China
deepens Central Asia role By
Zabikhulla S Saipov
Recent Chinese
diplomatic maneuvers in Central Asia, both
bilateral and multilateral, show that Beijing's
strategy treats the region as a corridor for
reaching resource bases in Afghanistan and the
Middle East. Central Asia is thus part of China's
broader blueprint of securing strategic resources
and supplies to feed its developing economy.
Illustratively, Chinese Vice Premier Hui
Liangyu's two-week official tour of Congo,
Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on September
1-13 supports the premise that Central Asia is to
have an important role in Beijing's energy
strategy.
While other global and regional
powers contemplated and sketched out on paper
their desired projects to slice up the Central
Asian hydrocarbon pie, China quietly has found common
language with the
regional leaders and has been connecting the
countries with oil and gas pipelines as well as
air and land routes. In particular, Beijing
succeeded in rapidly building and launching the
Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline and the
Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China gas
pipeline. In all of these projects, China achieved
its goals incrementally by inviting Uzbekistan
only after nearing completing of the construction
of its Central Asia-China gas pipeline, having
built the necessary infrastructure first in
Kazakhstan and then in Turkmenistan.
Beijing apparently is playing the same
shrewd strategy in Africa by visiting Congo and
Tanzania - the eastern and western coasts of
Central Africa - but not yet revealing its real
motives. In the future, the upgraded
infrastructure at these two end points probably
will be connected with the African countries
located in between.
By intensifying trade
and economic relations with Central Asia, Beijing
intends to develop its own periphery - its western
provinces including Xinjiang - and extend and tie
them to the wider region's economies. In this
respect, Chinese media reported that Xinjiang is
expected to become China's main logistics and
information hub for rendering services to Central
Asia.
That Xinjiang is located at the
heart of Eurasia, borders eight countries and has
17 official border crossings implies China's
desire to further boost this province's external
trade relations.
On September 2, Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao, while inaugurating the second
annual China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi, called on
Chinese businesses to intensify investment into
Eurasian countries and study the possibility of
creating new platforms for economic relations -
the China - Central Asia Economic Cooperation Fund
and the Fund on Agricultural Cooperation.
In 2011, according to Chinese Customs,
trade turnover between China and the five central
Asian countries reached US$16.98 billion. However,
Chinese exports to the region totaled $12.49
billion and imports to Xinjiang equaled $4.49
billion. In addition to serving direct air flights
between the regional countries' capitals,
Xinjiang-based Chinese Southern Airlines also
opened several routes to and from Urumqi, covering
all the Central Asian republics.
At
present, Beijing is keenly interested in a speedy
construction of a railroad to connect China,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Thus, in Kyrgyzstan,
Vice Premier Hui met President Almazbek Atambayev,
and both sides underlined the strategic importance
of building the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan
railroad as well as renovating the
Bishkek-Naryn-Torugart and Osh-Irkeshtam-Sarytash
highways.
The last stop in Hui's tour was
Uzbekistan. On the day of the Chinese official's
visit, President Islam Karimov signed into law "On
Ratification of the Treaty on Long-Term
Neighborhood, Friendship and Cooperation of the
SCO countries". Both sides also signed bilateral
agreements worth $535 million. Reportedly, from
August 2012, Uzbekistan also began supplying China
with gas on a regular basis, and supply volumes
may reach up to 4 - 5 billion cubic meters (bcm)
by the end of 2012. By 2016, the volumes of
Chinese-bound gas are planned to reach no less
than 25 bcm annually.
Trade and economic
relations between China and Uzbekistan is shifting
from a people-to-people to a state-to-state level.
During President Karimov's last visit to China on
the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization summit in June 2012, Uzbekistan and
China reached over 30 trade, economic, investment
and financial agreements worth $5.3 billion. They
cover the hydrocarbon industry, cotton, uranium,
gas, rare metals, and the production of chemical
products, electronics, IT, telecommunications,
pharmaceuticals and construction materials.
This breadth of agreements suggests China may
be aiming to balance its trade and economic
relations with Uzbekistan vis-a-vis Kazakhstan as
well as seeking to compete for power and regional
influence with Russia.
Yet, Chinese
interest in Central Asia is an extension of its
interests beyond this strategically located
region. Last fall, China won two major mineral
resource extraction contracts in Afghanistan.
These contracts play into the larger plans
assiduously pursued by Beijing to extensively
increase its presence throughout Central Asia and
access the region's strategic resources.
According to the US Geological Survey,
volumes of undiscovered, technically recoverable,
conventional petroleum resources for the Amu Darya
Basin and Afghan-Tajik Basin regions of
Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan were estimated at 962 million barrels
of crude oil and 52 trillion cubic feet of natural
gas.
In all countries mentioned above,
China mostly is focusing on infrastructure
building and natural resource extraction. While
Chinese investments in oil, gas, rail and road
infrastructure will certainly boost the economies
of the countries in the region and may raise their
international profile, the Central Asian republics
actually have few alternatives for raising their
socio-economic indicators besides accepting
Beijing's offers of knowledge and high tech
industry transfers.
In the short- and
medium-run, the countries of Central Asia will be
better off thanks to the enhancement of their
industries and level of their current
technological base. But by lending a helping hand,
Beijing is laying the foundation of its own
primacy in the region in order to meet its growing
energy demands for sustaining Chinese domestic
development.
With regard to the Central
Asian countries, China may until now have been
pursuing a strategy of appeasement and concession
toward all of them given their pivotal
geopolitical importance along the land routes
linking several regions and continents. Hence,
developing Central Asia and ensuring a Chinese
presence in this region will enable Beijing to
fulfill its wider desire to reach, exploit and
transport rich, far-off resources back to the
mainland.
Assuming China succeeds in fully
implementing its long-term projects for Central
Asia, the new, favorable status quo in the region
may eliminate barriers for Beijing to project its
power and widen its economic and politico-military
influence over attractive, adjacent regions to the
country's southwest.
At the same time,
China's partners in Central Asia will be able take
advantage of diversified export routes to world
energy markets, away from Russia and not dependent
on any single transit path. In return, however,
these Central Asian republics may increasingly be
expected to play the role of a strategic rearguard
and conduit for China as Beijing acts on its
broader ambition of would-be global leadership.
Dr Zabikhulla S Saipov was
educated at the School of International and Public
Affairs, Columbia University. Currently he is a
lecturer and foreign and domestic policy analyst
at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy
as well as the Management Development Institute of
Singapore in Tashkent.
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