Foreign Policy Category Archive

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China: One Country, Two Sessions, Three Threats

Pepe Escobar • May 22, 2020

• 1,300 Words • 19 Comments • Reply

The key takeaways of the Two Sessions of the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing are already in the public domain. In a nutshell: no GDP target for 2020; a budget deficit of at least 3.6% of GDP; one trillion yuan in special treasury bonds; corporate fees/taxes cut by 2.5 trillion yuan; a defense budget... Read More

China Forges Ahead Through Chaos and Threats

Beijing is turbocharging its Belt and Road and other game-changing plans despite Covid-19 and US hybrid warfare

Pepe Escobar • May 7, 2020

• 1,300 Words • 277 Comments • Reply

Amid the deepest economic contraction in nearly a century, President Xi Jinping had already made it very clear, last month, that China should be ready for unprecedented, relentless foreign challenges. He was not referring only to the possible decoupling of global supply chains and the non-stop demonization of every project related to the New Silk... Read More

China Rolls Out the Health Silk Road

Pepe Escobar • April 2, 2020

• 1,000 Words • 22 Comments • Reply

When President Xi Jinping was on a phone call in mid-March with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, before the arrival of a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Milan full of medical help, the key takeaway was the Chinese pledge to develop a Health Silk Road (Jiankang Sichou Zhilu). That was in fact already inbuilt... Read More

No Weapon Left Behind: the American Hybrid War on China

Pepe Escobar • February 21, 2020

• 1,400 Words • 261 Comments • Reply

The New Silk Roads – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – were launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, first in Central Asia (Nur-Sultan) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta). One year later, the Chinese economy overtook the U.S. on a PPP basis. Inexorably, year after year since the start of the millennium, the U.S.... Read More

Why the New Silk Roads Are a ‘threat’ to US Bloc

The Middle East is the key to wide-ranging, economic, interlinked integration, and peace

Pepe Escobar • January 23, 2020

• 1,700 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

Under the cascading roar of the 24/7 news cycle cum Twitter eruptions, it’s easy for most of the West, especially the US, to forget the basics about the interaction of Eurasia with its western peninsula, Europe. Asia and Europe have been trading goods and ideas since at least 3,500 BC. Historically, the flux may have... Read More

Battle of the Ages to Stop Eurasian Integration

Coming decade could see the US take on Russia, China and Iran over the New Silk Road connection

Pepe Escobar • January 15, 2020

• 1,600 Words • 41 Comments • Reply

The Raging Twenties started with a bang with the targeted assassination of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani. Yet a bigger bang awaits us throughout the decade: the myriad declinations of the New Great Game in Eurasia, which pits the US against Russia, China and Iran, the three major nodes of Eurasia integration. Every game-changing act in... Read More

Chinese cargo truck coming from the Kyrgiz-China border. Photo: Asia Times / Pepe Escobar

In the Footsteps of Xuanzang in Kyrgyzstan

This journey into the past also reaches the heart of 21st century China’s New Silk Roads strategy

Pepe Escobar • December 20, 2019

• 1,500 Words • 59 Comments • Reply

At the start of the Tang dynasty, in the early 7th century, a young wandering monk embarked on a 16-year long voyage from the imperial capital Chang’an (today’s Xian) to India to collect Buddhist manuscripts. At the time Chang’an was six times bigger than Rome at its height, with a population of over one million... Read More

Chinese container cargo trucks after crossing the Kulma pass at the Tajik-China border. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times

Pamir Highway: the Road on the Roof of the World

Pepe Escobar • December 15, 2019

• 3,000 Words • 52 Comments • Reply

This is arguably the ultimate road trip on earth. Marco Polo did it. All the legendary Silk Road explorers did it. Traveling the Pamir Highway back to back, as a harsh winter approaches, able to appreciate it in full, in silence and solitude, offers not only a historical plunge into the intricacies of the ancient... Read More

Trials and Tribulations of Central Asia Integration

The pros and cons of being the Heartland in the 21st century

Pepe Escobar • November 29, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 4 Comments • Reply

Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Crossing Tajikistan from west to northeast – Dushanbe to the Tajik-Kyrgyz border – and then Kyrgyzstan from south to north all the way to Bishkek via Osh, is one of the most extraordinary road trips on earth. Not only this is prime Ancient Silk Road territory but now is being propelled as a... Read More

The Birth of Eurasia

Godfree Roberts • November 8, 2019

• 3,300 Words • 102 Comments • Reply

Eurasia has most of the world's wealth, resources, and population — yet there is very low economic connectivity. A Sino-Russian partnership can collectively create a gravitational pull that allows them to capture the geoeconomic levers of power by creating an alternative to the Western-centric model. This entails developing new global value chains that captures the... Read More

A Blue Dot Barely Visible from New Silk Roads

US-Australia-Japan alternative to Belt and Road helps explain why the US sent a junior delegation to Thailand and why...

