With Russia mired in Ukraine’s long war and increasingly reliant on China for supplies, Beijing is rapidly expanding its influence in Central Asia, a region once the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
And Russia is fighting back vigorously.
China’s growing influence in the region was on display this week when leaders from Central Asia met with the presidents of China and Russia in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. New railway lines and other infrastructure are being built, and trade and investment are increasing.
Kazakh children waved national flags and sang in Chinese to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping as he arrived in Astana on Tuesday, praising the China-Kazakhstan friendship that has been “passed down from generation to generation.”
Vladimir V. Putin, President of Russia Expected arrival Wednesday China dominates the regional grouping at the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana. For years, the forum focused mainly on security issues. But as its membership has expanded, China and Russia have used it as a platform to showcase their ambitions to reshape the U.S.-led global order.
The organization was founded in 2001 by China and Russia along with the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and has expanded in recent years to include Pakistan, India and Iran.
Although China has expanded its economic influence in Central Asia, its diplomacy remains challenging as Russia seeks to tip the balance among Shanghai Forum members in its favor.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is expected to attend this year’s summit. He is Putin’s closest foreign ally and relies heavily on Russian economic and political support to maintain power. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explain Belarus will be named a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at this year’s summit, a small diplomatic victory for the Kremlin.
In a bigger setback for Beijing, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not attending the summit this year. Modi was scheduled to visit Moscow next week for talks with Putin and send Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to the Astana summit.
Following Putin’s recent visits to two other neighboring countries of China, North Korea and VietnamTheresa Fallon, director of the Brussels-based Center for Russian, European and Asian Studies, said Modi’s upcoming visit to Moscow showed that Putin was still able to build a diplomatic relationship that was independent of Beijing.
“He said, ‘I have other options,'” Ms Fallon said.
In 2017, India joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at Russia’s urging, and Pakistan joined at China’s encouragement. But India’s relationship with China Getting cold Since then, the two countries’ armies have had border clashes in 2020 and 2022.
Although Modi advocated for closer ties when he came to power a decade ago, today even direct commercial flights are no longer allowed between the two countries.
Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, said India is increasingly concerned about the geopolitical balance of power in the region as China’s influence rises and Russia’s influence weakens. China and Russia have also cultivated increasingly friendly relations with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which has ruled Afghanistan since the withdrawal of US troops in 2021 and has long sided with Pakistan against India.
“As long as Russia is dominant, India is fine,” Pant said. “But as China becomes more important economically and more powerful in Central Asia, and Russia becomes a secondary partner, India’s concerns will grow.”
But from a broader perspective, Russia’s participation in the SCO is largely a rearguard action, designed to offset the region’s seemingly inevitable move toward China. Putin, who relies heavily on China to sustain its economy and military production under Western sanctions, has for years accepted Beijing’s growing ties with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The huge economic power gap between Russia and Beijing has prevented the Kremlin from engaging in direct competition in Central Asia.
Instead, the Kremlin has sought to maintain a degree of influence in its former satellite states to address issues vital to its national interests, including attending largely symbolic events such as the Astana summit. Putin will hold six separate meetings with Asian heads of state in Astana on Wednesday, Russian state media reported.
Russia wants to maintain access to Central Asian markets to circumvent Western sanctions. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has received billions of dollars worth of Western goods through Central Asian middlemen. These include consumer goods such as luxury cars, as well as electronic components for military production.
Russia also relies heavily on millions of Central Asian migrants to prop up its economy and rebuild occupied areas of Ukraine.
Finally, Russia hopes to cooperate with the governments of Central Asian Muslim countries on security issues, especially in countering the threat of terrorism. Earlier this year, a group of Tajik citizens 145 people died The terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall is the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in more than a decade. The Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research organization, said Russia and China not only compete in Central Asia but often cooperate because they see a shared interest in establishing stable regimes in the region that have little coordination with Western militaries.
“They believe that regional stability depends on a secular, non-Muslim and, to some extent, internally repressive, authoritarian regime,” he said.
Beijing also faces deep-seated fears among Central Asians that China could use its large population and immigration to overwhelm the sparsely populated region, said William Fierman, a professor emeritus of Central Asian studies at Indiana University. Soviet authorities have stoked such suspicions for decades, he said, and even younger generations who did not grow up under Soviet rule seem to share the same concerns.
The most talked-about topic in Astana is likely to be the war in Ukraine, which few experts expect will be widely discussed in a forum dominated by Beijing, given its indirect support for Russia’s war effort.
Xi will also use the visit to promote his vision for better transport links in the region, said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. After the summit, Xi will pay a state visit to Tajikistan, where the U.S. State Department recently estimated that more than 99% of foreign investment comes from China.
Many of China’s investments in Central Asia are focused on infrastructure. Last month, China reached an agreement with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to build a new railway across the two countries. The railway will provide a shortcut for China’s overland trade with Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and to the Middle East and Europe. China has tried Over the past 12 years Expanding rail transport within Russia to transport its exports to Europe, but now wants to add a southern route.
“From a long-term strategic perspective, this railway is very important,” said Niva Yau, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group that specializes in China’s relations with Central Asia.
Suhasini Raj and Li You Contributed reporting and research.
