By Anton Evstratov
If earlier the influence of China in Central Asia was limited mainly by the economic plane, and almost never turned into a military one, recently the situation has been rapidly changing.
Actively developing a network of routes, railways, oil and gas pipelines, as well as communication lines under the “One Belt – One Way” initiative, China is increasingly in need of protection for the infrastructure it has at the moment already built and it is planning for the future. Indeed, over the past 2 years in Central Asia, with the direct financing of the PRC, 26 new transport routes have appeared, the total length of which has almost come close to the length of the equator. For example, one of the recent such projects, the Termez-Dushanbe-Kashgar motor corridor, will connect the territories of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China.
This problem is seen in Beijing even more urgently in the light of the Afghan danger permanently oppressing the region – after all, 3 states of Central Asia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan immediately border Afghanistan, where political and military stability is still very far away.
In this regard, it is not surprising that the first purely military events of the PRC in the region began precisely from the Afghan border. We are talking about the construction of a checkpoint on the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan since 2016. Currently, hundreds of Chinese military personnel are located on Tajik territory near the Vakhan corridor, and a Chinese training center for the training of local personnel operates.
This was followed by an informal quadripartite agreement signed by China with Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to strengthen security and take measures to combat terrorism. A noteworthy point here is that on the Afghan side, representatives of the Taliban movement participated in the agreement, who have been diligently for several years establishing contacts with the Chinese, as opposed to the Americans and sponsoring Salafi groups in the region, in particular, the Islamic State and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf.
In this context, some quite formal agreements were concluded. So, in April 2019, Beijing signed an agreement on security and law and order with Tajikistan, as well as a plan for defense cooperation with Uzbekistan. A kind of “cherry on the cake” here can be the recent Tajik-Chinese military exercises on the border of the two countries in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC.
More and more experts are talking about the possible emergence of a Chinese military base in Central Asia, along with those that already exist in Djibouti and Cambodia. The new defense strategy of the PRC, set forth in the so-called White Paper, confirms these assumptions.
This document, among other things, emphasizes the obligation of the PRC and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to protect the citizens of China not only on its territory, but also abroad. As a result, China comes into apparent conflict with the Russian Federation, which until recently reigned supreme in the military-political sphere of the region. And, despite the clearly negative attitude of Moscow towards what is happening, it is easily explainable.
The Chinese economy is 8 times larger than the Russian one, and despite the presence of more progressive and modern armed forces, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Russian Federation to maintain military-political parity with Beijing in Central Asia.
There is no doubt that a radical restructuring of regional realities will not happen in the coming years – especially considering the fact that China and Russia at the moment are opposed by American expansion. However, the American contingent in Afghanistan is not eternal, and their activity in other Central Asian states shows a clear tendency to decrease. This is quite officially voiced by US President Donald Trump, who a few years ago expressed his intention to leave a number of regions, and is slowly but surely pursuing an appropriate political line. And after the Americans leave Afghanistan, it will be necessary to create a new regional security architecture, in which each of the existing parties – both Beijing and Moscow, will strive to take a dominant role.
It should be noted that none of them is able to dominate individually – as the only superpower or pole of attraction. Russia does not have enough economic power for this – this is especially true against the backdrop of Western sanctions against it, which make it possible not only to increase its presence in the Central Asian region, but also forced the Russian Federation to curtail a number of initiatives there (for example, energy projects in Kyrgyzstan). China, in turn, unlike the Russian Federation, has no experience in the struggle in this region, its influence in the societies of the Central Asian countries is insufficient, and the armed forces have not yet caught up with the Russian ones in combat readiness. At the same time, China is able to level some of these problems of the financial component.
These realities dictate the need for cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, and not even bilateral, but with the involvement of other regional players. The corresponding initiative was, for example, Russian special representative for the Middle East and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov, who proposed the concept of collective security, in which Russia will play a leading role in the field of defense, and all interested regional players will be able to join the design. Moreover, the concept contains a rejection of the participation of extra-regional forces in it. Thus, the place there will be China, the states of Central Asia, India, Pakistan and Iran.
However, the role of one of the Russian partners, China, the second world economy, is undoubtedly small. It is in this context, and by no means only in applied, that Beijing’s desire for military action in Central Asia and the partial replacement of its “soft” power with a hard one should be considered. But the traditional vector of “soft” penetration also does not collapse at all – after all, its success is obvious. Now only in Chinese universities more than 13 thousand students from Kazakhstan are studying, 11 thousand from Kyrgyzstan, 5 thousand from Uzbekistan and several hundred from Tajikistan. Confucius Institutes and other educational and commercial infrastructure of China operate on their territory.
The noted trends, perhaps more than other countries in the region, relate to Kazakhstan as its most stable state. And this is not surprising, because it is in Kazakhstan that most of the Chinese funds have been invested – about $ 50 billion. The same amount was allocated to the republic as loans. Obviously, it is Kazakhstan that is the backbone of China’s economic penetration into Central Asia, and, given the change in the economic vector to the military one, and its military activity.
Unlike Tajikistan, the republic is part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Beijing is not able to directly deploy troops on its territory, plan bases and other elements of military infrastructure without the knowledge of Russia, however, it is obvious that if Tajikistan and Uzbekistan become the peripheral zone in which such infrastructure appears first, then Kazakhstan is the most desirable and perhaps the last goal of Chinese strategists.
At the moment, the country is exploited by the PRC to the extent that it is possible – on an economic plane, however, there is also a kind of competition with Russia, in which Beijing does not mind involving the Kazakh side. In particular, back in 2013, the famous initiative of Xi Jinping was not presented in Moscow, namely in Astana. This was followed by investments in the Central Asian railways, instead of Russian ones. Meanwhile, Chinese investments could turn the Russian Federation into the world’s most powerful transportation hub.
Thus, China, through Kazakhstan, is pushing Moscow to the background in the economic plane. It seems that if this succeeds in the military sphere, this will be the final and comprehensive victory for China in the Eurasia region. Without a doubt, this scenario is relevant for the long term, at the moment, if there are American troops in Afghanistan, Russian military-technical superiority over the PRC and the parties still need each other, it cannot be realized, however, if they do not want it The final implementation, both of the Russian Federation and the countries of Central Asia, must be kept in mind, both in interaction with each other and in building relations with China.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)
Image source: Buzzon