China celebrates its Belt and Road Initiative’s ( BRI) 10th year anniversary this year (2023) but did the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) really exist and the explanation Prof. Richard T. Griffiths, a retired professor of Economic History at Leiden University, Netherlands tells ‘not really’, in his book ‘The Maritime Silk Road: China’s Belt and Road at Sea’ (International Institute for Asian Studies, pp. 232. ISBN 978-9-0823-8105-4.
The BRI, which the Chinese Communist Party celebrates entering 10th year, has harmed many countries’ social welfare, brought debt crisis to less developed nations, and pitted such nations against powerful states with longstanding bilateral relations. In 2013, President Xi made the announcement of the initiative at the official trips to Kazakhstan and Indonesia. The Maritime Silk Road and the Overland Silk Road Economic Belt were the two axes of the strategy. Initially known as the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) plan, the two later went by the name BRI.
The BRI or the seaborne trade was formally adopted by the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) during the 19th National Party Congress in 2017 as part of a resolution to seek “shared growth through dialogue and collaboration” Chinese President Xi Jinping went up to his third term with a BRI-based international engagement policy, demonstrating a continued commitment to an endeavor that the Chinese government has previously aggressively emphasized.
The BRI has faced criticisms since China’s ambition is to become the Asian and Asia Pacific powerhouse, mirroring the old Silk Road, with a huge infrastructure project stretching from East Asia to Europe.
‘Maritime Silk Road’ (MSR) does not exist
Prof. Griffiths, who is also a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, Netherlands, explains some of the complicated nuances involving China and its mythical but modern Maritime Silk Road in his book. He claims that the old maritime Silk Road that helped connect Asia and Europe has been revived as part of China’s grandiose BRI, yet seaborne international trade and shipping-lanes, which carry 80-90 percent of world trade, existed long before China’s arrival. Nonetheless, China’s desire to establish ports at strategic points along these trade lines has alarmed the Western security community.
The introduction of the book elaborates that the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ (MSR) does not exist, and it probably never did. Ships had traded between Europe and Asia, and all ports in between, for at least 2000 years but, until the arrival of Portuguese, Dutch and English in the 15th and the 16th centuries, no ships ever made the entire journey. It was the goods that travelled, passing through various entrepot ports that stretched along the coasts of Asia and into the Mediterranean.
Moreover, the author says, it is also highly unlikely that much silk was involved in these transactions. Bolts of silk made their way to Europe overland and, even then, it was rarely the main object of trade. So why use it as the title for this book? The main reason is that the memory of the Silk Road, with all the myths and legends associated with it, was revived by China’s President Xi Jinping in order to encapsulate the scope and range of a new policy initiative aimed at creating a more just, balanced, prosperous and peaceful world order in which China would commit its diplomatic and financial capital, as well as its engineering and construction skills. The initiative has become known as the ‘Belt and Road initiative’ (BRI) and it would be no exaggeration to say that it has subsequently framed China’s foreign policy. This branding of Chinese infrastructural investments as the embodiment of the spirit of the Silk Road has been pursued with relentless efficiency. Scarcely a speech by Chinese politicians and administrators passes without some reference to it…. Not a stretch of road or railway, or power plant or port could be financed or built without it being part of the BRI.
Admiral Zheng He
The book introduces the new policy initiative launched by China in 2013 to improve transport and connectivity among the countries of the Eurasian continent. That policy had two components – an overland route and a maritime route. It starts, however, 600 years ago, with an exercise in ‘soft power’ in which China engaged in a series of voyages to encourage connectivity, trade and good relations with its maritime neighbours.
The author also talks about the Spirit of Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) hangs over China’s infrastructural project to improve connectivity among the nations of the Eurasian continent, now known as the BRI.
Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng commanded the largest fleet, and the largest ships, ever before constructed. The first voyage set sail with a fleet of 317 ships, including four (or more – the exact number is unclear) treasure ships. The seven treasure voyages Admiral Zheng he made in that time took him through the islands of Indonesia, along the coast of Southeast Asia and through to India. The fourth voyage (1413-1415) travelled round the tip of India to Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
On the fifth (1417-1419), the fleet visited the East African coast, and the sixth (1421-1422) followed the same route, taking home the various ambassadors who had travelled on the fifth voyage on its return to China. The 7th voyage (1431-33) followed the same route as the previous two. These were not really ‘voyages of discovery’ since the fleet travelled on trade routes that had been known for centuries. Rather, they represented a cross between diplomatic and trading missions, with the odd anti-piracy operation and foreign intervention thrown in for good measure. They formed part of the tradition of suzerainty, establishing peaceful relations between states but with a strong hint of hierarchy – in this case China representing the beneficent and benevolent ‘elder brother’. The Diplomatic relations were established, gifts were exchanged, and there was a little trade conducted on the side. And what gifts they were! They included jewels and fabrics, works of craftsmanship and an array of magnificent foreign creatures, including lions, tigers, giraffes and birds of magnificent plumage. In each case the Emperor’s gifts were carefully calibrated to be a touch more generous than those which he received. The voyages took place when China was one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, and linked to other civilisations through overland and seaborne trade routes.
