Strategy Amidst Ambiguity: the Belt and Road and China’s Foreign Policy Approach to Eurasia

Abstract

Introduction This brief article discusses China’s current approach to foreign policy in Eurasia. Foreign policy is understood as a strategy or planned course of action to achieve specific goals according to elite and national interests. Eurasia consists of countries located on the continental land mass of Europe and Asia, but which are also considered to lie on the borderlands of Europe in the West and China in the East. These countries include Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Eurasia is a heuristic unit of analysis at best. Nevertheless, the region is important to study, because of its gaining importance for Chinese foreign policy. China’s increasing presence in Eurasia is often framed as part of the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB). Announced in 2013, the SREB is China’s effort to interlink with Central Asia, Russia, and Europe across the landmass of Eurasia – reminiscent of the ancient Silk Road (Witte, 2013). The word choice of “economic belt” is meant to imply “a densely occupied economic corridor for trade, industry, and people” (Macaes, 2018). Indeed, the SREB is central to the land-based element of China’s wider Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is a Chinese-led infrastructure mega-project. The initiative’s aim is to coordinate maritime shipping lanes (the road) with overland transit infrastructure (the belt) from Asia to Europe. Within the cont