School of War - Ep 229: Nadège Rolland on China’s Borderlands

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Nadège Rolland, Distinguished Fellow, China Studies, at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and principal investigator for the Mapping China's Borderlands: Dashboard, joins the show to discuss the shifting visions China has of its frontiers.  ▪️ Times     •      01:35 Introduction     •      02:34 What is “China?”     •      10:26 Sovereignty             •      19:30 Double translation     •      25:25 Capillaries             •      34:37 Imperial messaging            •      42:36 Prioritization        We also discuss Nadège’s 2020 report - China's Vision for a New World Order. Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

School of War listeners know that understanding China's geopolitical objectives is one of the themes of the show. One thing that seems beyond debate at this point is that China seeks dominance in its own neighborhood. And that's our subject for today, how the PRC seeks to control its own frontiers and how it thinks about them. It's not exactly the traditional Western or Westphalian model for such visions. Let's get into it. It is the for war just to lock the invasion of the way. 41, a date which will live in infantry. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state.

We continue to face the grave situation in France. We'll fight on the beaches, we'll fight on the landing grounds, we'll fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter.

Brian B. McLean. Hi, I'm Erin McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome back to the show, Nadaj Rolan. Nadaj is Distinguished Fellow in China Studies at the National Bureau of Asian Research, author of many important articles and a book called China's Eurasian Century and the leader in recent months, years now, perhaps, of a project at the National Bureau for Asian Research on mapping China's strategic space.

Nadegh, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you very much for having me back. I love this project that you guys are doing. We did a recording, I guess, right around the new year about the historical evolution of Chinese geopolitical vision in sort of the strict sense. It's actual attitudes towards geopolitics and geopolitical thinking, which I thought was really interesting. And I think people should go and look at the actual underlying research that informed your appearance on that show. That project has shifted to or has added a new. layer, which is an inquiry into how to China sees its borderlands, its periphery. And that's where I'd like to

start with us today. I'll start with probably an extremely unfair because very broad question, which, you know, when we talk about peripheries and borders and frontiers, definitionally, what we're talking about is what's in and what's out and what does that even aim? And I guess you've talked a little bit about this on the podcast that you run out of the Bureau. But what is China? What is traditionally in? What does that mean? Yes. Well, first of all, Aaron, thank you so much for following this work. You're right. This is the next phase of that broader inquiry into how China is thinking about its strategic space, the space that constitute what it needs to continue to develop and grow and and become potentially a, potentially, a dominant power. And the conclusion of the first phase led us to look at a map that was quasi global. And that sort of aligned with a moment in which China's rise was really clear, not just

for the rest of the world, but for Chinese elites themselves. And they were trying to figure out what to do with this growing power and what the limits of its national interests would be and the kinds of resources that they would need to have access to and where should they prioritize their space. So the notion of space was really deeply grounded into geopolitics and this, also this feeling of the space being constrained and encircled by hostile powers, of course, the U.S. being the most important one of them. And so in this new phase, we are concentrating, we're sort of leaving behind the global vision or the quasi-global vision.

I think people have really started to realize that this is something that is unfolding very rapidly, We see China's footprint everywhere from the Middle East to Latin America, to Oceania, etc. But what we're trying to figure out now is how does this power that China has accumulated and this growing asymmetry in power, how does that affect and impact China's closer neighborhood, closer to home? Any great power before it becomes a great power, needs to assert a sort of control over its own close periphery. And basically, I think that the borderlands are these areas that China can perhaps

develop this new form of Chinese-led order in a way that is possibly more easy, I mean, easier than in other far-flung places. On the frontier slash periphery, one of the reasons why I find this particular topic so interesting is that we constantly are in dialogue with the past. So even though China now has around 24 countries with which it shares a land or a maritime border, this was obviously not always the case 100 years ago. it was not the case. The frontiers and the borders of China have significantly changed over time, over the centuries. Despite what the CCP wants us to believe, China was not always the same as it is today. It had moments in its long history in which it was a much smaller political entity. It's only very recently that it has become itself as big as it is.