Pepe Escobar • November 7, 2019

• 800 Words • 35 Comments • Reply

Chinese President Xi Jinping six years ago launched New Silk Roads, now better known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the largest, most ambitious, pan-Eurasian infrastructure project of the 21st century. Under the Trump administration, Belt and Road has been utterly demonized 24/7: a toxic cocktail of fear and doubt, with Beijing blamed for everything... Read More

Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP): the RCEP Train Left the Station, and India, Behind

Biggest story at ASEAN was convergence of moves toward Asia integration, leaving Delhi out for now

Pepe Escobar • November 6, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 15 Comments • Reply

A pan-Asia high-speed train has left the station – and India – behind. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which would have been the largest free trade deal in the world, was not signed in Bangkok. It will probably be signed next year in Vietnam, assuming New Delhi goes beyond what ASEAN, with diplomatic finesse... Read More

Welcome to the Indo-Russia Maritime Silk Road

Modi and Putin discuss business and joint ventures at an economic conference in the Far East

Pepe Escobar • September 6, 2019

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

There’s no way to follow the complex inner workings of the Eurasia integration process without considering what takes place annually at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. BRICS for the moment may be dead – considering the nasty cocktail of economic brutalism and social intolerance delivered by the incendiary “Captain” Bolsonaro in Brazil. Yet RIC... Read More

China's BRI Could Save Destroyed Southeast Asia

Andre Vltchek • August 11, 2019

• 2,800 Words • 43 Comments • Reply

Most of the people in the West or in North Asia usually never think about it, but Southeast Asia is one of the most depressed and depressing parts of the world. It has been through genocides, wars and atrocious military regimes. Then, those monstrous income disparities. According to The Bangkok Post, in 2018, “the 10%... Read More

Turkey’s Erdogan Meet’s China’s Xi: Sultan Shines in the Court of the Dragon King

Erdogan looks set to buy Russian missile defense system in defiance of US and NATO, tying his cart to China and Russia

Pepe Escobar • July 10, 2019

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Turkey is a key hub in the emerging New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative. Erdogan is a master at selling Turkey as the ultimate East-West crossroads. He has also expressed much interest in joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led by Russia-China, whose annual summit took place in Bishkek a few days before... Read More

Uyghurs, Political Islam & the BRI

Godfree Roberts • June 25, 2019

• 7,100 Words • 319 Comments • Reply

Since our media have confined themselves to unsupported allegations, I’ve collected several first-hand accounts of happenings in Xinjiang, an area of China I myself have never visited. Many Chinese consider Uyghurs the descendants of a marooned, white imperialist army living on land that was China’s long before they arrived. Edgar Snow[1] visited Xinjiang in 1937... Read More

Panda Diplomacy Much Better Than Mafia Extortion of Collapsing West

Andre Vltchek • June 13, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 5 Comments • Reply

While the United States has been intimidating dozens of countries all over the world, two cuddly Chinese giant pandas – a three year old male called Ru Yi, and a female one year younger, named Ding Ding – were settling down in their new home, inside the legendary Moscow Zoo. Chewing bamboo shoots, and obviously... Read More

China and Russia: Whoopin' Uncle Sam at His Own Game

Mike Whitney • May 2, 2019

• 1,600 Words • 246 Comments • Reply

Your Geopolitical Quiz for the Day: Two countries are embroiled in a ferocious rivalry. One country's meteoric growth has put it on a path to become the world's biggest economic superpower while the other country appears to be slipping into irreversible decline. Which country will lead the world into the future? Country A builds factories... Read More

Where the Silk Roads Meet the Mighty Mekong

Sleepy, landlocked Laos is undergoing rapid changes as China builds connections to mainland Southeast Asia

Pepe Escobar • April 24, 2019

• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment

The small wooden boats slowly make their way down the brown waters of the Mekong at sunset. Flowing meditation – just enjoying the silence, watching the river flow. Then, suddenly, in the distance, an apparition – a row of cement Ts. Like a high-tech divinity, the 21st century irrupts across the immemorial Mekong, which in... Read More

Marco Polo Is Back in China – Again

Pepe Escobar • March 10, 2019

• 600 Words • Leave a Comment

President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Italy for an official visit on March 22. The top theme of discussion will be the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A day earlier, in Brussels, the EU is to debate a common strategy related to Chinese investments in Europe. A substantial... Read More

Michael Klare: A Long War of Attrition

Tom Engelhardt • February 17, 2019

• 400 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

These days, the trade “war” between the Trump administration and China is regularly in the headlines and, sometimes, so are the bases the Chinese are building in the South China Sea, the ships the U.S. Navy is sending ever more provocatively close to them, and the potential clashes that might result. But the global nature... Read More

