Lessons of the Silk Road

...With the current astounding growth of China's economy—8 to 9 per cent annually—the age-old trade across Central Asia has been expanding at an even more rapid pace...

...Covering about two miles an hour, the caravans traveled by night around the great Taklamakan and Gobi deserts of Chinese Turkestan, or Xinjiang (pronounced Sin-jeeang, meaning New Dominion), to escape temperatures that rose above 120 degrees in the blazing sun...

...Their perversely uneven pace belied how unhappily these intelligent, balky animals carried heavy loads across inhospitable terrain through often foul weather...

...But under the Hu regime they have continued to mushroom and many have been marked by destruction of property and loss of life...

...It is by far the biggest market for telephones—fixed line or mobile—and for communications equipment of all kinds...

...In beautiful cities like Samarkand and Bukhara on the Silk Road, they still marvel that Genghis spared some towering minaret or that Tamerlane halted his slaughtering after killing 10,000 or 20,000 people...

...There lingers some question as to whether China's increasing wealth and industrial strength will persuade it to maintain the status quo or transform it into a regional predator, as it has been at various periods in the past...

...As early as 500 BCE ladies in Egypt and Europe adored gowns of all but transparent Chinese silk—to the consternation of prudish city fathers...

...Open circulation of technical and commercial information, tolerated because it is essential to economic growth, has lessened Party control over ideas and expression...

...has planted bases in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan as part of the effort to smoke out AI Qaeda...

...Although America retains considerable influence in East Asia and Southeast Asia, that is in slow decline—commercially, diplomatically and militarily...

...All this has sprung from its virtually inexhaustible pool of educable low-cost labor (averaging 40 cents an hour...

...Backed by a vote of 411 to 3 in the House of Representatives, he warned that boosting China militarily could encourage an attack on Taiwan and place U.S...

...This is clearly the Bush Administration's intention, and it is one of several issues sowing distrust and tension between Washington and Beijing...

...The murderous marauding hordes that tormented existing civilizations while creating their own empires sprang from Central Asia: the Huns of Attila, whose depredations began well before his time...

...Given the new openness of the People's Republic, Western and Asian policymakers have a great opportunity to encourage China to assist others and thereby ensure its own prosperity...

...if anything, the reverse may be the case...

...Chinese influence, by contrast, thanks to its economic might, is increasing so rapidly that military action by Beijing on any significant scale is as unlikely as it is unnecessary...

...Somewhat paradoxically, the economy is also benefiting from the political weakness of the present regime...

...The crowds ranged from dozens to tens of thousands...

...troops in jeopardy...

...Outlook, a state-controlled Communist Party journal, revealed in October 2004 that since National Day the preceding year—the proclamation of the People's Republic is celebrated on October 1—there were 60,000 public demonstrations against those abuses...

...A population of more than 1.3 billion provides hundreds of millions of workers who can no longer subsist on the land...

...It was a treacherous itinerary...

...military bases in Afghanistan, recently expressed his belief that such facilities would endure for "many, many years...

...Moreover, China is once again a major player in world affairs...

...Official corruption and massive theft by bankers and financiers were in effect sanctioned by policy for centuries...

...In the third century BCE, the city became the first capital of the just united Chinese Empire...

...Time and man, however, habituated them to traversing sand, rock, ice, snow, even marshland...

...President and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao, who succeeded to those offices over the last three years, has not been able to effectively suppress the rising waves of opposition...

...Few of them, if any, matched the feat of Marco Polo, the merchant who in the 13th century journeyed from Venice even farther than Chang'an...

...In 138 BCE Han Wu Di, the War Emperor of the Han Dynasty, sent General Chang Chien to secure allies among the enemies of the assertively independent Uighurs pressing on his territories...

...An impressive network of roads is being augmented for the million-odd automotive vehides licensed every year...

...China denounced the benign statement as interference in its internal affairs...