It's over a very long period of time during the Qing Dynasty, the last Chinese dynasty. So what was the frontiers of the dynasty became the interior of China. And this is what causes a lot of problems for the Chinese Communist Party today internally because these borderlands, internal borderlands, are populated by ethnic groups that are different than the Han majority, that have different cultures and religions, and the party wants to control them. What interests me with this project is not so much to go back to ethnic policy per se,

or talking about Xinjiang and Tibet, although these are really fascinating topics in and of, themselves and I'm learning a lot as I'm leading the project on all these issues. But really, how is trying to sort of gnawing or I don't know what's the good English term for that, kind of eroding the borders between itself and its neighbors in ways that are not necessarily the way that Russia is doing it in Ukraine, for example. In other words, not by using, boots on the ground, you know, invasion of the territory, but with instruments of state craft that are sometimes completely under the radar, perhaps tools that we here don't really think

about, but that are basically helping Beijing increasing in its own influence and control over its neighbors. And there's a lot of different ways that China has started to do this and the project is really kind of probing in various areas to try to have some kind of focus on certain of those activities. I'm going to stop here because I don't want to rent more too long because otherwise I'm probably going to lose you right here. But yes, that's the main architecture. Well, it's fascinating.

I'm just going to kind of encourage you to keep going in a couple of directions that you already gestured towards. I mean, the most fundamental issue, I see. suppose that is raised by implication of everything you just said is it's what's so interesting about this project is also what's or part of what's so interesting to me about the broader inquiry into Chinese geopolitical visions, which is how jarring it is to anyone who certainly thinks day to day to day and even someone like me who was sort of raised in, you know, the Westphalian vision of international politics and what becomes the liberal order and as portrayed on any number

of national geographic maps when I was a kid, where all of the world is a series of, the United States is pleasingly large on the map. All the countries of the world are different little color-coded countries and their borders. It's sort of sovereignty visualized, an order visualized, and that's how I was raised, and most people in America and the West are raised. It was very jarring for me when I got to Afghanistan and realized it didn't really matter where the lines were drawn or what the colors were, that the fact that everything within Afghanistan's borders was all colored one color, and that Pakistan was colored in a different color that actually reality was different.

So that was a long-winded, but a personalized way of saying it was so valuable about your project is this attempt to visualize how differently the Chinese may view the world. And frankly, even Westphalian powers didn't in practice view the world in this way either. The reality was always more complicated.

And so here when we get to the border regions, you know, say a bit more about, I mean, we're not talking as you just laid out, say a bit more. We're not talking about lines and on one side of the line is China and on the other side of the line is Mongolia or Russia or, you know, Japan's area of maritime rights or whatever. We are talking about that, but that's one of only multiple parts. What are the other parts and how did the Chinese think of them? Yeah. So it might sound very paradoxical or contradictory to to approach this project in terms of borderlands when actually China is,

one of the countries in the world that are probably the most, the biggest defenders of this idea of sovereignty. This is first and foremost in many of their official documents and speeches that, you know, their national territory and their sovereignty is sacred. And so you would think that therefore those lines on the map are really important to them and that they will really not allow anyone to change them. So I guess it's part of this investigation because it seems to me like the reality of China's own activities towards its neighborhood is slightly more blurred than this.

So in other words, it's one thing to say, we want our own sovereignty to be preserved and defended and that's really the core and the first mission for our military. And it's another thing to say, and therefore we will also protect and defend the sovereignty of other countries. So that's the first paradox or perhaps contradiction. Second paradox or contradiction is that even though the discourse is really pro-sovereignty and sort of Westphelian in a way, China has inscribed in its national security strategy five, four years ago in 2021. This new concept that's called the Three Edges, I'm sorry, the translation is not great,

but basically it's a shortening of three things, the borderlands, the borders, and the periphery. So borderlands, meaning those regions inside of China that are mostly people, populated by ethnic groups that are non-hann, the border itself, so that physical line that draws China's map, and the periphery, meaning those regions outside of China that constitute its broader or narrower neighborhood. And they, the national security strategy says that this is the most important thing that China needs to defend. So the line is already blurred between what constitutes the inner and the outer. And so I'm not sure yet what it means in terms of national security planning for China to say something like this in their national security strategy

and what the implications will be in terms of, you know, defending whatever China's interest in those aggregated regions. Part of what I think is also that there's a possibility, that the pure military usage or the usage of the military tool might not be the one and only statecraft tool that China has in its toolbox. And that sometimes the U.S. extra sharp focus on China's military capabilities, which China really likes to remind us of, I mean, the parade in Beijing really reminded us of this formidable military development and modernization. But I think this focus on the military instrument sometimes is equivalent to a sort of a the so-called drunk-search, drunk-yard search.

