Page 39 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Fabio Massimo Parenti: Understanding the Global Shift China’s Development and The Belt
and Road Initiative

There are still numerous unresolved conflicts in a wide space of destabilization that
goes from the Indo-Pakistani border regions to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and
Ukraine: I am talking of the so called “Rimland”, composed of those spaces,
maritime, coastal and continental, bordering the “Heartland” (heart of Eurasia)
(Mackinder 1904; Spykman 1942; Nazemroaya 2012). In the majority of cases,
internal contradictions and regional rivalries have been excessively fueled in the
framework of the so-called "war on terrorism", favoring the military expansion of
the US-NATO system and its attempt to counteract or slow down the emergence of a
anti-hegemonic alliance system, centered on China, Russia and Iran (Parenti 2018).
All this has increased the risks and problems in several strategic areas involved in
the Belt and Road.

Two other historical cases hinder and slow down the full realization of the Chinese
strategic vision: the tensions around North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the first case, China has always favored international negotiations (the six-party
group), managing to contain North Korean nuclear projects from time to time and
always supporting the need to reopen lines of dialogue with the south of the
peninsula. Recently - also thanks to the Chinese and Russian mediation - there have
been important talks between the two Koreas, two years after the freezing of
relations. Moreover, China seems to be pushing for what the most rational and
feasible proposal is to resolve the North Korean question and the tensions with
Japan, South Korea and the United States. Continuing the dialogue and working for
denuclearization, through the application of the so-called "suspension for
suspension", where the interruption of North Korean nuclear programs can only
occur simultaneously with an interruption of the frequent joint military exercises of
the US, South Korea and Japan.

In the second case - Palestine - China does not move a millimeter from the idea of
the recognition of Palestinian independence and sovereignty, working for the UNs
solution of the two states and the restoration of the 1967 borders.

In the face of this framework on Chinese foreign policy, approaches, strategies,
proposals and political-economic practices, the National Endowment for Democracy
of the United States has coined the term “sharp” power to discredit China and other
competitors. This term has become very popular in the West. Furthermore, if we
look at the public opinion and the European authorities, we have seen that there are
divergent perspectives about the new Chinese influence in relation to the Belt and
Road.

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