“Making the Crooked Straight”: China's Grand Strategy of “Peaceful Rise” and its Central Asian Dimension

Abstract

This article argues that China's foreign policy since 1991 has been guided by the evolution of a grand strategy of "peaceful rise" that seeks to ensure China's smooth transition to great power status. Moreover, it suggests that a strategic preoccupation with Central Asia has become an important expression of this grand strategy. Framing these arguments is a third overarching one that postulates that China's foreign policy in Central Asia is not only intimately related to the strategy of "peaceful rise" but also to a particular, historically and geopolitically informed narrative of China's "Inner Asian" power.

India's Recent Infrastructure Development Initiatives: A Comparative Analysis of South and Southeast Asia

“…Over the years there has been deliberate effort on the Indian Government's part to project the Northeast region as the bridge to Southeast Asia (Karthykeyan, 2009). India's infrastructural ties with the Southeast Asia through the northeast can be drawn parallel with China's attempt to link Xinjiang province to the neighbouring Central Asia (Clarke, 2008). Similar is the case of Yunnan province, where China has turned the once impoverished landlocked region, into a gateway to South and Southeast Asia (Nanfan Daily, 2010).…”

China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: The Dynamics of “New Regionalism”, “Vassalization”, and Geopolitics in Central Asia

“…Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China has attempted to utilize Xinjiang's geopolitical position in order to simultaneously achieve the security and integration of Xinjiang and, as this project has progressed, China's rise as Central Asian power. The integration of Xinjiang grants China significant security, economic and strategic benefits that serve two purposes-the consolidation of China's control of Xinjiang and the expansion of Chinese power in Central Asia-which contribute to Beijing's quest for a "peaceful rise" to great power status (Clarke 2008).…”