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“The promotion of the One Belt One Road initiative is
not to recollect the past
nor to export the massive production capacity of China.

The reason for promoting the OBOR is to
realize the long-term development of the Chinese economy
and the great prosperity of Chinese nationalism.”

I once participated in an academic conference on the One Belt One Road(OBOR) that was held in Hangzhou in 2017. The OBOR initiative is China’s national strategy to develop an economic belt that connects the Asian and European economy to counter the U.S. Currently, 149 countries, including Korea, and 32 international organizations have signed an agreement related to the OBOR with China. The citation above was said by a senior research fellow at the Center for China & Globalization, a Chinese think tank that developed the OBOR initiative. As it was a lecture for Chinese nationals only, the researcher boldly explained the reasons for promoting the OBOR initiative.

In the end, he asked for proper awareness on the OBOR initiative, particularly stating that the project should not be viewed as the “China Threat” theory to the international community.

“The OBOR initiative is for over 60 nations to cooperate equally
and prosper together to build a community of common destiny.

Leaders, media, and experts must be fully aware of this intention
and refrain from irresponsible comments.”

“The OBOR initiative is not about China fighting for hegemony, but to provide the world with an infrastructure for constructing a community of common destiny for mankind.” This is what Chinese researchers said in unison in accordance with guidelines of the Chinese government.

Community of common destiny for mankind: ideological support of the OBOR

China claims that the reason for promoting the OBOR initiative is to construct a community of common destiny for mankind. However, this is the tail wagging the dog. To be precise, a community of common destiny for mankind is promoted from an ideological dimension to support the OBOR initiative.

China gained confidence in the war of hegemony with the U.S. for the first time during financial crisis of 2008. It discovered that the global governance mechanism had a critical flaw and that the powerful countries of the West were, in fact, incompetent. China viewed its participation in the G20 Washington Summit held the same year as a symbolic event of itself being included in the group of key decision-makers for global governance.

The construction of a community of common destiny for mankind was proposed for the first time by former leader Hu Jintao at the 18th National Congress in 2012. Xi Jinping who later took office consistently suggested the building of human community with a shared future in his speeches for home and abroad. The Chinese government then started to promote the community of common destiny in connection with the OBOR initiative in 2015 at the Boao Forum for Asia. Xi Jinping made a question at the forum, asking what China will do for a community of common destiny. He stated that China will adhere to policies for peaceful development, win-win development, and cooperation in the Asia Pacific region, and that China will take responsibility for them. The reason China proposed the idea of community of common destiny for Asia was because it needed to have Asian countries on its side to fight against the U.S. for hegemony.

Xi Jinping mentioned the construction of the human community with a shared future once again at the 19th National Congress in 2017 and had the ideology included in the Chinese Constitution in 2018. The ideology of a community of common destiny for mankind thereby became the greatest doctrine for international orders that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to establish and a diplomatic strategy with a clear purpose.

Who is the ruler of the world?

Some people say China’s proposal of a community of common destiny is a question to the world, asking who the ruler of the world is.

Xi Jinping emphasizes that a great revolution that has never happened in the past century is occurring today, and that China must take responsibility as a powerful country in this time of power shift. The never-before-seen great revolution in the past century refers to the rise of the East and the fall of the West. The West has gained power over the world after the modern times; however, Xi views that from now on the West will collapse and the East will lead the world. In other words, China has gained power over the world.

China thought of the need to dispel the “China Threat” theory and promote the “China Opportunity” theory to acquire global hegemony. The China Threat theory asserts that China that has grown economically will become powerful with a strong military and fight against the U.S. for hegemony in East Asia. Therefore, China stresses that the development of China is an opportunity for the world and not a threat to anyone. It also puts emphasis that it welcomes free riders on its rapid-growing economy. This implies that since transactions with China will bring significant economic profits, other countries should follow China’s will. It also means that economic sanctions will be put when China’s will is not followed. Korea has already experienced China’s economic sanctions during the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense(THAAD) missiles.

China has proposed to establish various global governance systems and a community of common destiny to support them in order to win the Sino-US hegemony war. In the end, the community of common destiny can be seen as a “novel worldview” for establishing Sino-centric world orders against the US-centric conventional orders.

China ruling history and the return of world order

China intends to spread the discussion on the community of common destiny for mankind and have it as the standard of civilization and implement Sinocentrism in the world. Then what kind of human society is China dreaming of, once it becomes the ruler of the world?

The discussion on the community of common destiny is theoretically based on China’s traditional doctrine of the world and Marxism. “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” is a combination of Marxism and Chinese traditional culture. That is, the community of common destiny can be viewed as a global extension of Chinese socialism.

The discussion on the community of common destiny is also negatively affecting relations between Korea and China. Chinese elites are using history as political means for establishing national identity and discussions on the community of common destiny. China has a long history of using past events as means for political purposes. It often had history to justify sovereignty since it is one of the least religious countries in the world. New dynasties were pressured to destroy official records and rewrite history for the new ruler. They built ethical foundations and directions for national affairs by manipulating historical memories.

China is restructuring world history in a Sinocentric perspective by using historical events and manipulating collective memory. “Chinese doctrine of the world” is one example. According to Chinese elites, world order is moral order that existed centering on China before the 19th century. They claim that world order is nonviolent and peaceful community made by free will, unlike Western imperialism, and that the “Chinese doctrine of the world” must be a new alternative for human civilization.

In 2017, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Xi has told him that Korea actually used to be a part of China. Experts suspected that Beijing was having hegemonic ambitions. Xi’s remark violated the international law that states that all countries, small or large, have equal rights. Law professor Carl Minzner of Fordham Law School criticized that Beijing is going backwards to the past and that intellectual isolation that it has chosen has the risk of taking China back to the time that weakened national dynamics.