In just 10 years, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) became a huge network of cooperation participated by more than 150 countries and over 30 international organizations with many projects undergoing or having been finished. So why it was China that proposed the BRI? Why was it accepted by so many countries and international organizations?
From the philosophy dominating China’s mainstream thinking, we could get the answer of the first question. Dialectical materialism is an important worldview and methodology that guides contemporary Chinese thought and practice. Materialist dialectics believes that the entire world is a universally connected organic whole. Chinese traditional culture also contains profound dialectical, connectivity-oriented and holistic thinking, such as "the unity of nature and man (天人合一)" and "mutual growth and mutual restraint (相生相克)." Therefore, in the mainstream world view of the Chinese people, nothing could be isolated. This makes China's attitudes towards the world and other countries fundamentally different from those in the West, where individualism dominates.
Through the fast-growing net of Belt and Road cooperation and the outcomes, we could see the power of connectivity. Connectivity has been existing since ancient times, and the concept of “international relations” is based on "connectivity" to some extent. Therefore, "connectivity" is not a new thing or a new concept in the field of international relations. However, by sorting out some phenomena and delving into some facts that have been ignored for a long time, we can clearly see that "connectivity" is becoming an increasingly important and decisive force in today's world. That also explains why BRI can be accepted by so many countries.
After the end of the Cold War, two trends are obvious in playing prominent role in the tremendous changes of today’s world -- globalization and digitalization. The rapid synergistic development of these two trends has greatly removed physical space barriers that originally prevented more people from connecting with each other. As a result, connections among people worldwide are exploding in more faster and diverse ways.
Explosion of connections increased interdependence between countries and peoples. Our human society enters a new era of "connectivity politics" from the era of "power politics". Connectivity can be used as a kind of power, to gain benefits or to hurt enemy as being weaponized, as connectivity naturally has both to sides of effects -- positive, such as mutually beneficial trade and cultural exchanges promoting understanding, and negative, for example illegal immigrants or transborder diseases. The countries that know how to take advantage of the positive effects and avoid the negative effects would win in competition.
Connections in at least four dimensions, including categories of people, money, goods, and information, in the world grow so fast that efforts to cut them off become futile. This is why sanctions against Russia are difficult to achieve the desired results, and why complete "decoupling" between China and the United States is just an unrealistic international political fantasy of a few people, and why Western foreign policies, especially the US foreign policies, are increasingly criticized, including their internal reflection, while Western international relations theory failed to provide sufficient theoretical support for the foreign policy change.
The power and decisive role of connectivity have not been talked enough globally. However, whether from the perspective of the increasingly extensive and complex connections, or from the role played by connectivity at some important international issues, including peace, development and climate change, we are increasingly unable to ignore it, and have to admit that connectivity is playing a more and more critical role.
In an era which probably could be put as "connectivity politics era", only by breaking the inertial thinking in the era of "power politics", and paying more attention to "connectivity", including enhancing the positive effects of connectivity and avoiding its negative effects, can we make wise decisions.
This kind of Chinese world view reflected by China’s foreign policy, including the promoting of “global community of a shared future” and the "Belt and Road Initiative”, are full of connectivity thinking. China’s construction of ecological civilization also reflect connectivity thinking, as people are closely connected with the nature. To those who refuse to give up “power politics” logic, China's foreign policy seems lack of logical support and even could be considered as "absurd." But if we see China’s foreign policy through lense of "connectivity politics,” all the decisions made by China are not only logical, but also in line with the trend of the times and the needs of the world. ###
Sounds good to me.