You're only focusing on looking for your keys under the light of the lamppost. And so for you, your world is really just the one that's illuminated by this lamppost. But then perhaps your keys are actually in sort of the gray areas or the darker areas outside of this illuminated circle. And this is what I find in commentaries about China's diplomatic or political practices. if you don't understand that there's a lot of, there's a whole world out there or of other instruments that are really efficient and used constantly by Beijing to achieve its objectives. And if you don't understand that these are things that China is using, because you have not learned what they are, therefore you will not be able to recognize them and therefore not

identify them and it's as if they don't exist for you. And I think again, just looking at what China is doing in its close environment where its power asymmetries are much greater here than anywhere else in the world allows us to perhaps have a greater ability to seek and detect those sort of gray and dark areas, the instruments that are at play and what is China doing exactly. in spaces and ways that we would maybe not to naturally think about. Is that clear? Yeah, on this question of over-indexing on military power, I share your concern.

Well, you know, while at the same time as I think you do, you know, I take military power very seriously. And if I have to pick one thing to keep me up at night, that'll probably be it. But there is a danger, as you just pointed out, of believing that if you just solve the military problem, which we can define for purposes of argument is, if you just achieve hard power deterrence,

then everything else will take care of itself. I don't think that that's true. I think in part through what you're documenting in this project, but things we can go look at elsewhere, there are other forms of power, other forms of influence, which working in concert with perhaps a military force that is a pure one-to-one question is deterred or deterrable,

they could still succeed essentially in achieving Chinese objectives to the detriment of the of the American interest. That seems like a major worry to me that we focus enough, no much on a potential cross-strait crisis with Taiwan, which to be clear is a very serious threat. And we wake up one morning, and, I mean, to be blunt, China runs the world. And having never crossed the strait, having never crossed the strait. It's very, yes, it's very possible. It's very possible. And I think that most of the energies in Beijing are focused towards that clearly. Can I, can I, this is a bit of a digression, but something that you said, you're the perfect person to ask about this.

This is always something that's nag me. But you mentioned how it's jarring to look at Chinese strategic documents, public statements, and see the emphasis on sovereignty. And then the disconnect between that and apparent Chinese either behavior or certainly, even even things that they articulate. quite explicitly elsewhere in public-facing documents. And this is an issue, sort of an embarrassing admission, but this is an issue that this jarring, uncanny quality of public Chinese talk about world affairs and diplomacy. That's always been something that I've encountered.

Now, I'm not a professional reader of these documents. You are. And I, the reason I guess I'm asking this question, which is how the heck am I supposed to read these documents? In part because, I mean, I have no Chinese. So, you know, there's a, I never. know quite how much to just attribute to language barrier and translations. There are some other languages where I can look at translations and I have enough of a feel of what must be underlying

it to kind of have a sense of how to actually understand it, how to actually translate it into plain English for myself. With Chinese documents, there is this weird, again, the sort of uncanny embrace of very liberal international orderish language. Sovereignty is one of the terms of terms, you know, appeals to stability. I'm not sure law. I'm not sure if that. All these, all these things are very familiar. But, you know, on the one hand, that don't quite abide by my understanding of actual Chinese behavior. And on my third hand, even just in the, in the language itself, there's something weirdly off. And I can't quite pinpoint it. And I can't quite articulate it. And I read these documents. And I read them, I read the sentence the second time and a third.

time and I'm still not sure with gun to my head, I had to put in plain English what this actually means, what it's intended to mean that I could. Radegh, help me. How does one read? You recently had an interesting analysis of the white paper for China's national security that came out earlier this year. Like, how does one read a document like that? Yeah.