...Under the name Chang'an (pronounced Chong-on, meaning Proö'acted Peace), it was the seat of a number of imperial regimes, culminating with the Tang Dynasty in the 10th century...

...Steered by France's President Jacques Chirac and Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the EU is playing the China card...

...The U.S...

...The problem of Taiwan has different dynamics...

...That figure is expected to reach 7 million annually in less than a decade—with the eager participation of foreign firms like General Motors, Volkswagen and Nissan...

...Though the Silk Road has been displaced by air and sea routes as the link between East and West, highways and railways through the spectacular mountains now carry China's growing trade with the heart of Eurasia...

...They were inured to grandiloquent euphemisms and, in any case, exhausted by the arduous trek...

...The descendants of those Uighur hosts are today oppressed by Beijing...

...Chicanery, deceit and unlicensed appropriation of intellectual property— from watches and movies to sophisticated software and advanced industrial designs—are endemic to Chinese society...

...A little earlier it attacked both Tokyo and Washington for a seemingly innocuous joint declaration stating their wish for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan matter...

...Even prior to those fearsome scourges, the Chinese felt threatened from the northwest...

...During his February fence-mending trip to Europe, President George W. Bush found himself categorically opposing European Union (EU) plans to lift the arms embargo imposed on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989...

...He made his obeisance to Kublai Khan, the celebrated Emperor of the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty, on the site of present-day Beijing...

...The Silk Road was for more than two millennia the longest overland route in the world, the great link between the Orientand the Occident...

...China also anticipates boosting its overall market share in producing consumer goods, now at 5 per cent...

...The autocratic native regimes, who share a fear of terrorists, have welcomed them...

...The Han Dynasty further lengthened the Great Wall to the present frontier of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia...

...What four years ago was a trickle of mostly smuggled and secondhand goods has become a legitimate torrent of many trainloads a week, because China, Russia and the United States are in a new contest for influence in Central Asia...

...to become the world's largest consumer of energy, capital goods and raw materials...

...Nonetheless, the firms that invested over $60 billion in China last year hope for domestic sales in large volume, as well as substantial income from exports...

...Elsewhere they crossed by high passes— some up to 17,000 feet—huge ranges like the Mountains of Heaven and the Pamirs...

...And there is no question that, just as it engages today in widespread counterfeiting and narcotics traffic, it would sell nuclear weapons or technology to any interested buyers...

...Power has shifted to local authorities, and they naturally give first priority to industrial, commercial and financial development...

...Pressure on credit and production has sharply brought down inflation, a substantial worry during aboom, to a relatively low 19 per cent...

...The camels' slow, swaying pace was wearying...

...Only China can affect the behavior of the rogue regime...

...Avid for the oil and natural gas it cannot provide itself, China has driven global prices sky high...

...Robert Elegant, a longtime New Leader contributor, is a novelist and the author of numerous books on China...

...Senior and middlerank cadres here formed what is euphemistically called Xin Wen Jieh, a News Circle...

...But China's internal rumblings have not detracted from its becoming a major factor in the international equation...

...Chirac and Schroeder have cast the U.S...

...Lookout towers, forts and enormous gates made of pressed mud and twigs in the westernmost segment are remarkably enduring, as I learned on a recent journey through the region...

...and China is remote, despite the routine planning of the Department of Defense and its occasional warnings of such an eventuality...

...America is the latest armed intruder in the lands—almost entirely inhabited by Muslims, most of them politically moderate—where the British Empire and Tsarist Russia waged the Great Game in the 19th century...

...It aims not only to bring in hard cash by strengthening its influence in Beijing, but to give Washington a taste of what it was like when the U.S...

...The six-nation talks on North Korea, currently on hold, are unlikely to produce concrete results...

...Despite a stern crackdown on the media and on intellectuals this year, Beijing is finding it ever more difficult to bottle up public opinion...

...The enormous province of Xinjiang—roughly the size of Europe from the English Channel to the Polish frontier—is being repopulated with Chinese...

