China Teams up with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in Russia’s Backyard in Anti US Show

Xi Jinping talked of closer economic and security ties in a summit with the leaders of Central Asia’s five former Soviet states

Xi Jinping used a summit with the heads of five Central Asian nations to show off China’s growing stature in a region where Russia has long held sway, calling for deeper economic ties and warning against interference from outsiders, in an apparent warning to Washington.

“The world needs a prosperous Central Asia,” Xi said Friday, toward the end of a two-day summit in the Chinese city of Xi’an with counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—former Soviet republics with which Beijing has steadily cultivated ties since they became independent nations in the early 1990s.

The Chinese leader, who outlined plans to increase trade in the region while “resolutely opposing external forces interfering in our internal affairs,” spoke as Beijing deepens its diplomatic activity across Eurasia. This week, China sent a special envoy, Li Hui, to meet with officials in Kyiv, Warsaw, Paris, Berlin and Moscow, as part of Beijing’s first significant effort to push for a negotiated settlement to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

China’s Central Asia summit offered a contrast with the Group of Seven summit in Japan, where the U.S. and its allies are expected to discuss what critics call Beijing’s “economic coercion” of other countries. China this week described the U.S. as the world’s biggest culprit in using its economic strength to impose its will.

Xi has expanded China’s diplomacy in part to counter what he sees as U.S.-led efforts to isolate the country. Xi has made Central Asia a part of that push. Last year, for his first overseas trip after nearly three years at home throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Xi traveled to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. A decade ago, it was in Kazakhstan that Xi launched what became the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar global infrastructure development program.

This week’s summit was replete with symbolism pointing to longstanding economic ties between China and the region. The gathering was held in the western Chinese city of Xi’an, which was once China’s imperial capital and which has long been considered the eastern endpoint of the ancient Silk Road trade route.

While China’s combined annual trade with the five Central Asian countries is still small when compared with bilateral trade with China’s wealthier neighbors to the east, it climbed by 40% last year to $70.2 billion, according to statistics from China’s General Administration of Customs. China has looked to Central Asia for energy supplies and raw materials as it sells them manufactured goods, particularly electronics.

In addition to trade, Xi emphasized China’s security interests in the region, a nod to its long-term concerns about political instability and threats from extremism.

“Many think there’s a division of labor in Central Asia, and that Russia is responsible for security and China is responsible for the economy, but that’s not the truth,” said Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “In the ‘90s, China came to Central Asia with a priority interest in security.”

That interest has grown more apparent with the presence of Chinese border guards in Tajikistan and training exercises with other countries in the region.

To Russia, China’s rising ambitions in Central Asia aren’t necessarily a surprise, given the growing might of the world’s second-largest economy. In Moscow, “they’ve basically accepted there’s a level of competition they can’t offer,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Many of the Central Asian nations, in turn, “want to have other options…It’s interesting how much they are openly trying to court China.”

While China’s influence in the region has increased, Russia has by no means disappeared—and analysts have warned against seeing Beijing as trying to undermine Moscow. As Russia faces isolation and sanctions from the West over its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Kremlin has sought to deepen ties in Central Asia, which it has long regarded as being within its traditional sphere of influence.

Over the past year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has traveled to each of the five nations whose leaders came to China this week. Earlier this month, those same five Central Asian leaders traveled to Moscow for a Red Square parade marking the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

When Xi visited Moscow in March, the joint statement that the two men signed pledged to strengthen coordination in Central Asia to help countries “safeguard their sovereignty, ensure national development and oppose external forces.”

In a sign of ongoing high-level communication between Moscow and Beijing, the Kremlin said on Friday that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin will visit China May 23-24. He is expected to meet Xi and Li Qiang, China’s premier.

Umarov said that Beijing doesn’t want to create friction with Moscow in Central Asia because it cares more about its relations with Moscow than its priorities in Central Asia. “There is much more cooperation between Moscow and Beijing in Central Asia than we can imagine.”

There are limits to both countries’ influence in the region. None of the former Soviet states in Central Asia have endorsed Putin’s invasion. And suspicion of China has grown in some parts of the region.

Activists in Kazakhstan have protested against Chinese factories, agricultural projects and the detention of ethnic Kazakhs, Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in China’s tightening of control in the Xinjiang region.

The Kazakh government dropped plans to sell land to China in response to protests in 2016 and has silenced some activists critical of Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang. But it has moved ahead with growing ties, including an agreement for 30-day bilateral exemptions on visas for travel between the two countries, one of more than 20 agreements between the two countries signed this week.

Some infrastructure projects in the region are expected to receive boosts from this week’s summit in Xi’an, including a rail link linking China to Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan. The project, considered since the 1990s, has been long delayed over funding and other concerns. The Ukraine war helped revive interest in the connection as trade partners look for transit routes that bypass Russia and the risk of becoming entangled in Western sanctions.

Xi also called on Friday for the acceleration of another long-discussed project, a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan known as Line D, which would help meet China’s increasing energy demands along a shorter route than three existing pipelines from Turkmenistan.