China’s New Initiatives and the Shaping of Eurasia’s Strategic Environment

Mitić, Aleksandar (2023) China’s New Initiatives and the Shaping of Eurasia’s Strategic Environment. In: Eurasian Security After NATO. Institute of International Politics and Economics; Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Belgrade; Moscow, pp. 113-139. ISBN 978-86-7067-317-5

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Abstract

The United States retreat from Afghanistan and Washington’s incremental China-containment pressure in the Indo-Pacific, as well as the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, have presented an important challenge for Beijing’s shaping of a strategic environment in Eurasia favourable to its key domestic, regional and global interests. China faced an increasing threat to its territorial integrity and sovereignty (Xinjiang, Taiwan), to its key role in the global supply chain (Western de- coupling), to its maritime transport routes (increased U.S. military oversight in the South China Sea) and to its land routes through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor into the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar (terrorist attacks of the “Balochistan Liberation Army” in retreat from Afghanistan). Furthermore, Beijing needed to address the question of instability in Central Asia, its energy security in the Middle East with Saudi-Iranian tensions still on, and to tackle the issue of threats of Western sanctions over its cooperation with its closest strategic partner, the Russian Federation. Despite the COVID-19 restrictions taking their toll on both China’s economic and diplomatic outreach, Beijing decided to push farther with its strategic undertakings. Thus, in addition to the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS in 2023, China presented three new initiatives in line with its flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – the Global Development Initiative (GDI, 2021), the Global Security Initiative (GSI, 2022) and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI, 2023). Building on the concepts of shaping and strategic narrative, this article looks at how Beijing involved its initiatives to pursue the shaping of the strategic environment and norms in Eurasia and beyond, pushing past the Western constraints of the “rules-based order” (RBO).

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