Since Japan, South Korea and Vietnam have signed free trade agreements with the EU before, in a sense, RCEP will be closely linked with the EU, providing conditions for the future economic integration of Eurasia. Of course, the key to Eurasian economic integration lies in whether China and Europe can sign a free trade agreement. Although China and Europe have not yet started the negotiations on a free trade agreement, as one of the most important topics in bilateral trade relations, the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment Negotiations (BIT) has been officially launched at the China-EU Summit in 1 16 in October, and it has been close to the "finish line" after eight years and more than 30 rounds of negotiations. 165438+1October 19, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce revealed that the two sides are speeding up the negotiation process through continuous and intense negotiations in accordance with the understanding confirmed by the leaders to complete the negotiations within the year, and have achieved positive results.
As a matter of fact, China and Europe have long had the basic conditions to start the FTA negotiations: the EU has been China's largest trading partner for 16 years in a row, and China has been the EU's second largest trading partner for many years. The data shows that the bilateral trade volume between China and Europe reached 4.86 trillion yuan in 20 19, with an increase rate of 8%.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Macron all know that the EU's biggest card, the proud high-end manufacturing capability, needs to rely on a unified big market to maximize its value. At present, RCEP led by China has been officially launched. If China and Europe can make a smooth transition from an investment agreement to a free trade agreement, it will not only provide a big market with broad prospects for the development of the EU, but also open a door for the economic integration between Europe and Asia. With the deepening of Eurasian economic integration, Eurasia is expected to become the center of the world again, and North America will inevitably become the periphery of this world center continent in geopolitics. According to the website of German Business Daily107.00 165438+, the European Commission has shown great interest in RCEP. The article points out that in the European Parliament, the lack of progress in the EU's Asian trade policy has been criticized. People are increasingly worried that the EU is lagging behind in global competition.
However, this does not mean that the EU will fall to East Asia. You know, in addition to RCEP, with the signing of the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement, the North American regional trade center has begun to take shape. A few days ago, Biden lamented in an article in Foreign Affairs that the Trump administration "gave up the leadership of the United States." The article promises that "Biden's foreign policy agenda will bring the United States back to the negotiating table." This may mean that after Biden takes office early next year, the US government will renegotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) with the EU. This move by the United States confirms Speakman's "brinkmanship" view, that is, "whoever can become a world power in Eurasia will become the most powerful challenger of the United States." In fact, besides the United States, some politicians in the European Parliament even used the topic of RCEP to encourage the United States and Europe to join forces against China.
The above-mentioned signs indicate that it is bound to be very difficult for China to push forward the FTA negotiations with the EU and realize the economic integration of Eurasia under the pressure of traditional power strategy. So, faced with this situation, what should China and East Asia do? To answer this question, it is necessary for us to have a preliminary understanding of the theory of land rights. Because, in essence, Eurasian economic integration is related to the revival of land rights.
From 65438 to 0904, Mackinder, a British geographer and geopolitical scientist, first interpreted geopolitics from a global perspective. Mackinder thinks that the world is made up of several big islands. Among them, Eurasia and Africa have the largest areas and are called "world islands", while America is another island. Because Eurasia is a concentrated area of the world's major political and economic forces, a coherent area with a large population and a huge area, and the birthplace of world culture and religion, Eurasia naturally becomes the geographical hub of world development.
Mackinder's theory can be summarized as follows: if you control Eastern Europe, you control the "heart zone"; Controlling the "heart zone" means controlling the "world island", and controlling the "world island" means controlling the world. The "heartland" mentioned here starts from Eastern Europe in the west, reaches central Siberia and Mongolia in the east, reaches Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia and Tibet in China in the south, and reaches the Arctic Ocean in the north. In Mackinder's view, the history of the whole world is the history of the struggle between the continental powers and the maritime powers. Although sea power has always been dominant, in the long run, due to the richness of human and material resources and the improvement of transportation, sea power countries will eventually be suppressed by land power countries.