Oh, thank you for that question. This is one of my favorite questions, really. It's what's had at the heart of my work. I sometimes call it the double translation. the need for double translation because it's like, as you said, you can translate it into English and still not understand it, that the CCP discourse is a sort of a, it's almost like a secret language. So you need to be initiated in some way. I know that not all China experts like it when I say things like that because they're like, no, it's, it's, you couldn't, you cannot really mythify it or oriental.

it or something like that. But it's sort of true. It's based on China hawkishness and esoterrorian. You're okay. But I don't know. I mean, it's, and I understand the, you know, the discomfort with that. I fully understand it. The way I have come up recently with a formulation to explain that a little bit.

I don't know if it will clearly answer your question, but the CCP, believes what they mean. They really mean what they mean. They really mean what they say, rather. They believes what they mean and they mean what they say. So when they are putting out documents, we shouldn't necessarily always just discard it as pure propaganda that we should, you know, that's just loisterous

and it's just to prop them up and let them look like they're really great, et cetera. And so nothing to do with reality. there's always a kernel of reality in there. And they always say what they're going to do. So we really cannot say that we didn't know because they always announced it. So they mean what they say, but what they mean is not necessarily what we think they mean. And, you know, that list that you mentioned about sovereignty and law, that reform, for example,

these are words that are similar and that we hear with also their own meaning in our own context, in our own political and ideological context, whereas they use them in their own political and ideological context. So, and that's where the second translation comes in. It's because you really need to understand where those terms come from and how they are used and the weight that the party assigns to them. So when they say law in the in the party state system, the party is above the law. The party makes the law and it can change the law and it can decide whether the law is lawful or not just. You know, just like that on a dime. And so it's not the same as rule of law. It's ruled by law and the party decides it. I mean, we can go down the list of things that are not understood when they say we will never seek hegemony. So if you go back to my formulation, they really mean what they say. They don't seek hegemony because they believe that the term hegemony is really a a particular way of asserting your dominance through violence and through force.

And they say they don't want to do that. So that goes back to this idea of the military instrument and the aggression is not necessarily the main instrument that China wants to use in order to achieve its objectives. It's not that it's not an important one because it has deterrence effects and, of course, you can shore force, et cetera. You can compel better. But it's not the only thing that they have. have in their sleeves. So that's another example of the importance of discourse and the importance

of words. No, I appreciate you saying that. It's reassuring on level, on one level, because, you know, a premise of my confusion was always that it wasn't just rank hypocrisy. It wasn't just plain lies. Yeah, no, no. That it was taken seriously by them. And it just, it couldn't quite mean what superficially it seemed to mean, because that didn't make any sense. Yes. That's, that's clarifying and helpful on this question of the of the borders to come back to the to the new project you know it's it's a commonly accepted observation about the last couple of hundred years of Chinese history up until you know let's say the last half century or so that China had a bit of a bad run of it and you know foreign powers had a lot of sway within what anyone would define

as China's borders and the periphery was a place of basically threat it was a place a threat could accumulate and penetrate. And a lot of Chinese policy today and, you know, for some time now seems to be predicated on a desire understandable on some level to reverse that. Where are we in the process of reversal? And where does this border region fit into that? You have a great line as you introduced the project at your website where you make a comparison and to capillaries, to sort of blood flow outward, that these border regions can be a place where influence comes outward as opposed to being a place where once China feared encirclement. Are they at a point where they're confident about reversing the flow?

And can you give some concrete examples to maybe explain a bit what we're talking about here? So the capillary's imagery is not mine. It's one of the Chinese scholars who are actually working on these ideas. of borderlands who use it. And I used it because I felt like it was really a great metaphor for what we're trying to observe with the project. And you're right, you know, for if we go back 100 centuries, 100 years ago, a century ago, sorry,

those frontiers, those borders were invaded. They were crushed by foreign powers, including Western powers, and then, of course, Japan. And there's a real trauma about that, of course, that's lingered, but that's also been instrumentalized by the party itself. Basically, you know, the opium wars and those foreign incursions into the Chinese territory, like slicing the territory, like carving it like a melon.

