The concept of One Belt and One Road (OBOR) was first introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2013. It is a grand vision requiring vast investments to connect the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa via land (roads and railroads) as well as by sea lanes (ports in Pacific to Indian Ocean) to facilitate commerce traffic among nations along the Belt and Road. China quickly formulated a formal plan after receiving some welcome messages from neighboring countries, thus OBOR has also been known as the Belt Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI project has drawn more than 60 countries to show interests or participate in its plan. However, the BRI project has also drawn some criticisms from countries either reluctant to join this project or acting out of political considerations.
 
Nadege Rolland, a Senior Fellow for Political and Security Affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research, has published an essay, Reports of Belt and Road’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated - Don’t Underestimate China’s Resilience, in Snapshot, Foreign Affairs, January 29, 2019. In this paper, the author cited that the Chinese intellectuals had expressed concerns about BRI’s wasteful spending and overstretches. The author also correctly pointed out that several governments that were initially enthusiastic about Chinese investment had later faced popular backlash to the terms of the loans and the potential for corruption. Some other observers have claimed that the Chinese leadership has failed to understand the dynamics that have led other countries to push back thus it may make China’s project of the century to eventually become a fiasco. 
 
Nadege has cited some outdated information as follows: In 2015. Indonesia and Thailand both discontinued high-speed railway projects underwritten by China because of differences in financing and land acquisition. (both projects are still alive as of late 2018) In 2017, Bangladesh decided to work with Japan reneging her agreement with China to build her first deep-water port.(China won a $3.1B contract to build a 120km/hr railway connecting the capital Dhaka to Jessore) Nepal also canceled a deal it had struck with China to build a hydropower plant. (Nepal granted China, Gezhouba Group Corp, a $2.5 B Hydropower Plant Project in Fall 2018) The government of Sri Lanka had borrowed heavily from China to build its Hambantota port. By the end of 2017, the port had failed to pull in sufficient traffic to pay its debts. The Sri Lankan government decided to cede the port to China for 99 years which was used by critics to questionChina’s intentions and to warn small countries about such a “debt trap”. In fact, the planning and negotiation of these mega projects do require years to mature, sometimes going through government leadership changes.  
 
In May 2018, Malaysia’s newly re-elected prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, wanted to renegotiate his country’s high speed rail contracts with China, describing them as “unequal treaties”.(Malaysia Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said in February, 2019 that the project is in the last mile talks to be revived.) The Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone soon began to reconsider the scale and scope of their cooperation with China. Obviously inspired by the concept of BRI, other potential investors formed the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, signed by African countries, India, and Japan, in May 2017 and the European Union also unveiled a plan for investing in Asia’s infrastructure. These alternatives including the U.S. participation will compete with China in supplying local governments with alternative financing.
 
I agree to Rolland’s conclusion in his paper that one cannot write off China’s BRI, although he offered no concrete evidence. Thus it is useful to review the achievements in BRI and make a projection for its future. First, the BRI Plan is a broad comprehensive world development plan; it not only will benefit China but also will benefit all its participating countries. The BRI initiative consists of five strategies (policies, infrastructure, investment and finance, communication and cultural exchange) to make the project successful. Coordination of political policies with participating countries takes first priority. Up to now, China has signed 103 documents of collaborative directives with 88 countries. China also has presented the BRI Initiative at various international conferences including UN conferences and its own first summit meeting in 2017 where policy matter and strategies were discussed, making BRI and its policy transparent. Hence, 88 countries have climbed on board of the BRI. In Xi’s trip in March 2019 to Europe, Italy, Monaco and France, China has pleasantly signed up Italy to BRI. Italy Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, will personally attend the Second BRI Summit in Beijing in April.
 
Infrastructure construction and investment programs are the key aspects of the BRI. In these strategic areas, the achievements speak easily for their successes, hence wide acceptance by the world. China-Lao railroad, Yaji rail, Kenya’s Munne rail (its extension to be open in May, 2019), YaWan high speed railroad and Hungarian railroad and Gwadar Port and Port of Piraeus have all progressed well. Up to mid 2018, there were 9000 rail transport routes connecting Russia, Germany, Poland, Spain,11 nations and 29 cities with eight provinces and major cities in China internally linked. (Xinjiang, Shanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Chongqing, Shanghai and Zejiang ) Over all, China has contacts with more than 600 ports and 200 countries and territories maintaining her world number one position in volume of shipping. China also has automated the YangsanPort in Shanghai with higher efficiency. In air transportation, China has signed agreement with 62 BRI nations, established direct flights with 45 countries and elevated Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing as world’s major airports. China also has invested $91.2 billion in electric utilities inBRI countries.
 
