China’s commitment to Central Asia stems largely from its own national and international security concerns. Beijing has established a collective discourse on the common threats that China and Central Asia face, which it labels the ‘three evils’ (san gu shili): fundamentalism, extremism and secessionism.
The risks of radicalisation in Central Asia, both internally or externally from Afghanistan or the so-called Islamic State, are a major topic of discussion at bilateral and multilateral meetings in the region, particularly in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China has sought to define and impose a regional security framework through this organisation to ensure the sustainability of its economic involvement in the region. The framework has been officially endorsed by Central Asian governments.
Central Asia is unique to Beijing because of its perceived potential to impact China’s domestic security concerns. The sudden appearance on the international stage of the five new Central Asian states in 1991 reinforced Chinese concerns about the potential for separatist claims from ethnic Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region.
The Uyghur diaspora in Central Asia includes at least 300,000 people based mainly in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Although Beijing viewed Central Asia’s contiguity with the Uyghur world as a potential positive that could assist economic interconnections between Xinjiang and Central Asia in the 1990s, China has progressively marginalised the Uyghurs since the 2000s due to domestic political concerns.
The second pillar of China’s commitment to Central Asia is economic. China hopes to consolidate its geopolitical influence in Central Asia by creating robust economic relations with the Central Asian states and contributing to regional development in order to avoid the risk of political and social destabilisation.
China is also concerned with securing continental energy supplies that are not subject to global geopolitical complications, especially those in the Straits of Malacca. Central Asia offers a partial solution to this concern: Kazakhstan has emerged as an exporter of oil and uranium, and Turkmenistan as an exporter of gas.
Beijing also sees Central Asia as a key engine for the economic development and future stabilisation of Xinjiang. China’s ‘Far West Development Program’ has indeed helped to transform Xinjiang into a place of major subsoil resource exploitation.
For almost 30 years, Beijing’s policies towards Central Asia have aimed at pragmatism. China has put aside its Maoist era aims to export communist ideology and instead pursues a policy designed to guarantee the political and economic stability of its regional environment.
To that end, China’s border disputes with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been settled, and Uyghur dissidence muzzled. Local political regimes have successfully been won over by Chinese narratives about the fight against the ‘three evils’, the unity of China and Taiwan, and the perils of Western interference.
Chinese authorities have no interest in highlighting too visibly their pressure on Central Asia. They prefer to portray it as a partnership. For this reason, Beijing supports Russian strategic presence in Central Asia and willingly plays ‘second fiddle’ to Moscow on security issues, while seeking to dominate in the economic sphere instead.
But China’s trade relations with Central Asia should not be overestimated either. In 2017, Central Asia represented only 0.5 per cent of China’s foreign trade and the region will not replace the Middle East in terms of hydrocarbon supplies.
China perceives Central Asia as not only a part of the post-Soviet world but also a part of West Asia. This perception has become increasingly important for the making of Chinese trade policy.
China’s positive reappraisal of continental routes in preference to maritime routes must be understood as part of a long-term historical evolution: China’s historical concentration on the development of its maritime facade dates back to its confrontation with Europe during the 19th century.
Today, China’s ruling elite believes that domestic unity and stability will only come through a rebalancing in favour of continental routes. And it is increasingly looking to do so through building a partnership with the Middle East. To that end, the Central Asian states provide new markets for Chinese products — markets that open the door to Iran, Turkey and further west.
Finally, China’s key foreign policy strategies are driven by factors far removed from Central Asia: they favour the stability of relations with the United States, the improvement of relations with Japan and India, and the development of a partnership with the European Union. Within this wider foreign policy dynamic, establishing relations with China’s post-Soviet neighbours occupies a relatively minor place.
Paradoxically, Central Asia is bound to remain marginal to the preoccupations of Chinese foreign policy as a whole, but fundamental for China’s domestic stability and the future development of its global economic policy.
Sebastien Peyrouse is Research Professor in the Central Asia Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.