Building the Community of Common Destiny
Senior Research Fellow, Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies
Development of the Concept
Jin Kai observed in his article Can China build a Community of Common Destiny? that the phrase ‘Community of Common Destiny'was officially adopted in 2007 in (former President) Hu Jintao's 17th National Party Congress Report to describe the special cross-strait relationship between the mainland and Taiwan. Ever since, Beijing has been keen to use this term to emphasize its important but unique relations with other countries, particularly China's neighbors.
Current Chinese President Xi Jinping elaborated the ‘Common Destiny' theme in his October 2013 keynote speech at the ‘Conference on the Diplomatic Work with Neighbouring Countries'. This was understood as a guiding principle of China's diplomacy with its neighbors.
At this Conference, President Xi stressed that “doing well in the diplomatic work with neighbouring countries is out of the need to realize the two ‘centenary goals' and achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; and that China needs to work hard to advance the diplomacy with neighbouring countries, strive to win a sound surrounding environment for China's development, and enable neighbouring countries to benefit more from China's development for the purpose of common development.” President Xi Jinping emphasized that “the basic principle of diplomacy with neighbours is to treat them as friends and partners, to make them feel safe and to help them develop”.
Again, in his speech entitled “Towards a Community of Common Destiny and A New Future for Asia,” delivered at the Boao Forum held on 30th March 2015, President Xi Jinping outlined the following four principles that underlay his vision.
· “We need to make sure that all countries respect one another and treat each other as equals.
· We need to seek win-win cooperation and common development.
· We need to pursue common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.
· We need to ensure inclusiveness and mutual learning among civilizations.”
It is said that this new type of community aims at building a ‘community of shared interests', ‘a community of shared destiny' and ‘a community of shared responsibility'. In essence, it is viewed as a part of the community of common destiny of the whole of mankind.
Jin Kai remarked that “the concept of a Community of Common Destiny is the core part of a well-designed and carefully constructed new diplomatic strategy for Xi's era: there is the ‘China dream' to maintain domestic unity and stability, ‘new type of great power relations' to fi nd alternative ways of peaceful co-existence with major powers, and the ‘Community of Common Destiny' to ensure a peaceful and stable neighbouring environment, which is essential for China's continued rise.”
Some scholars also observed that “at its heart, the concept of a ‘Community of Common Destiny' is essentially about ensuring peace and stability in China's external strategic environment through the development of good relations with neighbouring countries.”
To realize this dream of the Community of Common Destiny, China would defi nitely need a very huge funding. Justin Yifu Lin stated that “China is now the world's largest trading country and the second largest economy” and it “has huge volume of foreign exchange reserves—which stand at some $3.5 trillion (£2.5 trillion).”
“Coinciding with Xi Jinping's Boao speech, the Chinese Government released its ‘action plan' for the Belt and Road Initiative. The plan was jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce, indicating it is both a domestic and foreign policy initiative.”
China's concept of a Community of Common Destiny seems to revolve around economic initiatives which place China at the centre of the regional dynamic as the two main pillars of the Community of Common Destiny are the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (the B&R Initiative). This much promoted the Belt and Road Initiative is indeed the hallmark of this vision of a Community of Common Destiny.
In Justin Yifu Lin's view Xi's Belt and Road Initiative idea is relatively straightforward. Inspired by the ancient Silk Road network for trade and communication, Xi's Silk Road Economic Belt and 21stCentury Maritime Silk Road will link China to the rest of Asia and Africa, and ultimately Europe. By building much needed infrastructure across the Silk Road routes, China is going to build “a community of common interests, destiny and responsibility”.
For some observers, the Belt and Road Initiative can also be summarized as one core idea (peace, cooperation, development, and mutual benefit), five cooperation (policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds), and three communities (a community of shared interests, a community of common destiny, and a community of responsibility). The Community of Common Destiny is the new discourse system proposed by the Chinese government.