The commerce, communication and cultural activities followed the progress of infrastructure and investment programs closely. China has been effectively driving their achievements and presenting them proudly in various conferences and at her biennial BRI Summit. The 2017 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, or BRFIC was held on May 14–15, 2017 in Beijing, which drew 29 foreign heads of state and government and representatives from more than 130 countries and 70 international organizations. Xinhua reported the purpose of the summit as building "a more open and efficient international cooperation platform; a closer, stronger partnership network; and to push for a more just, reasonable and balanced international governance system.” In the West, CNN reported the meeting with a headline "China's new world order" and the Los Angeles Times ran an article "Globalization 2.0: How China's two-day summit aims to shape a new world order".
 
The outlook of BRI can be predicted from its Summit meetings. The 2019 second BRI Summit will be held in Beijing in the second half of April, expecting to be bigger and richer in substance. So far, Russia, Philippine, Malaysia and Italy, their head of states have already committed to attend. An introductory exhibit will be shown in Xian in this month. The stock market responded positively to the BRI Summit in 2017. Likewise the stock market anticipating a successful 2019 BRI Summit has displayed excitement with ten stocks entered trading halt on March 20th and nine on March 21st. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Africa (February) and President Xi’s visit to Italy, Monaco and France in March will drum up more attention to the BRI Summit in April as well as the Silk Road Expo scheduled to be held in Xian in May. We shall certainly get a complete progress report on the BRI Summit but there are enough score cards already for us to predict the outlook of the BRI. (To be continued in Part II)



​

​ 
Abstract

The US-China relation has evolved several turns from enemies to partners now changing again. The U.S. China policy naturally is a corollary of the U.S. foreign policy. Recently, the U.S. is switching her China policy towards targeting China as a competitive opponent causing concerns in the world. This essay does a review of the evolution of the U.S. China policy and makes comments. It appears that the U.S. China policy has become ‘transparent’ to the public for its  lack of logic and short-sighted with no long-term objectives.
​
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
The Chinese government’s training and job placement program for Xinjiang Muslims are accused by U.S. media as concentration camps which is far from the truth. While many countries including the U.S. are having Muslim refugee issues, China with long borders with Muslim world is taking a progressive approach to make her Muslim minority community to live better so they can resist the extreme Islamism and terrorists’ infiltration. Comes to China, the U.S. media has become so transparent lately in political propaganda that the mass media publish more questionable articles bashing Xinjiang Muslim training camps than revealing problems of any Muslim refugee camps in this country or in Europe. China used to be regarded as one voice nation and a propaganda machine advocating her ideology, but her change is obvious for the better today. Now China invites scholars and political analysts to her media (for example China Global Television Network) to voice their opinions debating issues such as climate change and environmental protection and correcting the U.S. media’s fake-news reporting on China.
 
China’s military build-up can be easily understood from Sun Tzu’s philosophy as more for defensive and reactionary to provocation. The South China Sea (SCS) situation is clearly a good example. The provocation of a law suit (to an arbitrary arbitration court) on SCS island jurisdiction and the U.S. maneuver of freedom of navigation in SCS simply reminded China’s vulnerability of having 60% of her trade goods going through SCS without protection. The presence of the U.S. navy posing military strength necessitates China to have some insurance of freedom of navigation of merchant vessels destined to her ports. It turns out by fortifying a few islands in SCS is a much better and more effective strategy than constructing expensive battle carriers  to compete with any threatening powerful navy.
 
Trade is important to China. The trade war initiated by the U.S. certainly will harm China but unfortunately, it will harm the U.S. and the world as well, especially raising inflation and turmoil in world economy. Related to the trade is the technology competition. Accusing China stealing U.S. technology is glossing over the real issue. China despite of world sanction has caught up in Space Technology research and development, in missiles, satellites, moon and space exploration and her own GPS system. China has built the fastest computer surpassing the U.S.  The U.S. chose to sanction China on technology export which certainly did not help her trade balance. It seems that the more sanctions are applied to China the more self-developments are coming from China. The U.S. must honestly face this competition with education and domestic policies rather than relying on stopping the competition.
 
