It’s not obvious, but when it comes to managing ties with China, countries in Central Asia and Africa have a lot more in common with one another than many would first assume.
Both are among China’s smallest trading partners that rely primarily on oil and other commodity exports. Countries in both regions have taken on quite a bit of Chinese debt to build infrastructure and both areas have complex civil society ties with China. And both Africa and Central are now important outposts along China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Nargis Kassenova is a leading China-Central Asia expert at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. She joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the current dynamics surrounding China’s engagement in the region and what lessons can be applied to countries in Africa and beyond.
Show Notes:
- Global Voices: What a Kyrgyzstan oil refinery reveals about China’s Belt and Road Initiative by Aizat Shailoobek Kyzy
- The Diplomat: China’s Central Asian Rail Investment Does Not Add Up by Tristan Kenderdine and Péter Bucsky
- South China Morning Post: China looks to Central Asia on security to create ‘safe Silk Road’ by Rachel Zhang
About Nargis Kassenova:
Nargis Kassenova is an Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies, Director of Central Asian Studies Center (CASC) and China and Central Asia Studies Center (CCASC) of KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan). She holds a PhD in International Cooperation Studies from Nagoya University (Japan). She is a member of the Advisory group of the EU Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), member of the Academic Council of the European Neighbourhood Council (ENC), member of the Advisory Board of SenECA (Strengthening and Energizing EU-Central Asia Relations) project, and of the Advisory Board of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) Eurasia Program, and Senior Fellow with the Program on Central Asia.
Transcript:
Intro: The China in Africa podcast is brought to you in partnership with the Africa China Reporting Project at Wits University in Johannesburg. The ACRP aims to improve the quality of reporting on Africa-China relations through reporting grants, workshops, and other opportunities for journalists. More information at africachinareporting.co.za, and our dedicated training website at africachinatraining.com.
Eric: Hello, and welcome to another edition of The China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Network from SupChina. I’m Eric Olander, and as always, I’m joined by Cobus van Staden, the senior China Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Cobus van Staden: Good afternoon.
Eric: Cobus, a couple of months ago, you wrote a very compelling column about why it’s important to look beyond Africa when studying the China-Africa relationship. Now, that may sound rather counterintuitive, but you simply cannot understand what the Chinese are doing in a place like Africa if you’re only focusing on Africa because so many of the issues now that are impacting the China-Africa relation are, let’s say debt, vaccines, COVID, obviously, U.S.-China, great power struggle issues. These are all transnational issues now. And so, if just by looking at one region without looking at what the Chinese are doing in, say, South America, south Asia, central Asia, and other parts of the global south, well, you don’t have that critical piece of context. And I thought that was such a great essay that you wrote on that and really framed it well for me. And since then, well, one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve tried to take the show to some of these other parts of the world.
Eric: We’ve had a number of shows about the Caribbean, about South America. We did Sebastian Strangio who talked to us about what’s going on here in ASEAN, in Southeast Asia. And today we’re going to be going to Central Asia. This is the first time in the 10-plus years of the podcast that we’ve talked about Central Asia, but it’s becoming an increasingly important part of the world. And there’s a lot there that does directly impact Africa. But let’s start with the definition of what is Central Asia, simply because this is a part of the world that a lot of people don’t know that much about. For our purposes today, we’re going to be talking about five countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Now, this is the region of the world, if you’re not familiar with it, that’s sandwiched in between Russia to the west, China to the east, and then you’ve got India to the south.
So, it is sandwiched right in there, and it counts for about 1% of China’s total trade balance, so about the size of what Africa does in terms of trade. Not too much. It’s also the most important trading partner for that region. Again, a profile very similar to Africa. Now there’s a very important regional group that includes all five central Asian countries, plus Russia that make up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the SCO. This is actually one of the more important groupings that you start to hear the Chinese talking about a lot more these day, and in part because the Chinese are leaning into these groups like the SCO a lot more as they face more pressure from the United States, Europe, Japan, and other parts of the world. Now, why is Central Asia so important? It’s a key artery for the Belt & Road Initiative.
Consider for a fact that the China-Europe railway now runs right through Kazakhstan on its way to Poland and then onto Germany. That’s a 15 day, 8,000-kilometer journey. But the reason why that’s so important is because there’s more overland shipment, in part because of the Straits of Malacca problem. One of the things that the Chinese are trying to do is to secure more energy supplies overland from Russia and Central Asia so that they don’t have to depend on oil coming through the Straits of Malacca in Southeast Asia, which is one of the key choke points that the United States could cut off in the event of a conflict. And that’s why those oil lanes are very important. Gas and oil coming from Russia, but as well also coming through Kazakhstan as well.
