China's New Silk Road strategy can benefit us all with a shared vision of harmony and prosperity

The contrast is striking: On one side, the presidential election in the United States next year is already absorbing Washington's energy, the European Union is in urgent need of decisive leadership and a series of severe crises is eroding Russia's power. On the other side, China is rapidly regaining a position of centrality and developing a new grand strategy with a global vision.

Far from being empty rhetoric, President Xi Jinping's New Silk Road will not only be one of the most discussed topics this year, but it will profoundly mark China's coming decade and reshape Eurasia.

There is backing from massive financial investments coming from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund. The Silk Road Economic Belt, first announced by Xi during a visit in Kazakhstan six months after he became China's president, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road are symbols of 21st century China and represent for those in Eurasia a historical opportunity.

Global China is one of the features defining the Chinese renaissance. The country's opening up is creating conditions in which the world has an impact on Chinese society, but an open China projects itself globally, too. Xi's New Silk Road vision, reminiscent of the dynamics of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), illustrates this movement.

Some observers can point out that Beijing's renewed focus on the Eurasian continent can be seen, in geopolitical terms, as an answer to the US pivot to Asia initiated by the Obama administration, but the New Silk Road should not be interpreted as a tactical scheme to counter other forces. It simply complements what Xi has called "a new type of major-power relationship" that characterizes China-US relations.

The People's Republic of China, the world's largest economy when calculated by purchasing power, is aware that with power comes responsibility, and vice versa. In a sense, the New Silk Road can be understood as a Marshall Plan with Chinese characteristics. It reassures China's neighbors, contributes to their growth and places them in a system designed by Beijing.

Xi's grand diplomacy has the advantage of embracing China's West. Xinjiang, one-sixth of China's territory, de facto at the center of the Eurasian continent, is a key element of the Silk Road Economic Belt. Infrastructure projects, trade and innovative public/private partnerships will transform China's most westerly region into an international platform and take it simultaneously closer to Shanghai, Turkey and Europe.

For China's top trading partner, the European Union, it would be strategic blindness to miss the opportunities Xi's proposal offers, a vision whose scope goes far beyond the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This year, in which China and the EU celebrate the 40th anniversary of their relationship, can mark a new departure for relations between the two edges of Eurasia.

While the China-EU 2020 Strategic Agenda and negotiations on an investment agreement are positive developments, the EU's new leadership trio, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission; Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council; and Federica Mogherini, high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, should respond adequately to the New Silk Road initiative. That includes a sense of historical responsibilities and the common destiny of Eurasians as a strategic horizon. If they fail to do so, they risk isolating the EU from a major trend that will, in any case, change Eurasia, given the political determination and the economic might of Beijing.

A Sino-European Silk Road Fund could be a complementary mechanism to finance large projects - from infrastructure to education - serving the shared vision of a peaceful and prosperous Eurasia. An ambitious trade agreement between the EU and China would complement the efforts to facilitate commercial exchanges across the Atlantic and Pacific.

The nations that can push the European Union to seize the New Silk Road moment are Italy, where the Silk Road has a unique significance; Germany, the country of Ferdinand Richthofen, the geographer who coined the term Seidenstrasse, the German equivalent of Silk Road; and France, especially apt to conceive a bold and independent policy toward China.

Rome, Berlin and Paris will certainly get the full support of Eastern Europe, whose history and culture are, through Eurasian continuity, connected with Central Asia.

Eurasia is under the immediate threat of a territorialized terrorism that will not be defeated with drones, killing machines that, on the contrary, generate infinite hatred and fuel radicalism. The New Silk Road, addressing the long-term needs of economic and social progress, creates the conditions for eliminating the roots of extremism.

Moreover, enhanced EU/China synergies in the framework of the New Silk Road are an invitation addressed to Russia, an indispensable nexus in a continental cooperation network, to act as a co-architect of a 21st century Eurasia.

Japan, a nation confronting multiple crises but that is still the world's third-largest economy, is not by essence excluded from the New Silk Road. The ancient Silk Road that still fascinates Japanese scholars linked Europe and the city of Nara. In the year that coincides with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Tokyo can choose to reconnect with the depth of its Eurasianess and become a constructive force in making a cooperative Eurasia.

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which will boost the ties between China and Southeast Asia, gives a new importance to the province of Fujian. Xi, who combined a profound knowledge of Fujian and a deep understanding of the Taiwan question, is offering Taipei an opportunity to benefit from his grand strategy and a space, besides the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, for more international visibility.

Fully embraced by the European Union and other Eurasian players, the New Silk Road will take 65 percent of the world's population toward an unprecedented level of cohesiveness and prosperity.

Following the China dream articulated mainly for the Chinese people, Xi proposes a humanistic vision of progress that goes beyond national interests. It is based on China's own experience of material development and inspired by the Chinese sense of universalism, da tong, or grand harmony. The New Silk Road is Eurasia's dream, a dream we can pursue together.

The author is director of the Academia Sinica Europaea at China Europe International Business School, Shanghai, Beijing & Accra, and founder of the Euro-China Forum. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Zhang Chengliang / China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 01/09/2015 page9)