...What they have been disturbed to discover is that a nearly equal sum leaves the country by devious means every year...

...This has been widely interpreted as a sign of government fearfulness in a country that has in the past imprisoned hundreds of thousands and leads the world in executions—not only in raw numbers, as might be expected given its vast population, but in proportion...

...The self-willed isolation of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), revived capriciously during the Maoist Period (1949-76), has been cast aside...

...The outside world increasingly sees China as an ever burgeoning market...

...Its iron weapons, gunpowder, paper, and agricultural implements were superior, if not invariably unique...

...Like any alliance, the EU benefits from having a shared rival...

...Still, Pyongyang represents a potential nuclear threat...

...But the Chinese will never import goods at the volume they hawk their exports...

...Uniformed policemen and prying closed-circuit television cameras in public Internet centers cannot halt the wide dissemination of critical messages that amounts to general publication...

...The outside world, with the possible exception of Beijing, has no idea of the truth of Pyongyang's February claims that it possesses nuclear weapons...

...Recent concerted action by the central government in Beijing, though, has improved general economic conditions...

...Adaptability was essential to negotiating the great Silk Road—not actually a road, but a system of paths, trails, lanes, and occasional paved highways stretching more than 4,000 miles from Istanbul on the Mediterranean to Dunhuang (meaning Blazing Beacon) on the western edge of China proper...

...The caravan men entering the city through its massive barbican gate were not startled by the inappropriate name of this place that has known far more strife than peace...

...To be sure, political liberalization is not yet sweeping, but it is on the way...

...Before the industrial revolution in the West, it should be remembered, China led the world in technology...

...It had been cobbled together a century earlier by the Chin Dynasty's Shih Huang Di, the First Emperor of China...

...and the Turkish tribes of Tamerlane...

...Whether cameleers, guards, guides, or traders, mosttravelers on the Silk Road undertook only a few hundred miles before returning home...

...They spread information on their own, without securing proper consent...

...In the past year the People's Republic has surpassed the U.S...

...played the China card against the USSR in the 1970s...

...But Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, citing the U.S...

...The initial doubts of skeptics notwithstanding, economic liberalization has been accompanied by a degree of political liberty...

...Its pride swollen, the Hu administration is at pains to arouse nationalist sentiment about Taiwan, or any other issue, in a country that remains overwhelmingly provincial...

...Their purpose, as far as can be ascertained, is to prevent the passing of inaccurate information to Party members, because falsity injures the Party and the country...

...The possibility of an armed confrontation between the U.S...

...Meanwhile, Beijing remains the key to keeping North Korea engaged in negotiations regarding its nuclear program, not to mention other issues...

...in that role...

...The Yü Mun, the Jade Gate celebrated by poets, still looms amid the sands...

...Even a group within the Communist Party has been circulating material detrimental to the regime...

...In early March, to underscore its determination to reclaim the island it considers a breakaway province, Beijing passed an antisecessionist law...

...the Mongols of Genghis Khan...

...Without Chinese crude oil and foodstuffs dictator Kim Jong IPs shaky regime might collapse...

...A much traveled spur reached eastward another 600 miles to the metropolis now called Xi'an (pronounced Seeon, meaning Western Peace...

...As they have for centuries, the Chinese will fashion their own, copying sophisticated machine tools, computers and consumer products as they please...

...China has declared that it does not want a "nuclearized" Korean Peninsula, yet neither does it want to see a presumed ally in the "Socialist bloc" dissolve...

...Nor is it evident what, if anything, could persuade Kim to relinquish his sole bargaining chip...

...Previously such protests, considered seditious, were rigorously put down...

...The lesson of the Silk Road is that China has prospered when it has been most open to foreign ideas, technology and goods...

...He has faced violent protests against the misdeeds of officialdom— including corruption, arbitrary decisions, extortion, and immoral personal behavior...

...Most of it returns openly and enjoys the benefits bestowed on new foreign investment...