The New Silk Road: Xi Jinping's Grand Strategy for Eurasia

Chinese Communist Party Secretary and President Xi Jinping's foreign policy agenda can be characterized as nothing less than rewriting the current geopolitical landscape. His announcement of the New Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road lays out a vision which will include a population of over 4 billion people with one-third of the world's wealth, and a 40 billion dollar Silk Road fund, along with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank, also known as the BRICS bank, to fund it. Xi's ambitious initiative has three drivers: (1) energy, (2) security, (3) markets. Like the silken strands on a loom, these drivers will weave together to create a fabric of interconnected transport corridors and port facilities that will boost trade, improve security, and aid strategic penetration. No longer is there a division in China's foreign policy between either the maritime domain or the “March West. ” The over-arching “Belt and Road” concept attempts to sew together these interests in one mega–foreign policy project. The “Belt and Road” initiative is a flexible formula and can even be expanded to include past projects as there are no deadlines or clear parameters. China's leading academics have been recruited to celebrate Xi Jinping as the “designer of China's road to being a great power. ”