POWER GAMES ON THE SILK ROUTE: A JOURNEY FROM HISTORICAL TO MODERN ERA

The real aim of the programme is an extension of Chinese power and influence. As per an analyst, it is a game where China is steadily placing counters across Asia and Europe. In the Western views, it is easy to interpret comments as a strategy of China, with the aim of extending Chinese influence in a series of carefully planned steps. Around 114 BC by the Han dynasty, the trade routes of Central Asia were expanded largely through the missions and explorations of Chinese imperial envoy Zhang Qian. The world’s greatest economic construction and development project ever is being undertaken by China. In the economic map of the world the New Silk Road project is a revolutionary change. The geopolitical conflicts over the project could lead to a new cold war between East and West for dominance in Eurasia as it is becoming clearer every day.

The Power of Money: Chinese Investments and Financialization in an Asian Hinterland

In February 2002, a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), Sinotrans Xinjiang, partnered with a local Pakistani collective, the Silk Route Dry Port Trust, to finance and operate a dry port in mountainous north Pakistan. Given minimal overland trade between China and Pakistan, this was an unlikely place for investment by a subsidiary of one of China’s largest SOEs. Individuals who commanded extensive social networks and possessed local knowledge were instrumental in brokering the joint venture. Brokers both Chinese and Pakistani leveraged the implicit power of money to create a new institution, the dry port joint venture, that helped normalize the presence and operations of Chinese business leaders in north Pakistan. The joint venture also enabled Pakistani strongmen to exert their control over local land and draw funds from a public bank, activities that ultimately undermined the joint venture itself. This episode is more than just a cautionary tale of an unsuccessful joint venture between a Chinese SOE and local partners. The episode highlights how, in an epoch of transnational financialization, money empowered local leaders, public officials, and official organizations to engage in and indeed benefit from loss-making activities that combine both regular and irregular processes.

National Policy on China One Belt-One Road (OBOR) Initiative Towards Indonesia as Global Maritime Nexus

One Belt-One Road Initiative is a huge project that is still a subject of discussion in the world. The project initiated by the Chinese state invites cooperation with various countries in the world in order to reactivate the maritime silk route, including Indonesia. There are 5 pillars of OBOR which are strengthening connectivity, improving infrastructure, promoting trade and scurity, increasing monetary circulation and increasing public understanding of maritime cooperation. There are some indonesian political experts argue that this cooperation will be dominated by China in all five pillars, which in the end will only make Indonesia “an instrument", not an actor. This is what the authors will discuss in this research. The purpose of this research is to see how the national policy prospects on OBOR regulations. This research is analyzed using descriptive qualitative methods by taking data from various relevant sources to the discussion topic. This research has a result that there are several national policies that can be implemented by Indonesia to strengthen its position as an actor in OBOR, where Indonesia should to provide escort to their national interests in the OBOR project.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Community Development: A Case Study of Sillery Gaon, West Bengal

Ecotourism has a significant role in community development in the host areas through alternative but sustainable livelihood. This tourism practice meets the needs of the tourists and hosts together, protecting the natural environment. Nowadays, this tourism involves visiting new areas to learn about various landscapes, environment, habitats as well as the cultural activities of an individual community. It also expands the possibilities for future. So, ecotourism can be an effective method for sustainable rural development in the Himalayan tract of West Bengal. In Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal, ecotourism is still a community-based activity which involves local people and their culture. Most of the ecotourism sites in this part of West Bengal are within forest and hilly tract. Here growth of ecotourism has been phenomenal during the last decades with the influx of tourists that boosted the local economy. Sillery Gaon, a small village, in ‘Silk Route Circuit’ of West Bengal, is a new addition to it and a perfect example of this scenario. It is situated in Kashyone, gram panchayat of Kalimpong District. This pictorial village is surrounded with the dense forest of Pankhasari range and blessed with the panoramic view of Tista River and Kanchenjunga. In the last ten years, the villagers have developed ecotourism facilities and activities which transformed their traditional agrarian economy to tourism-based livelihood. This paper is based on a case study that analyses the symbiotic relationship between the ecotourism practice and sustainable community development of Sillary Gaon village. It also deals with the prospects and challenges of ecotourism sector of this village.

