{"id":2470,"date":"2017-09-20T12:18:30","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T10:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meerverstehen.net\/?p=2470"},"modified":"2021-01-27T16:14:25","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T15:14:25","slug":"chinas-silk-road-initiative-a-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/chinas-seidenstrassen-initiative-eine-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"1TP5Understanding the sea: China's Silk Road Initiative - An Opportunity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of September, the special edition \"griephan Edition 2017\"<\/a> - produced by griephan in cooperation with the Federation of German Industries (BDI) - with the topic \"The challenge of global trade - setting standards creates markets\". The issue includes articles on China's Silk Road initiative, the protectionist reflexes of the G20, free trade as an expression of free societies and the Port of Duisburg, the current starting and finishing point of the Silk Road.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Silk Roads<\/strong>-initiative, consisting of the continental \"economic belt of the Silk Road<\/strong>\" and the \"Maritime Silk Road<\/strong> of the 21st century\" is Beijing's geostrategic concept, which aims to link Africa, Asia and Europe and the seas that connect them for trade. The Chinese approach can be described as \"strategic synchronisation\", meaning the integrated use of diplomatic, economic policy and military strategic instruments. The principle of \"flag follows trade\" applies here, meaning that the Chinese military initially plays a subordinate role, for example by participating in stabilisation missions at important hubs such as Djibouti.<\/p>\n

In Germany, the first question to be asked is whether participation in a strategic co-operation with China<\/strong> has been neglected for too long. It has become clear that China<\/strong> has taken the strategic initiative and successfully set the agenda. The current Silk Roads<\/strong>initiative has the potential to shift the existing balance of power and create long-term dependencies.<\/p>\n

However, this realisation should not lead to a fundamental defensive reaction. Anyone who is aware of Silk Roads<\/strong>-The risk of not recognising important shifts in the weighting of military and civilian instruments too late is that the initiative is closed off due to national or even European protectionism. Instead, a fundamentally broad-based approach to co-operation should be pursued. To begin with, particular attention could be paid to the maritime components of the Chinese initiative, such as the successful international naval cooperation already mentioned in the Horn of Africa with the participation of Chinese naval forces. And how do Germany and Europe view the participation of a Chinese task force - after all, the modern destroyer Changsha, the frigate Yuncheng and the troopship Luoma Lake took part - in a Russian naval exercise in the Baltic Sea in July 2017?<\/p>\n

It is important to bear in mind what was mentioned at the beginning: the initiative and design comes from China<\/strong> Beijing is prioritising its strategic interests in this initiative and will give secondary importance to aspects such as the rule of law or human rights.<\/p>\n

The players on this side of the Great Wall must realise that freedom must not be confused with arbitrariness. The alternative - free societies adapt to unfree ones or make lazy compromises - is not an option. As Dr Hubertus Bardt from the Cologne Institute for Economic Research states in a recent article for the griephan Edition 2017: \"Free trade is more than a producer of prosperity for the countries involved, their companies and employees. On the outside, free trade is an expression of an open society on the inside.\" In addition to the need for modern infrastructure, political and social stability as well as reliability are required in order to be an attractive trading partner in the long term.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Schulte<\/p>\n

Germany correspondent
\nIHS Jane's Defence Weekly<\/a>
\nand
\nFreelance journalist<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anfang September wurde die Sonderausgabe \"griephan Edition 2017\" - erstellt von griephan in Kooperation mit dem Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie e.V. (BDI) - mit dem Thema \"Herausforderung globaler Handel - wer Standards setzt, schafft M\u00e4rkte\" ver\u00f6ffentlicht. Die Ausgabe beinhaltet Beitr\u00e4ge mit den Blick auf Chinas Seidenstra\u00dfen-Initiative \u00fcber die Protektionismusreflexe der G20, freier Handels als Ausdruck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,33,37],"tags":[263,264,96,109,265,266,267,268,269,270,271,172],"class_list":["post-2470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sicherheitspolitik-blog","category-blog","category-schifffahrt-blog","tag-bdi","tag-bund-der-deutschen-industrie","tag-china","tag-deutschland","tag-griephan","tag-initiative","tag-janes","tag-sebastian-schulte","tag-seestreitkraefte","tag-seidenstrasse","tag-silk-road","tag-wirtschaft"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}