A fashionable nostalgia
As Thorsten (2005) pointed out, the ‘Silk Road’ has become globalization’s fashionable nostalgia, not just for a territorial place, but a perceived time when a vast global flow of ideas and things permitted adventure, romance and knowledge .
Much like all the Silk Road initiatives of today, China tries to present itself as a peaceful, cooperative and harmless figure in the region, as the cultural term so evocative of a glorious, ideology free, idealized past would suggest. A region wide shared past that does not even need to exactly ever existed.