That's also another imagery. is something that was traumatic. But for some times, for some time, this sentiment of humiliation was left aside by the political party itself. And then it sort of resurfaces with nationalism. And so what's interesting in this metaphor, or not metaphor, with this formulation of the century of humiliation

is that, again, it's linked with the, the Western foreign intrusions in China, the unequal treaties signed under force. And the party is using it now to say, because we have been the victims of that, we are not, we understand, you need to understand where we come from and we're not going to use the same kind of tools. So it's an instrument also of discourse that China is putting out. What's interesting in following that discourse of humiliation is that under Xi Jinping, it has, like for the past, in the past 13 years now, it has changed a little bit. We've evolved from a position of victimhood towards now the position of rejuvenation. That's what the whole project of rejuvenation comes from.

It's to erase the bad memories of humiliation and go back. to the time prior to that humiliation and those foreign intrusions at a time when China was the dominant power in its own region. And so that's the unsaid part of the China dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation that is really at the core of the whole agenda. So what's now going back to your question about those borders being the sort of channels through which foreigners can come in and undermine China and attack China, I think there's still that impression that this is still the case. You know, when you read some Chinese scholars on those issues, there's still this idea that there's a risk for China to be influenced. infiltrated by hostile foreign forces that are using those borderlands to do exactly that. So there's an increasing desire to securitize those borders, to harden those borders.

But at the same time, and this is another one of those contradictions, at the same time as there is hardening or securitization of those regions, there's also a need to open up to the wider periphery. And that's the Belt and Road project. At the same time as Xinjiang, for example, is getting under more control, it also becomes what the Chinese authorities call a hub for Central Asia. At the same time as there's increasing illicit trade and criminality coming from Southeast East Asia and also, you know, north of Myanmar with drugs and illicit traffics and things like that,

which means a need to control those criminality and criminal groups so that they don't transfer back into China and cause problems for China. There's also a focus on China's border regions, Yunnan and Guangxi, to become radiating centers towards southeast. Asia, radiating centers is a term that they're using. If you go to the Strategic Space website of NPR, you will see that there's an essay that is actually looking into how various provinces have been attributed specific responsibilities for tying up their near abroad. That's more for the Russian specialists.

but those countries that are on the other side of the border and how they are spearheads for or bridges or radiation centers or hubs for that kind of outward influence. So that's interesting and reconciling those two, this impulse and desire to gain more influence and to connect with China's neighbors through trade. then infrastructure and cultural and other kinds of corporations. And at the same time, how do you manage the security of your own territory? It creates a lot of policy questions, policy issues for the party and the central government. But there's also an interesting sort of decentralization of those activities towards the provinces that are on the on the other side of the border. I want to ask you more questions about the frontiers,

but something that you said provoked in me a thought that it almost makes me uncomfortable to say it out loud. I worry that following this comment, Aaron McLean, the executive producer of School of War, we'll have to fire Aaron McLean, the host. I. Nevertheless, the way you characterize Chinese self-understanding of China's own strategy

and its relationship to their history, that they were the victims of all, imperialism. Thus, they will never be the perpetrator of awful imperialism and all the contradictions that appear to stem from that. You know, you say that, and I can't think of the United States of America, which I, a country that I love dearly in a common line of critique of America and American liberal foreign policy that we, you know, we of course, you know, come from an imperial tradition that we shrugged off. We fought to get rid of and we didn't really want anything to do with the British Empire or all the other European empires. And we weren't like that. And we're a

different kind of country. And by the way, to be clear, and for the record, I think there is something to that. And the best evidence you can, of course, give is, you know, America achieves, I'll just say global hegemony in 1945, but occupies strikingly little of everyone else's territory in the immediate aftermath. Nevertheless, to go back to the point, you know, it's a common line of critique that these Americans who sit there and say they're not, they're not imperialists, they're not, they say they're not imperialists. They say they're not like the old ways, but actually they're the most rapacious, ruthless bunch of gangsters that the world has ever seen. They're perfectly comfortable pursuing their own interests, even as they sit there and tell themselves that that's not what

they're doing. And there's a way in which, again, I think that's overstated and I can, I love my country. I can defend our foreign policy just fine, but just to just to extend it to try to understand the Chinese better. There's a way in which the critique does point to something that is sincere in the, in the hearts of a lot of American foreign policy practitioners and thinkers and just the average American on the street, they don't see themselves as, you know, by and large and for the most part, maybe we'll set aside a few people who sort of proudly self-describe as realists here and there. But for the most part, they do see themselves as having good intentions and they do see, the American tradition is to see itself as a force for good in the world traditionally.