The Belt and Road Initiative will be fi nanced through a range of mechanisms. China's huge volume of foreign exchange reserves will provide the wherewithal to fund the projects. The Chinese Government increasingly speaks of the Belt and Road Initiative and AIIB together, linking them to its vision of a common destiny. The AIIB is the fi rst initiative designed to fulfi l infrastructure needs in the developing world, especially the Asia-Pacifi c region.
Professor Chas Freeman observed that “in the aggregate, China's Belt and Road Initiative development initiative constitutes the largest and potentially the most transformative engineering effort in human history. At $1.4 trillion, China's stated financial commitment to these projects is eleven times the size of the Marshall Plan, restated in current dollars. Most projects will be overland. Relatively few will be maritime.”
Professor Chas Freeman pointed out that “the B&R Initiative is now a grand plan to reengineer China's strategic environment, project Chinese economic power, secure Chinese access to energy and mineral supplies, and boost economic growth in western China. The B&R Initiative seeks to accomplish these objectives by fostering greater and faster connectivity between China and Europe via intermediate points in Central, West, and South Asia as well as Russia.”
Professor Chas Freeman also added that “the B&R Initiative amounts to a proposal to unite the Eurasian landmass economically under common rules and transport regulations. It envisages bilateral agreements with sixty-fi ve countries to reduce impediments to trade, the creation and endowment of new financial institutions, and the execution of enormous infrastructure projects. New roads, railroads, pipelines, ports, airports, and inland telecommunications links are to boost the effi ciency of overland travel and economic transactions across Eurasia. The vast space from the Atlantic to the Pacifi c and from the Pacifi c to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean is to be laced with industrial development corridors that draw on these links to create centers of economic activity. Network effects assure benefi ts not just to China as the leader of the B&R Initiative but to every country touched by it.
The Belt and Road Initiative seems to bear some elements of regional economic integration on the one hand and resemble to some extent a partnership arrangement between States on the other hand. However, some argued that the implication of the Belt and Road Initiative surpasses both regional integration and partnership. It takes both as its basis and priorities with a far-reaching view of building a regional Community of Common Destiny. In some observers' view the Belt and Road Initiative is an important tactic of the Chinese government to reconstruct the international communication order, to exercise China's discourse power, and to develop the nation's soft power in the age of globalization.
In fact, the traditional international communication order has been monopolized by the great powers of the West, and Western discourses have been playing the leading role in the world. Western countries have exercised this power by excluding developing countries, using their powerful communication systems and advantage of discourse, while developing countries have lost their discourse power in international affairs and international relations, and have been put in a passive position, bullied and exploited. That is why, from the Chinese perspective, reconstruction of the global order with an emphasis on China's international discourse power is such an important and urgent task.
The Chinese Government is also aware that its own successful development is linked to the economic growth of others, and that it cannot achieve its ‘great national rejuvenation' without peace, stability and growth in its neighbourhood. For China's neighbours, the Community of Common Destiny is said to be an opportunity for mutual advancement alongside China as regional economies are closely interconnected.
Most importantly, Asia needs new infrastructure—about $770 billion a year of it until 2020, according to the Asian Development Bank. Bert Hofman, the World Bank's chief in Beijing, adds that individual countries will benefi t more if they align their plans with one another and with China. It does not pay to plan and build separately. China also needs the B&R Initiative. At home, its businesses are being squeezed by rising costs and growing demands that they pay more attention to protecting the environment. It makes sense for them to shift some manufacturing overseas—as long as the infrastructure is there. Therefore, there are reasons to think that the new Silk Road will be completed.
Currently, the Belt and Road Initiative is receiving the support of 64 countries and its discourse system is gaining international infl uence, and thus, the world has started accepting a Chinese discourse. As the Belt and Road Initiative is being carried out, the international communication system led by China and China's discourse in it are gradually gaining more currency. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, the country is exercising its international communication and international discourse power, and the success of that strategy can bring the effect of realizing the China dream.”