Punishing Chinese technology company for violating US sanction to Iran has triggered more self-reliance activity in developing advanced semiconductor chips hurting the U.S. domination in that technology. Judging from the media swing recently on news about China, it is apparent to people (especially those who follow and study US-China issues) that the U.S. China policy has switched to targeting China as a competitor. The U.S. mass media are launching a concerted effort to discredit China. However, the legacy tools in the chest of US China policy are less effective in persuading the world other than making the US citizens confused and puzzled struggling with patriotism, diplomatic logic and justice. The deplorable accusation against Chinese scholars and researchers in the U.S. as possible spies for China only made dissenters from China having second thought and questioning whether the U.S. is still the peace loving free country welcoming immigrants?!
 
After forty years maintaining one China policy, the U.S. has now begun to play the Taiwan Card agitating China; this is another move with no long-term benefit. The decision of recognizing the PRC as the legitimate representation of China is a brilliant strategy from global politics point of view which indeed led the triumphant victory of the West against the communist world. Pulling China into the West camp eventually getting nearly ten percent of the world population above poverty appreciating capitalism is not only a humanitarian achievement but also a win of the West lifting the world economy, for which China is now a major contributor. Keeping Taiwan and Mainland China in truce for seventy years has helped them developed economically and the Asian world in peace. The peaceful reunification issue was on hold on a no rush schedule until a minority group of Taiwanese (affiliated with Japanese descent from the era of Japanese occupation of Taiwan) started an anti-China movement and advocating independence. The U.S. was maintaining a neutral position honoring the one China policy which served her interest to keep Asia Pacific in peace. But her recent behavior is clearly a switch away from the one China policy begging for justification from strategic point of view.
 
From the idea of selling more military gears to Taiwan to passing Taiwan Travel Act sends a wrong message to China as well as to the pro-independence DPP Party. Expanding the American Institute of Taiwan and allowing it to make statements supporting the current DPP Administration (subtly influencing the election) despite of the voting population has clearly expressed dissatisfaction with DPP’s anti-China actions is a questionable policy – for what purpose?. The previous Taiwan President Chen Shui Bian (a DPP leader and an anti-China pro-independence activist) was convicted with corruption (now on medical parole) had laundered hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S., yet the current US Administration stood by silently and yet still encouraging the DPP’s anti-China Policy behavior can only give the world a bad impression:  The U.S. rather sides with a corrupt party/government and renege a diplomatic agreement with China on the one China policy simply because she feels threatened by the rising China. One cannot help but trace this switch to the “Thucydides Theory” and an obvious failing in understanding the philosophy of winning without a war firmly believed by China.
 
The above analysis suggests that the current U.S. China policy is lack of logic and short-sighted. The rhetoric, media bashing and diplomatic maneuver using the tools described above may be able to gain a little advantage in the trade negotiation or a little profit from selling the outdated F-16s to Taiwan, but one can expect China will have a long-term strategy (China’s US Policy) dealing with the U.S. going beyond 2020, 2024, ... even up to 2052.  With both countries possessing nuclear arsenal, it is unwise for the U.S. Administration to utter war and claim one can win in a limited nuclear war. China will try to avoid the war but she will also back up with military strength to make sure her responsive strike (second strike) can destroy the attacker completely as a punishment. China is sincere to claim that she will never use nuclear weapon first but we must also respect her sincerity that she will make a thorough retaliating strike. China is surrounded with 14 neighbors some are powerful and unfriendly. It makes perfect sense for China to adopt a deterrent defense strategy, thus, China will continue her fortification of defense capabilities (SCS islands, carriers and all) so long she is receiving threats continuously. Wrong interpretation of the above can only lead to arms race with no good ending.
 
