For while the historical Silk Road was marked by lucrative trade and uncharacteristic religious tolerance (the terminus of the Silk Roads, the ancient capital Xi’an, was a remarkably secular place where traders of many faiths lived in peace), it was also important for its significant military trade and the exercise of raw Chinese power.īolts of silk were carried to Chinese border garrisons to pay soldiers carrying silk was easier than heavy metallic coins over the rough terrain. While China wants to evoke the romanticism of the historic contacts, Beijing officials discourage reading too much history into the present incarnation. A rising China now seeks ownership of the phrase and to turn it into a brand name for its ambitious project. In the century after Richthofen, the appellation ignited the world’s imagination. While China has long been the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, the term die Seidenstrasse was actually coined by German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877.

Later dubbed, ‘One Belt, One Road’, the massive strategic infrastructure project aims to connect 60 countries spanning four continents. The rationale behind China’s objection became clear a year later when newly installed President Xi Jinping launched with fanfare an ambitious New Silk Road project on land and sea. The Chinese diplomat said, “You can call it historic trade routes.” The US conceded and thus ended America’s brief dalliance with reviving the Silk Road. “What would you like us to call it?” he asked. “My counterpart in the Chinese government came to me and said, you can’t use the term New Silk Road – that’s our term,” Grossman told me. At the time, neighbours like China were enthusiastic but a few months later, then US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman received an unusual request from Beijing. In the summer of 2011, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed the development of a New Silk Road, a trade and investment programme to serve as the foundation for rebuilding Afghanistan’s economy after the US troop withdrawal. China seeks to break out geo-strategically through this ambitious project, redolent of historic romance

New slik road