CHINA IN CENTRAL ASIA
Abstract
For over a century, or over 130 years to be more exact, Central Asia remained part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union which replaced it and was treated by China as such. The sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union into independent states confronted Beijing with the need to deal with several of them in Central Asia, which required a new vector of its foreign policy.
The over 20-year-long history of China’s policy in Central Asia can be divided into three periods:
1. 1992-1995.
2. 1996-2001.
3. 2001—the present.
- At the first stage, in the early 1990s, Beijing took its time to acquire a clear idea about the new reality, establish and then develop diplomatic contacts, build up mutual confidence, create a base of treaties and other legal documents, and address the accumulated security-related problems.
- At the second stage, the mid- and late 1990s, 2000, and the larger part of 2001 (up to the 9/11 events), Central Asia acquired mechanisms and institutions of multisided cooperation (of which the People’s Republic of China was a part); China was expanding its economic presence in the region.
- At the third stage, which started on the tragic day of 9/11, China demonstrated inordinate activity and launched an “offensive” along all lines clearly determined to take a tighter grip on the region.
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Since 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established, three generations of leaders have replaced each other at the helm: the first generation is associated with Mao Zedong; the second with Deng Xiaoping; the third with Jiang Zemin. In 2002, the fourth generation of leaders headed by Hu Jintao came to power.
The Strategy rests on the following postulates: observe calmly; secure our positions; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership (see: P.B. Kamennov,Kitai v XXI v. Globalizatsia interesov bezopasnosti, ed. by G.I. Chufrin, Moscow, 2007, p. 54).
In the early post-Soviet years China needed normal relations with Russia to acquire a reliable “strategic rear” and to settle disputed, especially border, issues. Russia, in turn, needed stable and predictable relations with China (their com-mon border is nearly 4,300 km long). In many respects, it was “the sides’ constructive determination to cooperate that allowed Beijing and Moscow to settle the most painful issues of bilateral relations at the very beginning of the 1990s” G.I. Chufrin, Problemy bezopasnosti vo vneshnei politike Kitaia, Institute of World Economy and International Relations RAS, Moscow, 2005, pp. 148-149).
It was inertia rather than conscious choice; the situation in Russia was far from favorable.
M. Mamonov, “Strategia ‘profilaktiki opasnosti’ vo vneshney politike KNR,” Mezhdunarodnye protsessy (Russia),No. 3 (15), September-December 2007, available at [http://www.intertrends.ru/fifteen/003.htm].
Ibidem.
By the mid-1980s, it had become obvious that some of the regions were lagging behind in the social, economic, and political respects, which fanned separatism.
This transfer took several years to be prepared and accomplished. In 1998, Hu Jintao, who was 16 years younger than then leader Jiang Zemin, was moved to the second-important post of Deputy Chairman of the PRC. A year later he added the post of Deputy Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to his previous position; in November 2002, the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China elect-ed him General Secretary of the CPC instead of Jiang Zemin.
In 2006, Belarus’ request for observer status was declined as coming from a Non-Asian country. In June 2009, the Ekaterinburg SCO Summit granted, for the first time, a dialog partner status to Sri Lanka and Belarus.
In April 2009, the President of Kazakhstan’s visit to Beijing produced an agreement on a loan of $10 billion,$5 billion of which went to the oil and gas sector of Kazakhstan (to the leading oil and gas corporation KazMunayGaz,to be more exact). In June of the same year, China signed an agreement on an additional targeted loan to Turkmenistan of $3 billion to develop the country’s largest gas field Iuzhny Iolotan. In June 2009, at the Ekaterinburg SCO Summit, Chair-man Hu Jintao announced that his country had decided to extend the Central Asian SCO members an unprecedentedly large loan of $10 billion to support their national economies during the global financial and economic crisis.
It seems that the previous generations of Chinese politicians (Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin) were much more attentive to Russia’s interests than the fourth generation of leaders. The older generation acquired its political ideas before the 1960s when China and the Soviet Union were still allies. Their country was relatively weaker than the U.S.S.R. in the military and economic respect. The new political elite grew up during the period of cool (not to say antagonistic) relations with the Soviet Union. Their ideas about the world are free of any Russia-centrist component. Today, the Chinese economy-my is much stronger than the Russian, while in the military respect, China is not weaker than the Russian Federation.
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