One Belt One Road (OBOR) is not the first mega-international project initiated by the Chinese government, and the skepticism and criticism it has received from the West was routine. But for me, the most interesting aspect of the project is, how it went from being considered as an unrealistic ambition to now sounding as promising as it can be.
Back then in 2013, one of the domestic critiques was that OBOR was another show business that burns tax money for nothing. That «nothing», primary refers to the dream of national rejuvenation throughout the last century in China. And it was considered as «nothing», because despite of having a strong economy and rich culture, China had little room in Western Culture® – an economical and cultural alliance dominates the standard of human development. This alliance was so solid that if China wants to expand its influence, it can only seek elsewhere. «Most of the OBOR countries are so politically complicated and economically under-developed, that no wise businessmen would touch them», an analysis said so, in the implication that the OBOR was just another detour and futile proposal.
But something has shifted during this two years. Brexit and Trump‘s presidency have stunned the world, not only in a way that demonstrates the internal conflicts of the Western society, but also, to a certain extent, is pointing to a dismantling the Western solidarity. As a result, China finds a crack to show its pleasant side without a need of defending itself. For example, when Trump started to undo Obama administration’s climate change policies, China started to (conveniently) play the «responsible» climate leader regardless its opaque attitude towards climate change in the past. And the world, particularly the Western world, does hope that it is serious. The Sino-Skepticism is no longer all fictional and negative, but somehow became plausible and less repugnant in the shadow of persistent turmoil in the West. This shift of perception has less to do with the improving diplomacy of the Chinese authority, but it has much to do with the current crisis in the Western world.
The contemporary perception of the «West» and the «East», especially in the Sino-West context, is like a stew made of the colonial heritage (the West and the Oriental) and the Cold War concept («the free world» and the Communist camp), mixed with some random cultural, racial assumptions. At some point of the history, the binary concept became established more for power battles than for cognition. Although we have entered a «post-colonial», «post-Cold-War» era, the speculation of China displacing the Western-dominated culture order was never genuine until now. It seems to me that the dissolvent of one side is insufficient to surpass a binary concept, it can only happen when both parties are going towards a solution.
It is certainly not a pleasant reality that the West has to cope with now, and it is not necessarily a gratifying scenario that China plays the righteous world leader game. But in the silver lining of the cloud, we may see a slightly more equal global culture coming.