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In China today, the idea of the Silk Road is deeply connected to the spread of Buddhism, a narrative anchored around the story of Xuanzang and his seventh century travels to India and Central Asia, and the city of Dunhuang and its nearby Mogao caves. This raises the question of whether Silk Road cultural routes fashioned around the transmission of Buddhism will inflict new forms of social and cultural violence on populations, including Muslim minority groups, whose culture, language, and religious practices have been under threat for some decades. A Silk Road history, articulated through a language of cultural routes, thus demands we ask both new and familiar questions about the political work heritage is doing.

In an era of Belt and Road, the idea of creating and mobilizing the Silk Road as heritage is being driven primarily by one country, albeit with multiple others buying into this world of cooperation for economic and strategic purposes. Crucially, the Silk Road departs from many of the existing discourses of history and heritage that prevailed across Asia over the course of the twentieth century. Seemingly devoid of any nationalist, ethnic, or religious undertones, it circulates as a benign vision of history. Even when cast in its romanticized forms, it seems to have escaped the now familiar critiques of orientalism and cultural imperialism. Instead, it has come to be associated in both academia and international policy with notions of peace, harmony, trust, and dialogue. The unfolding geopolitical implications of the Belt and Road Initiative, and the accumulation of state power across the region through multi-sector connectivities, demand that we take a more critical path along the routes of the new Silk Road histories now being written.