Even as, I mean, Walter Mead wrote a great book essentially about this called God and Gold, even as America has rarely shied away from aggressively pursuing its interests when it wanted to. And there's a way in which your account of the Chinese self-conception, it reminds me of this. It's eerily similar. I don't know if this thought has ever crossed your mind. You're, of course, originally, and not from the United States, you have a bit more objectivity here, but you also seem to share my general skepticism of Chinese intention. So I don't know. I put that in your lap as one. I don't know.

Yes. Well, thank you very much. a poison gift that you're giving me. I don't know how to answer that. First of all, I don't follow the U.S. that much, so I forgive my ignorance on that. Maybe some hypothesis there. Maybe all great powers, you know, sort of end up doing the same kinds that great powers will do, right? And even if you're trying to put it in a nicely wrapped paper, trying to justify it Because you, like, I don't know, civilization, bringing the civilization to the barbarians, like the Europeans were trying to say or bring, you know, trying to save their souls or, I mean, you can always find a way to justify it. Or in the American case, you know, bringing democracy and liberal ideas and for the coming good. I think in a way China is also trying to come up with a way to present it, to find that

wrapping paper and is sort of struggling to find it. I mean, for the whole Maoist period, it was clear enough that it was, you know, the year international revolution and communist revolution that was the motivation behind expansion. and it's complicated for the Chinese elites to think about their expansion, probably even more than any other country, precisely because the Communist Party is deeply anti-imperialist. So how do you reconcile? I mean, there's a kind of crisis of identity here,

because how do you reconcile, you know, this sort of, what they would think as or construe as a natural expansion of China's interests that are related to its growing power with the, wait a minute, but isn't that actually imperialism and what form is that taking? And we can say, no, no, no, we're not hegemonic and no, it's not neo-colonialism and it says it's nothing to do with what the European powers used to do. and it has nothing to do with the way that the American power has done it, it's really, it's kind of cognitive dissonance for any party member to think about these things. I don't think that they have come up yet with something that has sort of cringled or encapsulated this justification, really. You can see that they're playing with this idea of a shared community of destiny, community of shared destiny, community of shared future.

I think that's the closest they have come to express that they want to reshape the world in a way that's different from the one we have known so far. they're now we are recording this a few days after the Shanghai Corporation Organization Summit where you had words like

Community of Destiny again put there but also I think there's Asian values that appeared in some of the discussions as well so something that brings us together as as a region you know the

so I think they're trying to find ways to qualify this. But if it's not really clear in the discourse, it's, it's getting more and more visible in those various activities and behaviors that they're having. SEO summit was really an interesting, again, microcosm of what China would like to see appearing. You see things like a fair and just global governance, Xi Jinping launched this new, now it's the fourth global initiative, the global governance initiative. So there are things that are happening that we need to continue to look at. And they might look like a pointillist painting, you know, little dots.

And if you look too closely to them, the only thing you will see is that little dot. But if you take a step back and look at the big picture, there's just sort of a pattern that's been created in the past 10 years under Xi Jinping. And when the party is trying to define those dots, each of them, in a way that's a little bit more cohesive than it used to be. Yeah, that's fascinating. Fair and just global governance. Yes. You know, it's a fascinating phrase, isn't it? Because on the one, again, sort of superficially like, well, I think I'm, I think I'm kind of for that. Yes. Yes. Yes. We're going to be. We're going to Americans talk about the international community. And there's there's a way in which it sounds

sort of like our liberal language, but then one reflects on the fact that it is quite silent as a phrase on who is governing and by what mechanism precisely. I don't really say much about that. And then, yes, the community of shared destiny, that one really, again, there's a way in which it seems synonymous to international community, which is a, it's a silly phrase in a way. In another way, it's a phrase Americans use uncontroversially, Westerners use uncontrovertually. But just I wish we still had Christopher Hitchens with us, who I think could really have a lot of fun with a phrase like this. It's the word share greats, you know, share who you're sharing it with? Why am I sharing?