Japan had made aggressive moves in the East China Sea (Diaoyu Island episode: Japan unilaterally violated an agreement that the sovereignty issue of Diaoyu islands is tabled) and consequently received retaliation resulting in a constant Chinese naval and air force patrol in the ECS. Japan may have understood China better than the U.S., hence she has adjusted her China policy switching to a more engaging one with effort to dissolve past war grudges and move onto cooperation for mutual benefits. The actions of the U.S. in SCS similarly will induce China to further militarize her SCS islands to deter any unfriendly intrusion or threat from the U.S. navy. This eventually will lead to a code of conduct in SCS so that friendly freedom of navigation can be assured. Perhaps, it is time for the U.S. to rethink of joining UNCLOS to honor a set of code of conducts on freedom of navigation. Observing objectively, China’s modernized (if further militarized) islands in SCS are in a better position now to provide that assurance than carriers or submarines. The ASEAN countries such as Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam seem to understand the above scenario already thus defying a U.S. proposition to gang up on China in SCS. Other countries like India and Australia seem to be weighing the situation the same way, unless China really changes her behavior to become an imperial power. On the global stage, President Xi’s recent travels to Europe and his speeches in the UN and elsewhere have always stressed China’s respect for UN agreements and multilateralism and China’s vision for global collaborative development. This is fairly assuring until one finds evidence disproving it.
 
This article is only a tiny voice from the Organic media, but it does represent an objective view that human civilization should not be dictated by the Thucydides Theory. Humans’ intelligence must be better now than thousands years ago. We should ponder on the philosophy: “Winning without war and competition advances civilization not destroys it” earnestly.




​

Abstract
​
The US-China relation has evolved several turns from enemies to partners now changing again. The U.S. China policy naturally is a corollary of the U.S. foreign policy. Recently, the U.S. is switching her China policy towards targeting China as a competitive opponent causing concerns in the world. This essay does a review of the evolution of the U.S. China policy and makes comments. It appears that the U.S. China policy has become more ‘transparent’ to the public for its lack of logic and short-sighted with no long-term objectives.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sun Tzu’s Book, the Art of War or Military Strategy is world renown, not only respected by generals but also by statesmen. Beyond his brilliant analysis on military strategy and tactics on war and battles, Sun’s book is also a great book on the philosophy on diplomacy and foreign relations. Some profound principles are that “War should be the last resort for settling inter-national differences.” and “Win without war is the best and ultimate goal.“ Therefore, diplomacy and foreign policy are extremely important in a competitive world in Sun’s teaching. His philosophy has profound influence on Chinese generals, military scholars and statesmen as evidenced by Chinese history where many more wars were avoided than occurred in the past 2500 years resulting in a unified China in contrast with Europe.
 
In comparison, the Western political scientists and military strategists seem to believe in the ‘Thucydides Theory’ derived from Ancient Greek history (~ 400 BC) that competitive nations are destined to have a (unavoidable) war with the rising power challenging the existing strong power. (Ref: Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? 2017) Another well known book, On War, by Carl von Clausewitz (Vom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831), prescribes a different philosophy: It advocates “War must never be seen as having any purpose in itself, but should be seen as an instrument of politics and policy. (Whereas Sun’s caution on War tries to avoid wars and refrain from being a war monger.) Clausewitz describes war’s objectives as rendering the enemy politically helpless and militarily impotent, very different from Sun’s philosophy keeping military strength in the background, more for defense than offense, and pursuing a winning strategy through diplomacy and foreign policies.
 
Sun Tze is just one of many great philosophers in Chinese history honoring a common theme that is focusing on peace loving and a harmonious world. This philosophy helped China or Chinese people to avoid many possible wars in their long history and helped them to unite as one nation despite of numerous tribes or minority factions existed from the Warring States era (Zhanguo era 500 - 300 BC) evolving up to today. Unfortunately, in the modern history of two hundred years (~1797 to 1997 the year Hong Kong was returned to China), China was gradually weakened, invaded and eventually occupied by the Western and Asian Imperial powers making her a devastated state trying to rebuild herself and rendering a poor image of an extremely weak nation (Asian Sick Man!) with no military strength and diplomatic skills to deal with the world. Most sadly China had fallen from the most prosperous nation, the number one economy in the world, to “butcher’s meat on the block for carving”.
 
