Belt and Road is China's 'manifest destiny'

Thitinan Pongsudhirak Senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University

published : 7 Sep 2018 at 04:25

newspaper section: News

A man walks by a government propaganda billboard touting President Xi Jinping's signature 'One Belt, One Road' campaign outside a subway station in Beijing on Tuesday. (AP photo)

No national project of global reach carries as much stake and attracts as much attention as China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Conceived in 2013, the BRI is the colossal brainchild of President Xi Jinping and his government.

If realised as planned, it would expand China's footprint throughout the Eurasian landmass and through the high seas from China to eastern Africa. The grand project should be understood as a function and campaign of China's quest for a return to the imperial glory it lost over the past couple of centuries.

Indeed, the BRI harks back more than a thousand years when trade flourished along what was then called the "Silk Road" that straddled the Middle Kingdom and the Western world.

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Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University

A professor and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science, he earned a PhD from the London School of Economics with a top dissertation prize in 2002. Recognised for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia, his views and articles have been published widely by local and international media.