ASEAN, China and the Community of Common Destiny
Wang Yusheng China's former APEC senior official, and Executive Director at the Strategy Study Center of the China Foundation for International Studies, expounded his views on China's Community of Common Destiny in his article entitled ‘China's Peripheral Diplomacy for Community of Common Destiny'. His comments highlighted the policy of China with regard to its neighbouring countries. He expressed the view that to pursue “good-neighborly and friendly relations” and the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence” has always been China's national policy; that in comparison with the past, the peripheral diplomacy “has gone up one more fl ight”; that President Xi Jinping's proposals on working together to build a “China-ASEAN Community of Common Destiny”, energetically supporting and promoting regional “interconnection” and opening economic belts along both the new Silk Road on the sea and the Silk Road on land comply with the calls of the times, echo the propositions of SCO and APEC and conform to the needs of the neighboring countries, the ASEAN and Central Asian countries in particular; and that China's development will benefi t its neighbors, which, in turn, will render powerful support to China in enabling the “China dream” come true.
Chinese leaders have vowed to build a Community of Common Destiny with ASEAN as this year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relationship. China's Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to advance the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which would be beneficial to all parties involved. In addition to this China-ASEAN FTA, China is also eager to advance the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacifi c (FTAAP) agreement. The FTAAP would have the benefit of taking numerous regional FTA's and incorporating them into a larger one—streamlining regulation, procedures, and standards for greater effi ciency. This can be seen as another step into the future for APEC.
China is already ASEAN's largest trading partner and bilateral trade reached 472 billion US dollars last year, up from 7.96 billion US dollars in 1991, with an annual growth rate of 18.5 percent. So, China is now ASEAN's biggest trading partner while ASEAN is China's third biggest. The two sides, which signed an agreement to upgrade their Free Trade Area (FTA) late last year, are targeting bilateral trade at 1 trillion US dollars by 2020. In the area of investment, it is reported that by the end of May 2016, their two-way investment exceeded 160 billion US dollars.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said China sees ASEAN as a preferred partner in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21stCentury Maritime Silk Road, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as FTA, and regional and maritime cooperation. “Over the past 25 years, China-ASEAN partnership has become the most broad, fruitful and closest ties among ASEAN's dialogue partners,” he said At the China-ASEAN (10+1) Foreign Ministers' Meeting held in Vientiane, Laos, on 25th July 2016, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated, among others, that China and the ASEAN are strategic partners sharing weal and woe and a Community of Common Destiny going through rise and fall together; that we have always adhered to mutual respect, mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual support in the past 25 years; and that China will continue to regard the ASEAN as a priority in its ‘neighbourhood diplomacy', back the construction of the ASEAN community, and support the ASEAN's central position in regional cooperation.
In their speeches, Foreign Ministers of ASEAN countries fully affi rmed that China is a close friend and important strategic partner of ASEAN. The ASEAN appreciates China's support in the construction of the ASEAN community and is willing to work with China and take the 25th anniversary of the establishment of ASEAN-China Dialogue Relations as an opportunity to promote ASEAN-China relations for new progress on the basis of mutual respect, mutual benefi t and winwin results. The ASEAN welcomes the joint statement on the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). The ASEAN believes that the full and effective implementation of the DOC is vital to maintain peace and stability in the region, and encourages countries concerned to handle the differences peacefully in constructive ways and through dialogue and consultation.
In short, it could be viewed that the comprehensive cooperation between ASEAN and China has not only given a strong boost to their economic and social development and brought tangible benefi ts to their peoples, but also made important contribution to the peace, stability and prosperity of the region and the world at large.
Myanmar, China and the Community of Common Destiny
Myanmar's democratic reforms have opened new opportunities to cooperate with its regional neighbours more actively. Myanmar, therefore, has been actively participating in bilateral, regional and international contexts. By its participation, Myanmar believes that it will benefit from information and communication exchanges, from cooperation such as tackling non-traditional security issues, fi ghting transnational crimes including drug traffi cking, and in protecting environment and managing climate change. Further collaboration in research and development, human resource development and technology transfers with regional and global countries have been producing positive results in Myanmar. In this context, Myanmar has welcomed all kinds of efforts to achieve connectivity in this region and beyond. Myanmar became one of the fi rst countries that had endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) which focuses on connectivity and cooperation between China and Eurasian countries. Myanmar has become a founding member of the AIIB and has contributed $264.5 million to the Bank's capitalization and received 0.49 percent of voting shares.
