Towards an Asian Eurasia: Mackinder’s heartland theory and the return of China to Eurasia

Abstract

Mackinder’s theory of geopolitics pitted naval powers such as the United Kingdom and later the United States, against land-based powers such as Germany and Russia for control of the Eurasian Heartland. In the context of the Cold War, the heartland was often defined as the Soviet Union and these ideas would play a crucial role in influencing American strategies towards the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). However, all of these fell apart with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which in turn appeared to grant the United States control over Eurasia and perhaps over the fabled World Island. Despite this turn of events, it would also appear that no one power possessed control over the region. Therefore, the core argument of this essay is that it is China rather than Russia that is the land power of the 21st century. This is partially due to changes in the Post Cold War international system, primarily those in Sino-Russian relations, as well as China’s increasing centrality to the former Soviet states. Therefore, in order to explore this question, the study will attempt to utilise Mackinder’s theories outlined in “Democratic Ideals and Reality” in the context of Chinese policy towards Eurasia, in order to determine how China contributes as much to the concept of Eurasia as Russia did. By doing so, China is following a precedent in Eurasia that predates Mackinder's theories and Russian involvement in the region by several centuries, thus posing a new source of experience from the 20th-century power politics that had dominated Eurasia for the past century.