Now, strategically, the region, super important, but demographically not so much. Altogether, five central Asian countries have a population of just 75 million people, which is, for our purposes, a lot smaller than just the country of Ethiopia, which is I think at 110, 120 million people. So, five countries, 75 million people, not a big market for Chinese products. But this is really not about selling stuff to those central Asian markets, but more about extracting natural resources out, and again, the strategic location. But because this is an old Silk Road trading routes, people coming up from India, again, the Chinese, Russians, everybody kind of meeting in this area, the mix of people is very, very dynamic.
And one of the groups of people that we’ve been talking about quite a bit on the show over the past few months are the Uyghurs. And the Uyghurs, obviously, is a very contentious issue in China, but it’s also, there’s a population that exists across the borders in both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Now again, the Uyghur issue is very, very complicated. We’re going to get into it a little bit today, but one of the reasons why there is a connection to Africa, in part because of these votes at the United Nations Human Rights Commission, at the United Nations General Assembly, and all these different votes on human rights issues related to the Uyghurs. Who are the Uyghurs? We’re going to find out a little bit more about that.
Cobus, wow, a lot going on. There’s a lot of intersections here. And again, it’s just one of these parts of the world that I think if we study a little bit, we can draw some interesting lessons that might apply for other parts of the world as to what China’s doing.
Cobus: Yes. It’s very interesting because in certain ways, in structural ways and also in terms of their position in supply chains, some central Asian countries and African countries are in a very similar position in relation to China. For example, China buys uranium from Kazakhstan and also from Namibia. But in other ways, their experience is really different. And the most important one being that they have such a long history of being right up against China. And not only that, but also being in close proximity to Russia at the same time. So, I think there’s very interesting kind of parallels to be drawn and then also interesting contrast to be drawn. Also in terms of the kind of level of autonomy a lot of African countries feel in relation to China because China is physically so far away.
Eric: I’ve been looking forward to this discussion for quite some time and the opportunity to speak with our guests today. Nargis Kassenova, who’s a senior fellow on Central Asia at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard University. She’s also an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. A very good morning to you, Nargis. Thank you so much for joining us.
Nargis Kassenova: Thank you so much, Eric. It is a great honor to be with you and Cobus on this podcast. I love your podcast. And I have to say I learn a lot from it too. It helps me to look at Chinese activities in Central Asia a different way. Thank you so much. And thank you for the excellent introduction of Central Asia.
Eric: I’ll be honest with you, this is a part of the world that I don’t know that much about. It’s not an area that I’ve studied much. I know it only because it’s part of the broader international relations discussions that when you study China in your master’s programs and your undergraduate degrees, you have to then cover Central Asia, but you don’t go into it too much detail unless you specialize into it. So, let’s start with maybe you picking up on the overview that I gave and take us into a little bit more detail about who is in the region, what are the countries, and what are the dynamics there with China?
Nargis: Actually, there are two central Asias. Yes, there is central Asia that you mentioned, which is a very complex region composed of five former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. And a few people knew about them until they appeared on the political map of the world as a result of the collapse of the USSI in 1991. And actually, I have to say that still few people don’t know about them these days. And there is also a broader central Asia. If we use criteria such as language culture, shared history, then it’s an area populated by Turkic-Persian-speaking people. And we can expand the borders to include northern Afghanistan and also Xinjiang. At a certain point of history, 18th, 19th century, this broader central Asia was divided into a Russia control part and China control part, and there was also the third contestant in this great game of imperial expansion, Britain.
But as we know, Britain could not gain control over Afghanistan, although it tried. In the 20th century, Russia and China had their ups and downs. And when they had their downs, the control from metropole would weaken in the region and would be strongly contested by locals seeking autonomy and independence. Nowadays, former Russia-controlled part is that complex central Asia that we will be discussing today. And the Chinese part or Eastern Turkistan is giving trouble to Beijing, or maybe it would be more accurate actually to say that Beijing is giving trouble to the people of the region.
Cobus: Well, I wonder if you could talk a little bit, you mentioned the kind of ups and downs between Russia and China. I wonder if you could lay out a little bit where the relationship is sitting at the moment and how that is impacting on the region.
