During Chinese leader Xi Jinping ’s visit to Europe in May, China and Hungary signed several agreements, including a $2.1 billion rail project that will be part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013 under the name One Belt, One Road, the initiative has been central to Chinese foreign policy, even though the program has led participants into debt traps and resulted in crumbling infrastructure . Commentators have increasingly speculated about the BRI’s decline . But when Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, talks with China experts on Capitol Hill, they often tell him that the BRI is still the biggest issue in U.S.-China relations. His first book, Countering China’s Great Game , succinctly describes why the initiative is a threat to America and how Washington can thwart Xi’s plans and win the new Cold War.
While the BRI helps Beijing resurrect trade routes and open new markets, Sobolik makes the case that its primary purpose is to shift the world’s strategic orientation away from the United States and toward China. For example, Xi neutralized opposition from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Beijing building and occupying islands in the South China Sea after some members received BRI investments. Countries with BRI projects are also less likely to criticize human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang and are more likely to praise China's supposed counterterrorism efforts there. Beyond its near abroad, China seeks to use investments to achieve a primary objective, reorienting Europe away from the U.S., through either the BRI or a “shadow BRI.” These latter projects in the United Kingdom , Germany , France , and elsewhere are not part of the BRI, but they can exceed Chinese investments in BRI countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia.
Through these efforts, Xi is trying to build a network of tributary states. So even if the initiative squanders billions, for Xi, it is worth the costs as long as it reshapes the global order while convincing his people that the Middle Kingdom rules over all under Heaven and that he has the Mandate of Heaven, to use the Chinese propaganda jargon. Therefore, Sobolik forecasts that the BRI will continue in some form and threaten U.S. interests.
To understand how the BRI fits into Chinese foreign policy , Sobolik looks to China’s imperial history. He contradicts Henry Kissinger, who wrote that China is “a satisfied empire with limited territorial ambitions,” and Elon Musk, who said China’s history suggests it is “not acquisitive” and will not “go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.” Instead, China’s history is full of imperial conquests and ideology. According to the concept of Zhongguo, China is the Middle Kingdom, the central power with cultural primacy and civilizational hegemony. Past and current Chinese leaders have combined this with the notion of tianxia, which implies China should rule, as mentioned, “all under heaven.” When outsiders refused to submit or become tributary states, the Middle Kingdom resorted to coercion, but it also sometimes risked overextension. Xi views the Chinese Communist Party as the latest iteration of a long line of Middle Kingdom dynasties. This worldview shapes what he thinks his regime must do to survive.
Wise U.S. policies could turn the BRI into a liability for China. But the Biden administration seeks to cooperate with the CCP while still competing with it, which Sobolik considers irresponsible. Yet China hawks have also promoted ineffective policies that are essentially defensive. They try to match the BRI’s largesse, but such efforts likely will fail because Beijing is willing to spend more extravagantly on its initiative than the U.S. can match with competing efforts. Instead of targeting China’s strengths, Sobolik argues the U.S. should exploit its fears and weaknesses, similar to how Washington once exploited the Soviets’.
During the Cold War , the U.S. suspected the Soviet Union feared America’s bombers, so Washington tested this theory in the 1980s, when the Pentagon acquired more B-1 bombers than it normally would. Moscow responded by developing new fighter aircraft and missiles instead of nuclear weapons. Sobolik draws upon this lesson and suggests America should find Beijing’s vulnerabilities and force it to defend those flanks, which would weaken the CCP and divert resources away from its other priorities, such as invading Taiwan.
With these lessons in mind, Sobolik proposes two policies for how the U.S. can go on offense against China and the BRI. First, the U.S. should dismantle the BRI by going after its hub: Xinjiang, where, according to both the Trump and Biden administrations, the CCP is committing genocide against Muslim Uyghurs. On a map, this region may look remote and insignificant. But Xinjiang is central to the BRI because overland routes connecting China to Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East pass through it. Sobolik argues that the CCP commits atrocities against Uyghurs to pacify the region and prevent a separatist uprising that could sever China from important markets. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which is designed to halt the importation of goods produced by forced labor from Uyghurs and other groups, is a good start. But the U.S. could do more. Specifically, Washington should use aggressive sanctions to target entities that benefit from the trade that passes through Xinjiang.
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Second, Sobolik proposes that the U.S. target the Digital Silk Road, the BRI’s telecommunications component, by chipping away at China’s Great Firewall. This policy would leverage America’s technological prowess to make China's internet censorship more difficult and costly to maintain. It would also expose the Chinese people to truths the CCP wants to erase. This would target China's greatest fear, losing control of its people and risking that they no longer see Communist leaders as having the “Mandate of Heaven.” Furthermore, the U.S. would demonstrate to authoritarians elsewhere that they cannot rely upon DSR technologies to control the internet or their people.
Despite its problems, the BRI will not collapse anytime soon, as Xi’s trip to Hungary demonstrated. Sobolik provides an excellent handbook for readers who want to quickly learn how and why this latest iteration of Chinese imperialism threatens America. But even for people who have followed the subject for years, his analysis offers an important reminder about geopolitics: Defense alone does not win cold wars, so America will need to relearn how to go on offense.
Mark Melton is managing editor at Hudson Institute. His views are his own.
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