“As Myanmar is located on the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road (South Belt), it has decided to “participate in the Maritime Silk Road with the aim to invest and foster collaboration in Southeast Asia through the wider scope of South China Sea, Pacific Ocean and India Ocean.” To highlight the importance Myanmar has attached to AIIB, Myanmar's leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, during her visit to China, met with Mr. Jin Liqun, the AIIB's President.
Since 2014, China has called for joint efforts to establish the Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) consists of two trajectories: the Silk Road Economic Belt, an Eurasian overland trading road modelled on its ancient prototype, running across Central Asia and Russia and linking China with Europe; and the 21stcentury Maritime Silk Road, a trading route connecting China and Europe via Southeast Asia, India and Africa and building among others on China's maritime bases in the Indian Ocean.
There is a web of six east-west or north-south trans-regional economic corridors on the B&R Initiative. A case in point is the Indochina Peninsula Corridor, where China and the fi ve Mekong River countries-Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam-can build on the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Project led by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and may intersect with the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity. While the ADB focuses on east-west links with mixed success, China concentrates on north-south connections.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIMEC) have been under consideration for several years.
Professor Freeman stated that China has built a major port at Kyaukpyu in Western Myanmar. Oil and gas pipelines now connect Kyaukpyu to Kunming. This chops 700 miles off the distance oil shipped from Africa or the Middle East must travel to China, cut delivery times by 30 percent, and avoid the need to transit the strategic chokepoint of the Straits of Malacca. A railroad is planned to parallel the pipelines, but not yet approved.
Professor Chaw Chaw Sein mentioned in her paper that “China envisages an economic corridor linking its south-western Yunnan province through Myanmar to Kolkata as a key segment of a land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt”, and is also planning to boost ties with port cities, such as Chennai, through a “Maritime Silk Road” starting out from south-eastern Fujian province through South China Sea to Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
Professor Chaw Chaw Sein also added that “Myanmar considered the route (the 21stCentury Maritime Silk Road) can play an important role in the development of the country by bringing new economic opportunities for Myanmar and its people. Myanmar also pledged to cooperate and signed the MoUs and agreements with China, including the MoU on Bilateral Economic and Technological Cooperation under the Framework of BCIM-EC.” Professor Chaw Chaw Sein also pointed out that “security environment is one major negative factor inhibiting the successful realization of the B&R Initiative.
Although Myanmar has welcomed the B&R Initiative, the difficulty for Myanmar at the present moment is domestic peace and stability situation. Regarding this matter, Ba Hla Aye, member of the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies, in his paper submitted to a Workshop in Yangon, referred to the comment of Ali Jun stated in his article entitled “Myanmar ethnic reconciliation a Chinese strategic goal” which appeared in the Global Times of 9th October 2016. Ali Jun says:
“Only after Myanmar consolidates its domestic peace and stability, can we talk about infrastructure improvements in the country, further promote the Beijing-led the Belt and Road Initiative through the region and implement cross-regional cooperation including the Bangladesh-ChinaIndia-Myanmar Economic Corridor.”
It was encouraged to learn that during the visit of the State Counsellor to China, “China has urged rebel groups in northern and northeastern Myanmar, including the Kokang rebels, Arakan Army, and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, to participate in talks led by the new government later this month (August). China's support to Myanmar peace process and restructuring Myanmar-China relations through the State Counsellor visit in September 2016 have the positive impact which led to signing for implementation of highway project through Shwe Li to Mandalay to Nay Pyi Taw Highway.
Although Pakistan and Sri Lanka are on the Belt and Road Initiative, missing link in China's B&R Initiative is one of its six economic corridors, BCIM, in which Myanmar is one of the economic corridor countries.