Max Haberstroh
The Silk Roads: Making the 'Great Game' Great Again
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Max Haberstroh
The Silk Roads: Making the 'Great Game' Great Again
This essay is written (no AI support) by Max Haberstroh, Senior Trainer MTC (Meaningful Tourism Centre), International Senior Consultant on Sustainable Tourism, with over four decades of professional experience in tourism management and development both in Germany and abroad, and with a special emphasis on the Kyrgyz Republic, as the adviser to the President of the Republic and the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators (1994-2001). Further assignments include other Central Asia Silk Road countries and China, as well as Ukraine and Eastern Europe/Balkans & Caucasus (German Technical/International Cooperation – GIZ, and Centre for International Migration and Development – CIM), Russia (Volga-Don Association), South America (Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization), Africa/Indian Ocean (Conservation International), Middle East, South-East Asia (German Foreign Office).
The Silk Roads' Augmented Reality
In 2013, China's newly nominated President Xi Jinping gave a much heeded speech in Astana, Kazakhstan's brushed-up capital. His main concern focused on nothing less than how to invigorate the ancient Silk Roads, „in order to promote people-to-people friendship“. – After eleven years, in 2024, jointly with Kazakhstan's President Tokayev, Xi Jinping inaugurated the China-Europe Trans-Caspian Express Route.
Xi's (geo-)strategically planted „One Belt, One Road policy (OBOR)“ was targeted at building „an Economic Belt and a Maritime Silk Road“ that would soon be renamed as “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)“, reaching out far beyond the 'Eurasian' continent, into Africa, the Americas, the Arctic – even to outer space and cyberspace. „The mantra of the Silk Roads supersedes all division: all should follow the 'Silk Road spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit and seek greater synergy' in pursuit of 'national renewal'“, analyses Peter Frankopan in his blockbuster book 'The New Silk Roads – the Present and Future of the World' (2018), quoting China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Xi Jinping calls for investments in roads, rails, harbours, energy and global trade – and a great deal of ideology and political and economic power. From this angle, the cooperation acronym of 'BRICS' for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa looks like an extension of 'BRI' – the Belt and Road Initiative – China's geo-economic configuration of the multi-polar world. The central myth of the old Silk Roads has shifted from Samarkand's Registan to the augmented reality of Peking's Square of Heavenly Peace.
"Test the West“
The notorious 'Great Game' of the 19th and early 20th centuries saw a competition of both political intervention and archaeological exploration. Amazing events brought about most of the tales of adventure, intrigue, vision and wisdom. They filled countless books and kept readers out of breath for decades. They tell the history of exploration, including the destinies of outstanding European and Asian players of the ‘Great Game’, weaving the fabric storytelling lives from. Today, the revival of the 'Great Game' is in full swing – under different auguries, though, and with different actors.
The old Silk Roads were multicultural, to be sure, but, rather than being absorbed in a 'melting pot', they largely kept identities like the ingredients of a 'salad bowl'. Watchtowers were not ivory towers for scholars in splendid isolation, often they served as lighthouses to show caravans the direction – caravans and voyagers, spearheaded by the likes of Marco Polo the merchant, Ibn Batuta the pilgrim, Xuanzang the monk, Zheng He the admiral, Matteo Ricci the missionary, not to mention those unforgotten explorers of the 19th and early 20th century, and – last but not least – Ferdinand von Richthofen, the geologist and geographer who forecasted China's future importance and gave the Eurasian trading routes their conspicuous name „Seidenstrasse – Silk Road“.
25 years ago, the Kyrgyz Republic, poor in mineral resources but rich in culture and adventure tourism opportunities, propagated the country's 'Silk Road Doctrine – the Diplomacy of the Great Silk Roads', based on the ideas of humanism and tolerance. It was the time, when the concept of “our common house“ went viral in capital cities of Europe and Central Asia, as economic cooperation started to bloom, to the better and to the worse. Marlboro advertisments showed a Red Army officer's smoky indulgence to “Test the West“, and thousands of used-cars – German, Japanese and French – were flocking overland, direction East, along the old Silk Roads. Today, the Russian Army tests the West, while brand-new Chinese BYD e-cars are crammed on huge cargo ships bound oversees, following the maritime Silk Roads, direction West.
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Silk Road Tourism was on a constant rise – despite chaotic conditions in the earlier years of the awkward age of the young '-stan'-countries, with civil war in Tadjikistan and Afghanistan, terrorist attacks in the Ferghana Valley, exacerbating effects of climate change, and an emerging U.S.-Russian rivalry in 'near-abroad' countries, as Russia would refer to the Community of Independent States – still considering them as its geostrategic front court.
Winds of change catapulted people behind the former 'Iron Curtain' to abrupt freedom, hailed democracy as a panacea against all political troubles and took privatization as an automatism for commercial success. The old political guards celebrated their seamless coming out as standard bearers of the new liberties. At last, the outcome was very mixed: crime, lawlessness and large-scale corruption challenged the fresh breeze of political freedom and private entrepreneurship that provided contrasting experiences to the otherwise rather gloomy aftermath of 'Good-bye, Lenin'.