The author describes that over the past decades, underwater archaeology has uncovered a plethora of wrecks dating from this era that reveal much about the nature of the ships and the cargoes they carried. One was The Cirebon wreck sank off the coast of Java around 970 CE. Although only 40 per cent of the hull remained, it suggested a vessel of some 30 metres in length and a width of 10 metres, capable of carrying some 300 tons of cargo. There were also large quantities of tin ingots, tin coins and objects from the Malay Peninsula, fine paste ceramic vessels from Thailand, hundreds of perfume bottles from Syria or the Persian Gulf, a ton of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, hundreds of rubies and sapphires from Sri Lanka and other items.
Another vessel, Intan wreck sank a little earlier, if the dates of the coins are any indication. Although it carried some Chinese ceramics, they had probably not been loaded in China since the pottery was found on top of non-Chinese ingots. The cargo included bottles from Southern Thailand, large shards from blue-green iridescent glazed jars from West Asia and a hundred silver ingots, inscribed to show that they had been intended as payment for the salt tax (and were probably being smuggled out of the country). The leader of the recovery expedition proclaimed, ‘She carried bronzes cast in Sumatra, yet showing the strong Buddhist and Hindu influences of India. She carried beautiful ceramics, bronze mirrors, and silver ingots from China. She carried intricate fine-paste-ware kendis (spouted bottles – RTG) and bottles from Thailand. She carried tin from the Malay Peninsula. And she carried glass and pottery from the Middle-East.
Prof. Griffiths further adds that it is hard to conceive that so much cultural and commercial interaction between the lands of the Indian Ocean and the China Seas could be so vividly displayed in the cargo of one small ship. The first gives weight to a powerful initiative by a great power, backed by the considerable sources of the state, to configure the part of the world into a stable and peaceful constellation that, nevertheless, recognised China as the pre-eminent power. The second describes a world of busy shipping lanes taking different goods in different directions and to different markets, mostly manufactured goods and occasionally raw materials. These stories may be unfamiliar to the readers, the author says but in China they are deeply engraved as part of a proud history and culture and a sense of national identity. Not for nothing have the glory days of the MSR, before the intrusions of the Europeans in the beginning of the 16th century, been invoked to capture the spirit of China’s recent BRI.
MSR would consist of two corridors
President Xi Jinping, in his speech to the Indonesian Parliament in which he launched the idea of the MSR, reminded his audience, of these voyages, ‘exchanging products and fostering friendship. To understand the proximate origins of China’s BRI, of which the MSR was a part, it is necessary to start with the global financial crisis in 2008 that rocked the world economy to its core. Despite resorting to deficit financing and a loosening of monetary policy, most industrial nations experienced a sharp recession the following year. China, too, engaged in counter-cyclic l policy. It could not avoid a slowdown in its growth rates, but at least it was still growing. The boom that had preceded the crisis had witnessed a favourable trend in raw material prices, and those emerging markets that had profited from these developments had built up considerable reserves of foreign exchange.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) met in the middle of the crisis and they were important in boosting the liquidity of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the assistance it was able to provide countries in difficulties. However, the richer countries were unwilling to release their control over the IMF or to consider changes in its rules and objectives – a shift from imposing (deflationary) financial rescue packages towards promoting long-term development. Blocked from participating more actively in the existing international institutions, the BRICS moved to create new ones, more attuned to their own thinking.
They stated their intent to establish a new development bank in March 2013, and China formally proposed an Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank six months later. China went one step further by making the offer to invest its own funds and development know-how in a brand-new, sizable connectivity and infrastructure project.
When China’s Premier Li Keqiang opened the 10th China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning in 2012 he encouraged people-to-people exchanges and promote cultural agreements. Premier Li concluded by reminding his audience that for more than 2,000 years China and Southeast Asian countries had been linked by the ancient maritime Silk Road and that they were meeting to pass on the ‘historic glory’. He hoped that ‘our road of cooperation [would] become wider and our mutually beneficial outcomes more plentiful and substantial.’
Later, that year, President Xi Jinping gave a speech to Central Asian leaders at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. He too started by observing that for 2,000 years the Silk Road ‘had proved that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes’. He said China wished to collaborate with the Central Asian peoples to boost the region’s growth and prosperity. He asserted that the fast advancement of China’s links with Asian and European nations over the last 20 years had given the old Silk Road a “new vitality.” He emphasized to his listeners that China’s foreign policy has always been built on respecting other nations’ development pathways and refraining from meddling in their domestic affairs. He mentioned details that were remarkably similar to Li Keqiang’s announcements, including the fact that the new Silk Road Economic Belt will be implemented in stages.
The MSR would consist of two corridors, one connecting the coast of China with Europe via the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the other connecting the coast of China with the South Pacific via the South China Sea. According to the Plan, the government “should advance port cooperation; increase sea routes and the number of voyages; and enhance information technology cooperation in maritime logistics, as well as promote cruise tourism and the establishment of cooperative research centers. The MSR should be successful by utilizing the economic resources of the entire coastal region of China.
By R. R. M. Lilani