After Mackinder's theory of land ownership was put forward, the Soviet Union undoubtedly applied it to the most incisive countries. In its heyday, the Soviet Union basically controlled the "world island" by fostering agents, establishing joining countries, infiltrating satellite countries and forming Warsaw Treaty Organization. However, due to the lack of the ability to fully integrate all ethnic groups to form a strong national cohesion, the Soviet federalism was finally defeated in the process of hegemony with the United States.
Corresponding to the Soviet Union, the United States practices the theory of sea power: whoever controls the ocean controls the whole world. From 65438 to 0890, American Mahan put forward the theory of sea power, whose greatest strategic role is to control the world logistics routes. As we know, since the era of great navigation in the15th century, maritime transportation has rapidly replaced land transportation and become the main mode of international trade with its absolute advantages in volume and cost.
However, Marxism tells us that we should learn to look at problems from a developmental perspective. Just as navigation and remote sensing promoted the rise and prosperity of sea power, the development of railway technology will also promote the revival of land power. 20 1 165438 On March 9th, Chongqing tuanjie village-Duisburg, Germany officially set off, which was the first train in China and Europe. For the first time, the time-space distance between China inland and Europe has been shortened from more than 40 days to about 15 days.
Looking back now, the importance of Chongqing, Chongqing, New Europe and a series of subsequent China-Europe trains is self-evident. According to Mackinder's "land ownership" theory, whoever can rule the heartland can control the world island; Whoever controls the world island can rule the world. Chongqing, Chongqing, New Europe and other Central European and Central Asian trains have undoubtedly penetrated into the heart of the world. It is not difficult to see that the China-Europe train has not only changed the traditional trade pattern between Europe and Asia, but also strengthened the rapid exchange of goods, people and services between the East and the West in the "heart of the world", which is equivalent to making the overall resources of the "world island" more reasonable and will play an inestimable role in the economic integration of Eurasia. The News of the World once praised, "This railway will be a revolutionary means for China, as a land power, to surround the sea with the mainland in a roundabout way, and the geopolitical situation will change greatly".
Of course, this does not mean that sea power is not important. After all, maritime trade in peacetime still accounts for most of today's total trade, which is an important way to promote economic development and expand national influence. In this sense, China's revival of land rights is not based on the premise of sacrificing sea power.
In addition, under the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, the large-scale opening of China-Europe trains has fundamentally broken the situation that the development of export-oriented economy in the western region basically depends only on the eastern coast, especially for the inland cities in the west, and the layout of export-oriented industries with logistics channels and hub construction as the carrier has played a positive role in promoting. In the long run, China-Europe train will build a "ballast stone" for the stable development of national economy and politics in the western region, and make the external environment change in a favorable direction again, which will play a positive role.
2065438+On September 25th, 2007, the economic integration of Eurasia ushered in another important moment. On this day, under the framework of the Sino-Singapore interconnection demonstration project, the normal operation train of the southbound rail-sea intermodal corridor built by Chongqing in conjunction with Guizhou, Guangxi and Gansu started, which shortened the transportation time by about 15 days compared with the traditional "Chongqing-Shanghai-Singapore" line. This is also the predecessor of the new land and sea passage in the west. The opening of this train has not only solved the problem of difficult sailing for western China, but also injected new impetus into the economic integration of Eurasia.
Specifically, on the one hand, the new land and sea passage in the west connects ASEAN, western China, Central Asia, West Asia and the European Union in series through the connection with the Central European trains; On the other hand, ports such as Orchard Port in Liangjiang New Area and Luohuang Port in Jiangjin have achieved seamless connection with the golden waterway of the Yangtze River. By then, goods from Japan, South Korea and areas along the Yangtze River valley can be distributed to the EU or ASEAN and other areas in the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle. or vice versa, Dallas to the auditorium
We can foresee that with the deepening of the Belt and Road construction, the economic dependence between the EU and East Asia and Southeast Asia will continue to increase, which will help China sign a free trade agreement with the EU. Chengdu-Chongqing region will become an important hub of the whole Eurasian continent, and on this basis, it will promote the benign interaction between Chinese and foreign economies. Of course, Chengdu-Chongqing region should also upgrade the level of development platform, actively expand the sea passage, especially open a new international trade passage from Yunnan to Kyaukphyu, Myanmar as soon as possible.