The Train – Back on Rail
Following a period of stagnation, including the standstill caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, China identified the Central Asian states as first-hand clients to share the idea of rejuvenating the Great Silk Roads, with a focus on revamping and installing a network of road and railway connections unheard-of. Large-scale BRI investment opportunities were hanging like lifelines for shaky economies. Politicians could scarcely resist China's proposition to build a commercial network that is meant to connect places and people, towns and cities, airports and harbours, countries and continents. Wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere, riots and political upheaval at hot spots all over the world may certainly impede China's economic outreach, but, rather than reaching out to untarnished communication levels, BRI partners started to enumerate stifling loan rates, political dependence, frustrations over unrealistic project forecasts and biased contract conditions, as well as all the power tools to turn the road network into a neatly woven cobweb with the spider seated in Peking.
Against all odds – today over 3,600 high-speed trains connect 550 cities in China, keeping the world's largest high-speed rail network covering over 46,000 kilometers of length (Wikipedia). And trains gain momentum in Central Asia: As part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a new railway connection is under construction between China, the Kyrgyz Republic and Uzbekistan (CKU), linking land-locked Kyrgyzstan with the Eurasian rail transport system (Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov. 14, 2024).
Another example: Uzbekistan's „Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Corridor 2 (Bukhara-Miskin-Urgench-Khiva) Railway Electrification Project“ – CAREC adds „electrification, signaling and telecommunication, and traction power management systems to the recently built railway line between Bukhara, Miskin, Urgench, and Khiva, 465 kms in total. The line has a design speed of 250 kms per hour and links to the electrified high-speed railway line between the country's capital Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara“ (ADB 2025 projects overview). Furthermore, six rail corridors are conceived to connect CAREC with Europe and Asia. The train is back on rail.
In terms of accommodation, modern Silk Road travellers get their comfort zone: The Uzbek city of Samarkand boasts a new tourism resort complex, designed by the well-known Uzbek artist Bobur Ismoilov: the Silk Road Samarkand Ethno-Park, also referred to as 'the Eternal City'. It's the all-inclusive 'Instant Silk Roads' concept: Samarkand-Bukhara-Khiva-Ferghana in a nutshell – with luxury hotels, a congress center, amphitheater, restaurants, tea houses, wellness spaces, handicraft workshops, cultural shows and art galleries. A kind of Silk Road, 'light', as one is tempted to say
Making the 'Great Game' Great Again
In 2018, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi evoked the 'mantra of the Silk Roads'. All should follow the „Silk Road spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit and seek greater synergy“ in pursuit of “national renewal“ (Peter Frankopan, The New Silk Roads). Properly speaking, this is no less than the shiny template of a win-win scenario – intriguing words for curious political audiences. In the meantime there is some concern about the perceived “dichotomy ... of an empire being built by design or by default“ (Frankopan) – a renewed China whose aim is to be “the prinicpal advisor to all humanity“ (Henry Kissinger).
In September, 2025, twelve years after the evocative address of China's President Xi Jinping in Astana, representatives of the world's main religions gathered in Kazakhstan's capital. Justice, dignity and equitable evolvement have been identified as basic factors to create human unfolding, consolidation of peace and interreligious cooperation. Nothing really new, nothing really 'wow'! – but everything so sustainably true, always worth remembering – and reminding!
These basic factors, not man-made, are based on nothing less than human rights, universally understood and stipulated in common sense. Common sense, however, has become rare in today's world in turmoil, as materialism's secular blessings leave people alone with their individual sorrows, meaningful ambitions and malnurished spirituality. More and more there is the feeling that the pivot of a sound cultural development is anchored in transcending secular perception, say: trusting in God. Peace may look real, yet a mirage is lurking, people rejoice, yet a mere ceasefire arduously hides the bitter delusion of a 'Heavenly Peace' (Peter Scholl-Latour, reference to book title).
There is a basic misunderstanding about a kind of automatism between trade and peace: The Silk Roads were by far not always peaceful; they formed the arteries of trading goods, exchanging ideas and news, and spreading religions. There were fields of actual and potential conflicts in abundance. Admittedly, amongst criminals and crooks there were serious international scientists and explorers, 'children of their time', though, in search of strange civilizations and their remnants as part of our joint cultural heritage. They were eager to learn about former peoples' lifestyles and their wisdom.
Eager to learn! The famous scientist and voyager Alexander von Humboldt who besides America and Amazonia travelled Russia, put education and formation ('Bildung') to the top-agenda of humanness, in order to create “the basis of a free and happy society“. – These days, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports from China: „The era of raw economic assertiveness is giving way to a more nuanced strategy that fuses investment with education [vocational training], infrastructure with human capital, and ambition with a dose of humility“ (Carnegie Politica, Oct. 6, 2025). With Confucius/Kung Fu Tse and Lao Tse, and some five to six thousand years of cultural heritage, China certainly understands the synergies of key and soft skills.
Chinese inherent predilection for 'tangibles' and Deng Xiaoping's heretical „Enrich youself“ mantra had outstripped Mao's egalitarian Communism. Bending 'permanent revolution' into profitable shape brought the Middle Kingdom long lasting double-digit growth rates, generated by a capitalist system that has been established behind a communist facade, with strong mercantilist elements and a nation under surveillance. A development that left the West flabbergasted and, to date, keeps the world in constant concern. While Russia is tangled in retrospective relationship warfare with Ukraine, the U.S., facing its 250th founding anniversary in 2026, intensifies its contested global top dog combat. China is at the crossroads, decided to push its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) further on, making the 'Great Game' great again. The delusion of Heavenly Peace has become commonplace, while tourists use the Silk Roads as the backdrop for selfies.
The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.
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