Based on a longstanding desire to get China more focused inland, I was fairly pleased about the New Silk Road initiative (now Belt and Road Initiative):
[Such] a Chinese initiative will help America by dividing Chinese military efforts away from a focus on sea and air power; by getting Russia to worry about China instead of mythical threats from NATO (and if China comes to Europe, having a sane Russia cooperate with or even join NATO makes sense rather than being nonsense pretending a North Atlantic Treaty Organization should guarantee Russia's Far East from Chinese threats); by pushing Chinese power into contact with European military power--which America could never count on to help us in the South China Sea--Europe will tie down Chinese power that makes it to Europe's neighborhood; and India will have more incentive to cooperate with America as Chinese power flows around India's northern borders.
Indeed, if China is no longer so reliant on sea lines of communication through the South China Sea because it has significant trade routes inland, perhaps China won't be so willing to go to war with America to gain absolute control over the western Pacific region.
So I don't react with alarm at China's New Silk Road. I react with a guarded sigh of relief. If China is going to rise--and stay there--I'd rather have as many potential foes of China facing China as possible.
The trade route initiative combines elements of economic development, domestic stability, Chinese Communist Party primacy within China, and foreign policy advancement (with due notice that all the aspects are on a continuum of party concerns for the primary mission of primacy):
The party’s considerable need for continued domestic economic reforms to maintain its legitimacy is a prime motivator of both the BRI’s focus on offloading excess industrial capacity and its attempted creation of new trade linkages to benefit new innovation-based Chinese ventures. ...
Efforts of this nature are, in turn, largely informed by far more recent concerns, primarily about the US. As one representation, the geographic orientation of most of the BRI’s six planned corridors is likely informed by an influential 2012 article from Beijing University’s Wang Jisi urging the country to ‘march west’ into areas of Central and Western Asia and onward towards Europe, building power and influence in areas less touched by Washington.
And honestly, if this is a good assessment of Chinese intentions regarding America rather than some mirror imaging, it is a good sign for peace:
Several analyses describe the BRI as a way for China to simultaneously achieve two geopolitical objectives: amassing strategic influence in Eurasia’s heartland while deftly avoiding direct competition with the United States. Some sources, however, are more explicit in portraying the BRI as a response to U.S. pressure, especially that posed by the Barack Obama administration’s rebalance to Asia policy. [emphasis added]
I've long said that I want China pointed inland to avoid a clash with America. Sure, winning a war is better than losing. And deterring a war by a hostile China is better than having a war. But having a China that isn't thinking about a war with America in the western Pacific and which might want better relations with America to secure their Pacific flank as they look inland is even better.
I want China to accept that its best route to continued prosperity is within the American-designed post-World War II global system that has gotten China this far.
UPDATE: Related discussion of worries on the BRI routes that accepting Chinese aid is essentially embarking on debt servitude.