However, in the future, if East Asia wants to gain the upper hand in the game with traditional forces such as the United States and complete the economic integration of Eurasia, it still needs to do the following:
First, speed up the research and development process of high-speed wheel-rail freight trains, and apply them to the main logistics channels covering Eurasia as soon as possible, such as the China-Europe trains, the rail-sea intermodal trains in the new land-sea channel, and the freight railways along the Yangtze River. As we all know, compared with traditional shipping, the biggest advantage of China-Europe trains is that they are faster. Take the Central European train (Chongqing, Chongqing, New Europe) as an example. After speeding up, it now takes165,438+065,438+079 km to complete the whole journey. However, we can also see. Central European trains (Chongqing, Chongqing, New Europe) still have a lot of room for improvement in speed, because the speed in China is generally only 120 km, and it is only tens of kilometers outside.
If the high-speed wheel-rail freight train with a speed of 250km/h can be put into use in the future, it may take less than five days for the China-Europe train (Chongqing-Chongqing-New Europe) and less than seven days for the train from ASEAN to the EU via western China. This also means that the advantages of railway transportation over sea transportation will be more unbreakable, and the most obvious effect is that the transportation of goods exported by Japan and South Korea to the European Union and other places will be more active, and the economic integration of Eurasia will also turn a new page. Don't think that this high-speed wheel-rail freight train is still out of reach. There are specific arrangements in the "Outline of Building a Powerful Transportation Country" issued in September last year.
In fact, there are many factors that affect the traffic efficiency of China-Europe trains and new land and sea passages. In addition to freight trains, there are aging railway facilities, ports and logistics distribution centers running at full capacity, especially when trains enter the territory of the former Soviet Union and have to change tracks twice, which seriously affects their timeliness. What do you mean? Originally, the internal gauge of railways in China and most European countries was 1.435mm, while that in the former Soviet Union was1.520 mm. Therefore, when the train entered the former Soviet Union, it was necessary to replace the European standard narrow gauge train with the Russian standard wide gauge train. In order to solve this problem, either the domestic railways of Russia, Kazakhstan and other countries should be standardized with other countries in Europe and Asia, or the variable track trains should be developed. If the factors that hinder the smooth flow of trains between China and Europe are eliminated one by one, it may only take three days for Chongqing to get to Germany.
The second is to start the construction of the new navigation channel of the Three Gorges Project and the navigation expansion project of Gezhouba as soon as possible. We mentioned in the article "Tenth Five-Year Plan: The Construction of the New Waterway of the Three Gorges Project is Imperative under the Background of Double Circulation" that the construction of the new Waterway of the Three Gorges Project is related to Chengdu-Chongqing region's participation in the double circulation of domestic and international economy through the development of international transit trade. Chengdu-Chongqing area is an important hub of Eurasia and even the gateway of land rights. In this sense, the new navigation channel of the Three Gorges Project and the navigation expansion project of Gezhouba are related to the economic integration of Eurasia, not unimportant.
The third is to fully open up the railway transportation corridor covering the whole Eurasia. For example, in the direction of China-Indochina Peninsula, improve the Trans-Asian Railway network centered on Yunnan as soon as possible; China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor will start the construction of China-Kyrgyzstan-Ukraine international railway as soon as possible, improve the southern passage of the new Eurasian continental bridge, and open up the most convenient transportation passages from East Asia and Southeast Asia to Central Asia, West Asia, North Africa and Southern Europe; There are also railway projects such as China-Pakistan (China and Pakistan, Iran) and China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
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