China is building a New Silk Road that runs through the heartland of the Muslim world. Its leaders promise to bring about change through improved economies and greater communications across the Eurasian and African continents. While China has the financial and technical resources to accomplish its infrastructure goals, it is sorely unprepared to deal with the social and political demands of the people in the partner countries. This book addresses how China’s leaders and citizens—in their relationships with Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesian, Iran, Nigeria, and Egypt—are learning that they have to re ... More

China is building a New Silk Road that runs through the heartland of the Muslim world. Its leaders promise to bring about change through improved economies and greater communications across the Eurasian and African continents. While China has the financial and technical resources to accomplish its infrastructure goals, it is sorely unprepared to deal with the social and political demands of the people in the partner countries. This book addresses how China’s leaders and citizens—in their relationships with Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesian, Iran, Nigeria, and Egypt—are learning that they have to respect and adjust to the aspirations of ordinary people throughout the Islamic world, not just cater to the narrow band of government and business elites. In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that turbulent countries along the New Silk Road are likely to transform Chinese society at least as much as China is changing them. This is a deeply unsettling realization for China’s authoritarian rulers who desperately want to monopolize power domestically. The party and state bosses have responded with a contradictory blend of flexibility abroad and rigidity at home—compromising with popular demands in one country after another while refusing to negotiate many of the same issues with their own citizens. Maintaining such a split-minded statecraft will become ever more difficult as people in China and across the New Silk Road share their aspirations and grievances in wider networks.