Why are we sharing? Because we're sharing. And then destiny, you know, destiny. Well, who's saying. Future. Yeah. So, but it's the same word in Chinese at the beginning. But then, of course, because of the way it has been welcomed or not so much by the rest of the world when it was launched 13 years ago.

that they sort of imposed a new way of translating it. And now it's community of shared future. If you're interested in all of these terminology and what they mean, back in 2020, I'm sorry, this is like shameful self-promotion, but I wrote a report on China's vision of a new world order. And I'm kind of deciphering all these, those kinds of languages. And fair and just is really an important one. And I'm not going to elaborate too much on it here because we need another half hour.

But if you're interested in that, you can see why it's fair, why it should be fair, and what it means for it to be just. And as you said, there's more to it than what the words are just saying, saying. We'll post a link to that along with the Borderlands project here in our show notes. One last question for you. I want to be respectful of your time. You talk about, and Ux that have already come out as part of the Borderlands Project, how obviously as China thinks about its periphery, it's near abroad, whatever we want to call it.

This question of prioritization comes up. I mean, this is a vast, vast space. China borders more, what, more countries than any other country on Earth. So, you know, how does it think about what to wait here? And then a sort of related question, but one of the things all of us here in the United States were talking about it, this parade that just happened, is that. the role of India and how American policy, you know, seems to be contributing to, at the very least, a warming from a pretty cold start point of Sino, Indo, Indo-Chinese relations.

So talk, so prioritization broadly, but then this Himalayan portion, which for a while there was a really tense place for China. How does that play into this potential warming of relations with India play into Chinese visions of its periphery? So on the prioritization, I think this is also something that we really are interested in. And we have a dashboard that looks at different indicators to actually help us visualize where the priority went for the past 10 years in various domains, like the economic development and the security and then civilization, which is all the cultural and people. to people aspects. And looking at the dashboard, you can see it's a great visual instrument because then you can see where the priority has gone. So that's because, of course, it's a very limited number of indicators. It's not the full picture, but it gives us the beginning of an answer to that

question. One of the questions I had in Marin going into and preparing for the various essays that we will want to put out in the next few months was whether there was a difference between the land, like the continental neighbors and the maritime neighbors. It seems like the one that really share a physical border, it's probably easier actually to penetrate to the other side or integrate them through connectivity, through railways or other kinds of infrastructure. whereas the maritime ones might be a little bit more difficult to integrate, especially when those maritime borders are, as you well know, very contested. Another way to maybe think about those priorities would be,

so again, the presence of territorial disputes, and the last possibility of prioritization would be whether there is or not the presence of another either middle or great power that sort of operates in the shadow or in those contested let's say spheres of influence. So of course the ones that come to mind are Russia and Central Asia and India in the Himalayas and then perhaps the US on the Southeast Asia and East Asia borders, but it seems like from the early results of our investigation, it seems like Southeast Asia is really the one where China has the most control now. So basically as a result, perhaps of a sort of disengagement from the U.S. And the ones that are really holding up are

basically Japan and perhaps South Korea, but it's not even sure. that this is enough. In the Himalayas, I don't think we should draw any conclusion just based on Modi's presence in the SEO summit and discussion with Xi Jinping. Modi, for example, didn't sign anything related to the endorsement of Belt and Road. Modi is following his country's interests, national interests, and whether some of them align with China or with Russia or with the U.S., he's going to play with, you know, whatever great power is needed to fulfill those objectives. And I think that the fact that the border has been quiet recently doesn't also mean that it

won't flare up again in a few months or in a few years again. These are very sensitive, sensitive issues still. There too in the Himalayas, China is divided. is deploying some strategies that are very different from what we might expect. I mean, the border with India, you have tensions, you have people who are physically fighting with one another over the border. But nobody really thinks or studies what's going on in Bhutan, where China is actually eroding the territory of Bhutan by, installing villages that are populated with Chinese people that are on Bhutan's territory. And I'm going to do a recording or a documentary on this specific issue in the next few months.

But this is another way that China is actually gradually, very slowly, like, asserting its presence on those contested territories for the long run. And you can see how it is here. It's interesting to see the difference between how it is acting against peer, like India, versus a country that is much smaller, much weaker, like Bhutan. So these are kind of interesting comparisons that we can draw from those little points that we can see around China's periphery. Nadez Rolande of the National Bureau of Asian Research. As always, a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the show.

Well, thank you very much here. It's been fun. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.