Nargis: Well, it is a complicated relationship because on the surface, if you look at the rhetoric, these are strategic partners that are trying to counterbalance the collective West. But there is not much trust with each other and it’s not a full-fledged alliance for sure. So, they are suspicious of each other’s intentions. And it’s understandable because these are the two Eurasian giants and there has been, historically, there has been this competitive dynamics between them that we saw in Central Asia and what both of them had been doing in Central Asia to the competition, and so on. Traditionally, as already mentioned, this compact central, for instance, it was controlled by Russia.
But since the collapse, relations with China have been developing, and China’s presence has been growing. And in a way, what we saw was the emergence of a Russia-China condominium in a way formalized as Shanghai Corporation Organization. That’s the region where two powers coexist. And there is a bit of a distribution of labor with Russia being stronger in the security department and China stronger in the economic development department. Although these lines have been blurring over the past several years with Chinese activities in the security sector becoming more prominent. There is this coexistence and latent competition in the region with Russia trying to integrate the region better, link it more to itself through various projects like Collective Security Treaty, the Organization modeled after NATO, and the Eurasian Economic Union, modeled after the EU, much less successful than these two Western organizations, obviously.
But Russia has been trying to tie back the region to itself. And China is competitive now because China is this dynamic economy with much deeper pockets than Russia. China can offer more to the countries of the region and help them develop, and so on and so forth. And also now it is providing the security assistance as well. So, Russia is not happy about it, but at the same time, there isn’t much it can do about it at the moment apart from, maybe it’s a strong word, slightly sabotaging the bigger projects, the connectivity projects such as Western-China, Western-Europe Highway, where China built its part of the role, Kazakhstan built its part of the role, and Russia is still building it’s part of the role, despite all this talk on the linkages of the integration projects of the BRI and Eurasian Economic Union.
So, it is sort of this kind of soft competition in the region. And there isn’t much Russia can do. A lot of it has to do with Russia’s very bad relations with the West. So, it’s sort of put itself in the corner where it has to maintain this good relations with China and pretty much except what comes its way.
Eric: So, Russia needs China more than China needs Russia in that sense.
Nargis: Well, they both need each other, but China has much stronger currency at the moment.
Eric: So, on the surface, as you pointed out, there is this happy-go-lucky feel. So, we have the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and then we also have this group called the Cplus5, C+C5, there we go. And that’s China plus the central Asian five. And Wang Yi just held a meeting with them, and again, everybody looks happy. How do the central Asian five countries really feel about China?
Nargis: Well, it is a mix. These are mixed feelings because, on the one hand, China provides this great opportunities that nobody else provides. China brings investments. It brings technologies. It gives loans for various projects. But on the other hand, it’s this huge country next door. And we had complex relations before and we had territorial disputes fairly recently. And there are still suspicions that they are not fully settled. Although, formally, they are settled. In the 1990s, China and three central Asian states, with which it had territorial disputes, held negotiations. These negotiations were very successful to the extent that the process later resulted in the formation of the Shanghai Corporation Organization. But anyhow, this very serious issue was resolved despite this big imbalance of power, right?
Here, you had, on one side, huge China with a big army, with nuclear weapons, with this and that. And on the other side of the negotiations, you had this three newly independent, super fragile states of Central Asia. But China wanted to have good relations with the neighbors in the, as we know, in the ’90s. there were all this very successful territorial dispute negotiations with neighbors that China undertook. And it wanted a safe neighborhood for its problematic Xinjiang province. And this resulted in the resolution of these territorial disputes. But suspicions remained at the level of public. There is a feeling that maybe we gave away too much land and there was a betrayal by the governments, and also the Chinese side, the Chinese government, with the rise of nationalism, might reconsider and return to the issue.
There are more rational fears that, okay, it is a giant economy and it’s hard to develop. On the one hand, it’s easier to develop next to it. On the other hand, it can be more challenging to industrialize next to China. And you mentioned the small population. There is a kind of a fear that there will be this massive migration of Chinese who are lacking land to Central Asia, having so much land. There is a bunch of fears and concerns like this ranging from rational, kind of rational concerns about this growing dependence of the countries of the region on China which reduces the room for maneuver and to very irrational ones.
Cobus: You mentioned this struggle to industrialize. And we see similar struggles in Africa, and with it, all of these discussions about different strategies to try and force China and other external partners to do more of the refining of the resources that it buys from Africa, within Africa. There’s been a lot of pressure from the Democratic Republic of Congo around that, for example. Do you see similar kind of pressures in mineral-rich areas in Central Asia as well?