How the New Silk Roads Are Merging Into Greater Eurasia

Russia is keen to push economic integration with parts of Asia and this fits in with China's Belt and Road Initiative

Pepe Escobar • December 13, 2018

• 1,400 Words • Leave a Comment

The concept of Greater Eurasia has been discussed at the highest levels of Russian academia and policy-making for some time. This week the policy was presented at the Council of Ministers and looks set to be enshrined, without fanfare, as the main guideline of Russian foreign policy for the foreseeable future. President Putin is unconditionally... Read More

Economic War on Iran Is War on Eurasia Integration

US sanctions on Iran should be interpreted as a piece in a much larger chessboard

Pepe Escobar • August 14, 2018

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Hysteria reigned supreme after the first round of US sanctions were reinstated against Iran over the past week. War scenarios abound, and yet the key aspect of the economic war unleashed by the Trump administration has been overlooked: Iran is a major piece in a much larger chessboard. The US sanctions offensive, launched after Washington’s... Read More

Why Europe Is Afraid of China’s New Silk Roads

Pepe Escobar • April 25, 2018

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

It came out as a sort of minor scandal – considering the ’24/7 post-truth news cycle.’ Of the 28 EU ambassadors in Beijing, 27, with the exception of Hungary’s, signed an internal report criticizing the New Silk Roads as a non-transparent threat to free trade, allegedly favoring unfair competition by Chinese conglomerates. The report was... Read More

The Myth of a Neo-Imperial China

Pepe Escobar • March 16, 2018

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The geopolitical focus of the still young 21st century spans the Indian Ocean from the Persian Gulf all the way to the South China Sea alongside the spectrum from Southwest Asia to Central Asia and China. That happens to configure the prime playing ground, overland and maritime, of the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and... Read More

The Myth of a Neo-Imperial China

New Silk Road infrastructure projects could bring back a peaceful and prosperous Eurasia

Pepe Escobar • March 14, 2018

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

China’s “Xi Silk Road” Is Here to Stay

Xi's extended tenure could embody the guarantee China needs to continue its anti-corruption purge and guide the ongoing...

Pepe Escobar • March 2, 2018

• 700 Words • Leave a Comment

It took only two sentences for Xinhua to make the historical announcement; the Central Committee of the CCCP “proposed to remove the expression that ‘the president and vice-president of the People’s Republic of China shall serve no more than two consecutive terms’ from the country’s constitution.” That will be all but confirmed at the end... Read More

Xi Jinping’s Road Map to “the Chinese Dream”

China's Belt and Road Initiative – the New Silk Road – will spark the country's development and turn the dream into...

Pepe Escobar • October 21, 2017

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Now that President Xi Jinping has been duly elevated to the Chinese Communist Party pantheon in the rarified company of Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, the world will have plenty of time to digest the meaning of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Xi himself, in his... Read More

The New Silk Road Will Go Through Syria

Pepe Escobar • July 14, 2017

• 900 Words • 48 Comments • Reply

Amid the proverbial doom and gloom pervading all things Syria, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune sometimes yield, well, good fortune. Take what happened this past Sunday in Beijing. The China-Arab Exchange Association and the Syrian Embassy organized a Syria Day Expo crammed with hundreds of Chinese specialists in infrastructure investment. It was a... Read More

Peace, Harmony and Happiness, Plus a Deluge of Yuan. the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing

Inclusive globalization, win-win global trade, Made in China 2025 ... President Xi uses Belt and Road Forum to explain...

Pepe Escobar • May 15, 2017

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

President Xi Jinping, in his keynote speech that opened the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, did his best to explain the future of the New Silk Roads. Xi said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – that what was once “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) – is a multilateral... Read More

Putin Aligns with Xi in Crafting the New World (Trade) Order

Pepe Escobar • May 15, 2017

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History will record the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing marked the juncture where the 21st century New Silk Roads assumed their full character of Globalization 2.0, or “inclusive globalization,” as defined by President Xi Jinping in Davos earlier this year. I have dealt with the monumental stakes here and here. Terminology, of course, remains... Read More

Trade War with China? Will Trump Hop on an American Silk Road?