The US-China Relations is significant only in the recent two hundred years since the U.S. is a young country started her relation with China as a minority party of the colonial powers eyeing the riches of China. The US China relation was better than the relation between other Western powers such as UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Holland with China, because she was a new nation founded on liberty and justice and advocated the ‘Monroe doctrine’ fending off European colonialism from the continents of America. The U.S. returned a part of war reparation back to China for building universities and hospitals, a far-sighted China policy, which, to this day, received Chinese people’s gratitude. The US-China relationship further improved as allies during WW II fighting the aggressive Japanese Imperial army. China was able to tie up millions of Japanese soldiers on the mainland of China while the U.S. could win her naval and air battles against the Japanese forces.
 
WW II interrupted China’s treacherous revolution to establish a republic nation in the presence of Western powers physically dominating parts of China. Japan’s ambition of conquering China as a whole, although created a brutal war in China, but ultimately the Sino-Japan War caused the withdrawal of the colonial powers from China and awakened the Chinese to defend their nation with life. The war victory gave China a new life but under the influences of Russia and the U.S. two political parties split China to two parts, the Mainland (CCP) and Taiwan (KMT). The U.S. backed the KMT (Taiwan) under the military strategy of forming an island chain surrounding the Communist countries from the north, Russia, North Korea and China, a salient part of the US anti-communist strategy. The U.S.-China relation took a strategic twist in the peak of the Cold War with the U.S. led NATO confronting Soviet Union led Warsaw pack in arms race and regional conflicts. The U.S. recognized the Mainland China (People’s Republican of China, PRC) as the only China and engaged her as a partner against the Soviet Union. Whether it is pure sympathetic sorry or selfish strategy, the U.S. Congress passed the Taiwan Act with the intent to protect Taiwan from a forced take over by the Mainland. PRC had no intention to use force to unite Taiwan unless provoked, which clearly followed Sun Tzu’s philosophy.
 
The U.S.-China policy worked successfully as far as making the Soviet Union to collapse in 1990. The U.S. became the only super power in the world and China had clearly begun to gradually embrace capitalism and search for a sustainable economical development model of her own. The U.S. first opposed but finally supported China to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO). No doubt, the WTO helped China in her economical growth, but more importantly one must recognize the fact that the Chinese people being one of the poorest in the world for decades had worked extremely hard to succeed in their economic development despite of discrimination and sanctions applied against their country. Every developed nation had taken advantage of the technologically more advanced nations to advance but the most important ingredient in that process is still self-reliance. China’s rise is no different from the rise of the U.S. by taking advantage of UK and European nations nor it is different from Japan’s rise and second recovery by taking advantage of the European countries and the U.S. The only exception is that China’s rise was much faster and larger in scale considering her huge poor population. China’s ability to lift hundreds of millions of people above poverty has to be attributed to her own effort and determination. For example, despite of inadequate resources, China produced several million STEM graduates a year.
 
In the turn of twenty first century, the U.S.-China’s fully engaged relationship seemed to have taken a change or a pause for change. China’s Rise has been observed but the U.S. has been too occupied by the war against terror and the Middle East mess. China continued her rapid development keeping a near double digit growth in GDP. Then the debate began whether engage or disengage with China was the dialogue. During the debate, the voice of pointing out the philosophical difference of the East vs West discussed above was missing and legacy military strategy was gaining momentum surrounding the Thucydides Theory. Few self-reflection on what went wrong with the economic development model of the U.S. (and of the West) were seriously studied. Under the WTO, all participating nations act voluntarily on trades, investments, mergers and acquisitions; there was no gun boat at the port like colonial days forcing unequal deals or treaties to be made.
 
The current U.S. China policy is becoming more transparent to the public for lacking logic and short-sighted for losing a long-term view and fair objective. The U.S. used many tools in dealing against a communist China employing her powerful media: 1. Authoritarian regime, 2. Human rights, 3. Military rise (South China Sea etc.), 4. Trade imbalance (tariff war), 5. Technology competition, and the Taiwan Card. The regime issue was a long standing ideological claim but it is getting a little stale, especially when many developing countries are envying the Chinese government’s efficiency and achievement. The Chinese government’s performance deserves the envy of the developing nations; in three decades, the Chinese government has lifted hundreds of million people above poverty line - who is to say that regime is bad for the Chinese people? Human rights is another old issue, but all one has to examine is the historical facts (progression) say, for the past 70 years what has changed. Tibet has gained not only more economic prosperity but also true religious freedom and human dignity. Now the Tibetans are no longer ruled by atrocious and creationist monks with brighter future in preserving its culture than American Indians can.