Korea, the Iron Silk Road and the Belt and Road Initiative

The impact of transformational trends can be observed in a diverse and fragile international system, in changing patterns of social cohesion and human behavior. I was able to study this phenomenon together with my Korean students when I was teaching as guest professor at Chonnam National University in Gwangju/Korea a couple of years ago. In a situation of reverse mentoring the students, representatives of the generation called “the millennials”, taught me how they were perceiving, living and embracing transformational processes.

As bright young people they were confronted with all the consequences of a changing society. They were well aware that their expectations of life were not only determined by individual decisions, but were also linked to historical events and social developments. They talked about their family’s experience in Gwangju and Chonnam province, a part of Korea that in the local perception was often neglected and even discriminated by the political center. They welcomed the opportunities of liberal democracy, an open society and modern infrastructure, but at the same time they critically reflected about the consequences of demographic change and technological progress. And they felt that their individual future was inextricably linked to a broadly connected global community and, in particular on the Korean peninsula, to an aggregate of collective desires and disappointments.

As capital of Chonnam province, the south western region of the divided peninsula, Gwangju is hopeful to become one day like the city of Busan one of the end points of the railroad system that will connect the Eurasian landmass from the Atlantic to Korea, a country that exemplifies the dramatic, often tragic events and profound changes that took place in East Asia since the beginning of the 20th century. Standing one cold winter morning at the counter of Pyongyang train station, I thought about the impact of these changes on the Korean nation. From a friendly lady I received my ticket for the train that would bring me to the Chinese city of Dandong and from there to Shenyang with its huge BMW plant. The ticket was printed in Korean, Chinese, Russian and German. From my interpreter I learned that in Pyongyang you can even buy a ticket for a train ride to Berlin. But will it ever be possible to buy a ticket for Gwangju or Busan via Seoul and cross the demarcation line on the 38th parallel by train?

But even long-term trends can be disrupted. When the pandemic broke out in Wuhan at the end of 2019, many China watchers asked: What will happen to the Chinese economy, the country’s political system and the surrounding region (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2020)? Today we know the answer: More than one year after the outbreak of Covid-19, we recognize that East Asia, at least for the time being, remains the dynamic and driving hub of the world’s economy.

3. China’s grand strategy

Against this transformational background your conference will address specific questions: How can middle powers and export driven economies like the Republic of Korea and Germany further benefit from ever closer ties across Eurasia? Can they participate in mega-sized infrastructure projects like the Belt and Road Initiative or the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline without becoming entangled into conflicting strategies? How can they avoid becoming totally dependent from the interests and the designs of competing great powers?

I keep these and similar questions in mind since a three months tour through China in spring 2016, when as Inspector General of the German Foreign Office I had to inspect our embassy in Beijing and our consulates general throughout China. During my tour I visited Chengdu in landlocked Sechuan province, where a Chinese official proudly informed me about the regular train service between his province and the city of Duisburg in Germany. He was surprised by my question “Why Duisburg?” and immediately gave the answer: “Of course Duisburg! It is the inland port of Rotterdam!” During the following conversation I realized that my Chinese interlocutor fully understood the details of the geo-economic landscape and the infrastructure of Western Europe.

Visiting two weeks later China’s top institution of higher education, Beijing University, I asked the head of the German department: “Which text are you reading with your graduate students?” Her answer was: “The ‘Political Dialogue’ by Leopold von Ranke”. Although this text is one of the most important documents of German political thought in the 19th century it is little known in Germany itself. And when shortly afterwards a deputy minister in Beijing told me that he and his wife, a successful entrepreneur, had carefully studied Karl Marx, he confessed that “Das Kapital” had been the inspiration for his wife’s successful business career.