Pepe Escobar • January 23, 2017

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

If it’s a trade war with China he would rather have, the new president will find himself on the back foot from day one Hysteria reigns supreme at the dawn of the Trump era, with the President rebranded across the whole ideological spectrum as an American Mao or even an American Hitler. Let’s step away... Read More

All Aboard the Post-TPP World

Pepe Escobar • November 24, 2016

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

A half-hearted near handshake between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before and after they spoke «for about four minutes», standing up, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, captured to perfection the melancholic dwindling of the Obama era. A whirlwind flashback of the fractious relationship... Read More

Why the New Silk Roads Terrify Washington

Pepe Escobar • October 7, 2016

• 1,400 Words • Leave a Comment

Almost six years ago, President Putin proposed to Germany ‘the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.’ This idea represented an immense trade emporium uniting Russia and the EU, or, in Putin’s words, “a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of dollars.” In a nutshell: Eurasia integration. Washington panicked.... Read More

On the Road to United Eurasia

Pepe Escobar • June 30, 2016

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Whenever President Vladimir Putin stresses Russia’s «all-embracing and strategic partnership» with China, one can hear the proverbial howls of anger emanating from the neocon/neoliberalcon axis in the Beltway. As he met Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijng this past Saturday, Putin even allowed himself an understatement; «To say we have a strategic cooperation is not... Read More

It’s All About Eurasia Integration

Pepe Escobar • June 23, 2016

• 1,200 Words • Leave a Comment

The key takeaway of the 20th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – 30 ministers from 21 nations and 880 CEOs attending – predictably was all about the key socioeconomic story of the 21st century: Eurasia integration. President Putin put it quite mildly, actually, when he said that, «with our partners, we believe the Eurasian... Read More

Silk Dragon Takes Persian Road

Pepe Escobar • January 27, 2016

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He came, he saw, and he pocketed all the deals that matter. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tour of Southwest Asia – Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt – could easily be sold anywhere as your typical Chinese-style win-win. On the PR arena, Xi did a sterling job polishing China’s image as a global power. Beijing scored... Read More

Oil Geopolitics and the “Economic Corridor”: Pakistan Enters China’s “New Silk Road”

Pepe Escobar • May 28, 2015

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Now how do you top this as a geopolitical entrance? Eight JF-17 Thunder fighter jets escorting Chinese President Xi Jinping on board an Air China Boeing as he enters Pakistani air space. And these JF-17s are built as a China-Pakistan joint project. Silk Road? Better yet; silk skyway. Just to drive the point home –... Read More

U.S. Wakes Up to “New Silk World Order”

Pepe Escobar • May 15, 2015

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

The real Masters of the Universe in the U.S. are no weathermen, but arguably they’re starting to feel which way the wind is blowing. History may signal it all started with this week’s trip to Sochi, led by their paperboy, Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Foreign Minister Lavrov and then with President... Read More

Oil Geopolitics and the “Economic Corridor”: Pakistan Enters China’s “New Silk Road”

Pepe Escobar • April 26, 2015

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China’s Silky Road to Glory. Beijing’s Trade Proposal Undermines Obama’s TPP

Pepe Escobar • November 15, 2014

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If there were any remaining doubts about the unlimited stupidity Western corporate media is capable of dishing out, the highlight of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing has been defined as Russian President Vladimir Putin supposedly “hitting” on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s wife – and the subsequent Chinese censoring of the moment when... Read More

The Birth of the ‘de-Americanized’ World. Beijing Calls for Creation of New “Reserve Currency” to Replace the U.S. Dollar

Pepe Escobar • October 15, 2013

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It’s time to build a “de-Americanized” world. It’s time for a “new international reserve currency” to replace the US dollar. It’s all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon’s mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts –... Read More

China Stitches Up (SCO) Silk Rd

Pepe Escobar • September 13, 2013

• 1,800 Words • Leave a Comment

While the whole world was terrified by the prospect of the Obama administration bombing Syria, Chinese President Xi Jinping was busy doing the Silk Road. One has to love that famous Deng Xiaoping dictum; "Always maintain a low profile". This being the second-largest economy in the world, "low profile" always packs a mighty punch. Cue... Read More

Pipelineistan and the New Silk Road(s)

Pepe Escobar • May 31, 2013

• 2,400 Words • Leave a Comment

This is a version of a paper presented this week at the annual conference of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. SINGAPORE - Ask Western elites - oh, those were the days, in the 17th century, when the rise of European sea powers led to the collapse of the caravan trade... Read More

Pipeline Geopolitics. Betting and Bluffing in the New Great Game

Pepe Escobar • October 12, 2010

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Future historians may well agree that the 21st century Silk Road first opened for business on December 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation, linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Hyperbole did not deter the... Read More

New Great Game Revisited, Part 2: Iran, China and the New Silk Road

Pepe Escobar • July 26, 2009

• 1,800 Words • Leave a Comment

HONG KONG - Does it make sense to talk about a Beijing-Tehran axis? Apparently no, when one learns that Iran's application to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was flatly denied at the 2008 summit in Tajikistan. Apparently yes, when one sees how the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran... Read More

"New Silk Road" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

China's Rise, America's Fall

Which superpower is more threatened by its “extractive elites”?

Ron Unz

• 431 Comments • Reply

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 390 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.