Bangkok Post

The ‘boosterism’ of China’s Silk Road story

President Xi’s pet project lets Chinese spread positive stories about their nation’s history, writes Virginia Postrel

- ©2017 BLOOMBERG VIEW

Iwas sitting in my hotel room in Hangzhou, in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, one evening last September when I caught a helpfully subtitled TV show about Song Dynasty inscriptio­ns carved on a mountainsi­de near Quanzhou — the city Chinese media invariably call “the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road”.

With prayers for good winds and safe returns, the carvings bore witness to China’s far-flung commercial relations during the European Middle Ages. The report was a perfectly legitimate travel feature. By calling attention to the Silk Road, however, it also served the Chinese government’s purposes.

The Chinese “Belt and Road” programme is more than an ambitious infrastruc­ture drive and an opportunit­y for diplomatic gatherings like last week’s forum in Beijing. The initiative is certainly, as my Bloomberg View colleague Noah Feldman has written, a “bid to displace the US when it comes to global leadership.” But it’s also part of a bigger story — one that highlights certain facts, downplays others, and creates a value-laden narrative in which China is the protagonis­t and hero. This national myth-making is designed as much for domestic as for internatio­nal consumptio­n.

Talking about the Silk Road gives Chinese the opportunit­y to hear and to tell positive stories about their nation’s history and character. It gives them a “usable past”, offering an enlightene­d, progressiv­e heritage to counter the colonial vision of China as backward and the Maoist repudiatio­n of the imperial past. It reminds the world of China’s technologi­cal dominance before the Industrial Revolution and frames that history not as one of relative decline — why the West grew rich and China didn’t — but as evidence of persisting national strengths.

“In Chinese-language media and China studies the Silk Road generally begins with China’s official diplomacy in Central Asia in the second century BC and inserts China into an enduring world history of ‘open’ empires instead of isolated civilisati­ons,” observes Tamara Chin, a Brown University comparativ­e literature scholar much of whose work focuses on the Silk Road. Others versions, however, make Central Asian nations like the now-vanished Sogdians the central actors.

China’s version of the historical Silk Road also omits some crucial facts — notably that “the” Silk Road did not exist. It’s 19th-century shorthand for a network of routes from oasis to oasis across Central Asia and, contrary to popular imaginings, few travellers or goods went very far. “The Silk Road was one of the least travelled routes in human history,” Yale historian Valerie Hansen writes in The Silk Road: A New History. Its importance was less commercial than cultural, as travelers — and, most important, refugees — carried their religions, technologi­es, and artistic motifs along with them.

The Chinese Silk Road story downplays the central role of the Mongol Empire in restoring trade routes as they conquered Eurasia in the 12th century. “The expansiona­ry Mongol rulers acted to ensure the safety of the trade routes, building effective post stations and rest stops, introducin­g the use of paper money and eliminatin­g artificial trade barriers,” writes Debin Ma, an economic historian at the London School of Economics. They also extended the sea trade. Pax Mongolica, not native Chinese rule, “marked the high stage of East-West exchange as symbolised by the famous travels of Marco Polo”.

Myth-making is always selective. The stories Americans told about themselves in the confident middle of the 20th century weren’t entirely true either — but neither were they false. In this way, the Belt and Road initiative resembles the Marshall Plan, to which many accounts have compared it. The lavish spending serves geo-strategic interests while simultaneo­usly creating, or reinforcin­g, a national self-image that appeals to Chinese pride: Here is a country that is not just strong and prosperous but generous and admired. We’re important and people like us.

That dual agenda was an undercurre­nt at the seemingly esoteric academic conference that brought me to Hangzhou. Textile historians and archaeolog­ists from some 15 nations — including back-to-back talks by Iranian and Israeli scholars — presented their research on silk. They also dutifully posed for photos documentin­g the occasion. There were presentati­ons of plaques and gifts, greetings from various mucketymuc­ks, and performanc­es by Chinese artists. Unesco’s imprimatur was frequently invoked. While it was a real scholarly conference, it was also a propaganda event, demonstrat­ing worldwide recognitio­n of the significan­ce of China and its central place in the history of the Silk Road.

National myth-making is designed as much for domestic as for internatio­nal consumptio­n.

Or consider the brand-new buildings of the host China National Silk Museum, completed a year ahead of schedule in order to greet the G-20 Hangzhou summit. The well-curated exhibits depict the history of silk as an inspiring tale of peaceful trade, technologi­cal ingenuity, and productive cultural exchange. While including many nations, they of course position China as the story’s protagonis­t. And despite the museum’s focus on the history and science of sericultur­e, a sign outside during my visit alluded to the contempora­ry context: “The Silk Road Leading to a Beautiful Future,” it proclaimed.

As a product of the New South, I know ‘boosterism’ when I see it.

I recognise the underlying insecuriti­es, frequent wastefulne­ss, and over-eager efforts to demonstrat­e importance. I also understand boosterism’s valid purposes and claims. Boosters have something to prove — to themselves as well as outsiders — but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong to make the effort. Their offended pride often drives achievemen­ts surpassing those of more establishe­d and complacent places. Jaded Westerners may cringe at the video of multicultu­ral children singing praises of the Belt and Road, but it’s hardly the worst way for an ambitious world power to assert its ascendency.

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg View columnist. She was the editor of Reason magazine and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, The New York Times and Forbes. Her books include ‘The Power of Glamour’ and ‘The Future and Its Enemies’.

 ?? AP ?? Water is sprayed on the table prepared for heads of states during the ‘Belt and Road Forum’ in Beijing on May 14. The Belt and Road initiative serves geo-strategic interests while creating, or reinforcin­g, a national self-image that appeals to Chinese...
AP Water is sprayed on the table prepared for heads of states during the ‘Belt and Road Forum’ in Beijing on May 14. The Belt and Road initiative serves geo-strategic interests while creating, or reinforcin­g, a national self-image that appeals to Chinese...

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