thablackbull
I get a similar impression that the article was a little odd - I think the
author seems to be confusing the intent of the message coming from China's
leadership.

China is saying, here is a 'story' to help you understand what we're trying to
do with the Belt & Road Initiative. In essence, the focus is not on the truth
claims of history, but it is a guidepost of what they want to do in the
future.

The author on the other-hand seems to be saying, because the history is
inaccurate, the corollary is that the Belt & Road initiative will not succeed
(which is not a logically consistent argument).

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aaron695
The author seems to think because it Silk Road 2.0 won't directly ship to
China it has little value?

All the railways, shipping ports etc also add value to the countries they are
in. The same as China is building so many dams around the world. There's a lot
of power being played here benefiting China and locally.

Do these countries really care is there's a border dispute in the Caucasus?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_rail...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming%E2%80%93Singapore_railway)

------
JackPoach
Somehow I believe that Chinese will be able to pull this off and the author
will regret his wishful thinking.

------
fspeech
I don't know how much culture China exported along the ancient silk road but I
do know that China imported a lot of culture along it (e.g. Buddhism and other
religions), so its importance on the Chinese culture can hardly be over-
emphasized. The problem with the author's critiquing of Chinese propaganda is
that he adopted a chauvinistic framework. In reality for the Chinese people
cultural import is likely more important than cultural export.

Again if we remove the fixation on Chinese export and view the situation more
objectively: Pakistan and the Middle East have the youngest populations in the
world. If they can develop into manufacturing centers, it will not only
alleviate the potential for radicalism. It will also compensate for the aging
demographics of China, whether that is what China intends or not.

------
salqadri
This is not a very scholarly article, and very disparaging to say the least.
It claims that Zheng He "did little to develop trade" and "contributed nothing
to navigational knowledge" and that all he effectively did was assist in "the
gradual spread of Islam". Have we considered to evaluate ourselves, on how we
perhaps may be suppressing the reality of Chinese historical accomplishments
by elevating such articles? It ignores many of his tangible accomplishments,
like clearing the waters of pirates that plagued Chinese maritime trade.

------
erikb
TL;DR it's not like it was in the past.

TL;DR it's not what they promise.

But where is the news in this?

I think the interesting facts are that (a) they still manage to influence
countries with their plan (and might for instance gain more influence over
Afganistan than both US and Russia have achieved), (b) they still manage to
increase internal growth through their projects. Both are really good things
for China. That you need to tell a story of historical values with such a big
plan is normal and should be expected. Sadly the article doesn't discuss that
and instead just focusses on showing the obvious. Also it vastly
underestimates the middle east. There's a reason why there's so much fighting
in this area. And it's not just oil.

~~~
dang
> _But where is the news in this?_

The existence of an interesting article is news enough.

~~~
nejenendn
While I agree with that sentiment, the idea that large investments are risky
is not in itself interesting. What does this add to the conversation?

