As the Third Belt and Road Forum is ongoing in Beijing, it is time for us to think about global connectivity.
It is amazing that in just 10 years, the Belt and Road Initiative 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. (For details, please check the “The Belt and Road Initiative: A Key Pillar of the Global Community of Shared Future” white paper, http://www.scio.gov.cn/zfbps/zfbps_2279/202310/t20231010_773734.html)
Through the Belt and Road cooperation, we could see the power of connectivity. So why the Intiative was proposed by China? Why it was accepted by most of countries in the world? Why it can generated so many outcomes in just 10 years? From the perspective of Connectivity Politics, we could get the answer.
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" and "mutual growth and mutual restraint." 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.
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 issues 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. Human society is entering the new era of "connectivity politics" from the era of "power politics".
Regarding to the factors that make the world to change from era of “power politics” to “connectivity politics, two trends are obvious in playing prominent role in the tremendous changes in human society, if we look at the more than thirty years since the end of the Cold War. They are the globalization and digitalization. The rapid synergistic development of these two trends has greatly removed the physical space barriers that originally prevented people from connecting with each other. As a result, connections among people worldwide are exploding in more convenient, faster, and diverse ways.
Multidimensional connections 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, 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 changes.
Many people are aware of connectivity but do not realize its power. However, whether from the perspective of the increasingly extensive and complex connections, or from the role played by connectivity at some important issues in international politics, we are increasingly unable to ignore it, and have to admit that connectivity is increasingly play a decisive role.
In the era of "connectivity politics", only by breaking the inertial thinking in the era of "power politics", paying more attention to "connectivity", enhancing the positive effect of connectivity and avoiding its negative effect, can we make wise decisions. And only by following the trend of the times can we effectively safeguard world peace and development.
China's world view and foreign policy, including the concept of “global community of a shared future” or the "Belt and Road Initiative”, are full of connectivity thinking, although many people are not aware of it. The construction of ecological civilization also reflect China’s 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.
Through the speeches and the conversations of Belt and Road Forum participants, we could see that times have changed, and we need to change our way of thinking about the world. Today, human civilization has reached this turning point in history. ###
Tiancheng Lou joined Baidu in 2016: “When Google was researching autonomous driving, he discovered that there was a large gap in Google’s cultural understanding of China’s transportation, and it did not understand Chinese driving habits at all.
"Americans and Chinese have different ideas and ways of driving. Americans’ minds are full of rules, but the most important thing when driving in China is communication. Cars must understand people’s intentions, analyze and communicate, and form compromises and guidelines when conflicts arise.”
Recently, Beijing approved Baidu's to unmanned Robotaxi service in Yizhuang, where many high-tech research centers are located. "Tiancheng Lou, Ideals will never die”. [Via Jeff Ding's China AI newsletter]