Graduate Research and Development Network on Asian Security (GRADNAS) Seminar Series

This paper reads Chinese state narratives of the New Silk Road in two contexts, Beijing’s relations with East Africa and Central Asia from a political nostalgia lens. In particular, the paper seeks to unpack both the material and symbolic construction of a nostalgic narrative of the New Silk Road not as a physical space where exchanges of goods, ideas, and practices took place but as a time, an era that simultaneously looks to a past constructed around positive markers, and to the future with the revival of the Silk Road symbolizing the possibility for a return to the Golden times. Branding Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in East Africa relies heavily on narratives around 15th-century Maritime expeditions in the Indian Ocean led by navigator Zheng He and romanticized images of the Ancient Silk Roads. In Central Asia, Beijing harks back to reenactments of Tang Dynasty aesthetics that link the Silk Road to 7th-century cultural innovations and Golden Age. In both of these cases, Chinese officials are leaning on a history of imperial relations (in the Tang or Ming dynasties) which prompts an interesting research puzzle. How do we make sense of Beijing’s harking back to imperial history while trying to promote a discourse of its increasing global influence as one that’s different from Euro-American powers? How are memories of the past (re)constructed in China’s relations to East Africa and Central Asia and what do these tell us about memory-narratives and global order? The paper argues that the combination of memory-narratives about a peaceful, inclusive, and flourishing Sino-centric global order as well as material infrastructure projects and archeological excavation investment that serve to memorialize these early encounters are necessary conditions that enable Beijing to both play up its imperial past, market it as a humble gesture of solidarity, and even more importantly as a promise for a bright future global order in which China’s interests are put at the center.

Speaker

Lina Benabdallah is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. She is the author of Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Her research has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Reviews, The Journal of International Relations and Development, Third World Quarterly, African Studies Quarterly, Project on Middle East Political Science, as well as in public facing outlets such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage and Foreign Policy. In the 2023 – 2024 academic year, Dr. Benabdallah was as a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Center for African Studies and is currently serving as a co-editor of PS: Political Science and Politics.

Discussant

Manjeet S. Pardesi is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Political Science and International Relations Programme, and Asia Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include Historical International Relations, Great Power Politics, Asian security, and the Sino-Indian rivalry. He is the co-author of The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for Global Order (with Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson, Cambridge University Press, 2023). He is currently working on a book project titled Worlds in Contrast: Hegemonic and Multiplex Orders in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (with Amitav Acharya, forthcoming with Yale University Press). His articles have appeared in European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, Survival, Global Studies Quarterly, Asian Security, Australian Journal of International Affairs, International Politics, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, International Studies Perspectives, Nonproliferation Review, Air & Space Power Journal (of the United States Air Force), The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, World Policy Journal, India Review, Defense and Security Analysis, and in several edited book volumes. He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of India’s National Security (Oxford, 2018) and India’s Military Modernization: Challenges and Prospects (Oxford, 2014). He is the Managing Editor of the journal Asian Security (since June 2018).

6pm, 28th Aug, North Carolina Time

10am, 29th Aug, Wellington Time

8am, 29th Aug, Canberra Time

This event is the third in the GRADNAS Seminar Series of 2024. The series will showcase the emerging scholarship on the historical International Relations of Asia. There has been a “global” and a “historical” turn in International Relations scholarship in recent years. Scholars are increasingly looking at Asian history to enrich International Relations theory. What are the theoretical insights that emerge from studying Asian history? Does Asian history provide us with new concepts and new understandings of order? Does Asian history challenge the received metanarratives of International Relations theory? How were historical Asian polities connected with each other and with the world beyond Asia? Can the International Relations theoretical findings from Asian history shed light on other parts of the world? What, if anything, do these findings tell us about the emerging world order? Join us as we celebrate and showcase the excellent research by GRADNAS members and friends on the Historical International Relations of Asia. Visit our website here.

For more information, contact the GRADNAS Coordinator, Tommy Chai at gradnas@anu.edu.au.