Sino–Sri Lankan relations and their impact on India

This article aims to understand the development of the Sino–Sri Lankan relationship from ancient to contemporary times and its overall impact on the Indo–Sri Lankan relationship and on India as a leader in the South Asian region. China has been investing heavily in Sri Lanka and several other South Asian countries in the name of economic development and upliftment. It has formed diplomatic ties with Sri Lanka and has provided immense economic, military and other forms of assistance and has reduced India’s involvement. The building of the Maritime Silk Route and the Belt and Road Initiative have been dream projects for China, and so the article analyses the assistance provided in terms of strategy that the Chinese may be planning. Based on the facts and evidence provided, the article will end on a scenario that could most likely take place based on the trajectory of the events and relationships.

Buddhism and Globalization

“Global Buddhism” can be broadly understood as the transnational and transcultural network of circulating Buddhists and dynamic flows of Buddhist ideas and practices. It is characterized by ideals of universally applicable values and individually accessible experiences transgressing historical and cultural particularities. Global Buddhism is one kind of globalized religion, being itself a specific domain within the general context of globalization. Globalization encompasses transnational processes of interchanging values, services, and products, typically related to the modern, capitalist world. However, globalization has also been understood as a framework constituting cultural and religious dynamics and centripetal forces involving circulating ideas, practices, and institutions in an open and interacting world. A broader spatial and temporal perspective on globalization situates it in broader historical contexts, but typically linking it to an affinity with postmodernity and with a historical focus on the time since the breakdown of the communist world. Proto-global elements of religion can likewise be found throughout history, especially in axial religions and in contexts of accelerated circulation and hybridization. Throughout Buddhist history, such elements have been characteristic of the religion’s evolution and dissemination. Mission and trade along the Silk Route and in southeast Asia created proto-global ramifications just like the advent of Western colonialism co-created reform movements and networks of people with international scope and impact on “Buddhist modernity.” Global aspects are thus inherently part of much of Buddhist history, but a more restricted use of the concept would place global Buddhism in the aftermath of modernity, typically pronounced in urban centres and de-territorialized (online) social networks. Resistance and relativization are potentially always part of global transfigurations has also been influential in Buddhist contexts. One specific kind of “glocal” Buddhism, (yet) mainly restricted to a North American context, concentrates on reactions towards the transfigurations of globalization. What constitutes this kind of “post-global Buddhism” is twofold: an unveiling of universalized, global Buddhism as basically particularized “white” Buddhism, and an ideological shift beyond such disguised hegemony envisioning itself with new practices, values, identities, and communities based on (gender and) ethnic/racial differentiation.

Spectrum of Camel Evolution and its Impact on Ancient Human Migration

The Evolutionary history and domestication of Camels are largely unexplored because of the lack of well dated early archaeological records. However, limited records suggest that domestication of Camels likely happened in the late second millennium BCE. Over the time, camels have helped human for their basic needs like meat, milk, wool, dung to long routes transportation. This multifaceted animal has helped the mankind to connect through continents and in trade majorly through the Silk route. In India, both dromedary and Bactrian camels are found and their habitat is entirely different from each other, dromedaries inhabit in hot deserts and Bactrians are found mostly in cold places (Nubra Valley, Ladakh). Fewer studies on Indian dromedaries have been conducted but no such studies are done on Bactrian camels. It is needed to study the genetics of Bactrian camels to find out their genetic affinity and evolutionary history with other Bactrians found in different parts of the world. Furthermore, parallel studies on humans and Bactrian camel are required to understand the co-evolution and migration pattern of humans during their dispersal in different time periods.

Medieval shifts in the balance of power.

This chapter has eleven subsections that explain the context of the European political economy and trade during the late medieval period. The subchapters are about the late medieval European economy, spices in medieval cuisine, spices in medieval medicine, silk in medieval Europe, the world system in the thirteenth century, the Venetian trading empire, the Catalonian trade networks, the Hanseatic League, internal European trade and the Champagne Fairs, Genghis Khan and reopening of the silk route, and the end of the Crusader states and Muslim trade.