Nargis: Oh yes, yes. Very similar. And it seems to me, Cobus, we have the same timeline in a way because well, we are resource rich-countries and Chinese companies started with these active investments and explorations, I would say in the second half of the ’90s. If we look at Central Asia, that’s when CNPC came and acquired some major assets in the energy sector. Well, the mining companies came and then you have this boost with the go out and policy. Then the financial crisis and China’s investing in other areas, in supporting its companies in other areas of the world and also providing credits. I want to say that it seems to me that the timeline is the same and the dynamics is quite similar. Yes, it started from buying these natural resources, developing natural resources, and gradually, the emphasis, more emphasis was put on investments in refining capacities, in processing. And now we are at the stage where there are more investments, we see more and more investments in the manufacturing sector. That we see particularly in the countries where governments can push for these kind of developments. Yeah, so Kazakhstan has more capacity to do this, to steer its own developments because it is richer, it can co-invest. It has more knowledge, more capacity in general. Uzbekistan is also quite good in this regard. It’s more difficult to do for poorer countries.
Eric: Well, let’s pick up on that issue that Cobus raised in terms of the level of engagement. And I want to kind of focus on debt, and there’s been a lot of infrastructure development, much like in Africa, but also in Central Asia. And they’ve loaded up on Chinese levels of debt that in many ways are not proving to be as viable as they may have hoped five or 10 years ago when they first took on these loans to build this infrastructure — railways, dry ports, all of these different logistics, connectivity types of buildings. What is the debt situation as it stands today in the C5?
Nargis: Well, two countries of Central Asia are heavily indebted to China, and actually to one policy bank, to Exim Bank. That’s Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These are the smaller, poor economies of Central Asia that were not terribly attractive to foreign investors. So, they wanted to pursue these infrastructure projects. They borrowed the money, it’s $7 billion 5, in that range dollars. And they thought that they were on track with returning them, but then the pandemic kicked in and the had to ask China to reschedule the debt service. They are at risk, definitely. In a sense, they’ve the reached the limit of what they can borrow and what China would be ready to keep them, I would think. The others are in a better shape. Kazakhstan has been … Well, it is a bigger economy and it has a diverse portfolio of debt. And the percentage is low of Chinese debt as a percentage of the public debt.
Uzbekistan now, it started from low numbers, but with the opening up that took place, opening up of the economy that took place with the political transition, well, the first president, Islam Karimov died, and now we have Shavkat Mirziyoyev since 2016. And they started working much more with China and they started borrowing actively from China. But what I want to emphasize is that both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan try to have a diversified portfolio and also to co-fund biggest projects. So, for example, you mentioned dry port, there is this, I guess most well-known dry port project in Central Asia, Khorgos, on the Kazakhstan-China border. And it is a joint project.
Eric: But it’s not doing very well, though, correct? Is that my understanding?
Nargis: Yes. But I think the expectations were too high. But it’s working. And actually, if you look at the kind of railway, the transit of commodity by rail, during the pandemic, it went up because of the disruptions of shipping by sea. So, yes and no. The trade by trucks actually got disrupted, but by rail, it’s not doing badly. Actually, the volumes went up.
Cobus: If I remember correctly, the Silk Road E economic Belt was originally announced in Kazakhstan, right?
Nargis: Yes.
Eric: In 2013. That’s right.
Cobus: So, they really are at the heart of the BRI in that sense. How enthusiastic are these countries about the BRI?
Nargis: Oh, very enthusiastic. And actually, before I go into BRI, I forgot to mention Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan brought a lot of money from China to build a number of things, but, also to build the pipeline, the gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan fields with China via some central Asian states. And it was reported that it paid off the debt. So, that’s a closed chapter. On BRI, yes. The BRI, well, at the, at the time it wasn’t BRI, right? It was Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative. It was announced in the capital of Kazakhstan in September 2013. And that was not by accident, obviously, because Central Asia is key for building this Eurasia, land corridors. And there was a lot of enthusiasm. And there’s still a lot of enthusiasm in Central Asia about the initiative because it is seen as our first giving opportunities for economic development so that we see that China is ready to invest, China is ready to cooperate, China is ready to foster connectivity that we need badly.
Central Asia is… It is central, and that that’s a problem in a way because it is landlocked. Uzbekistan is double landlocked. It’s not well connected to other markets. So yeah, China is a big partner our goals coincide. Yeah, they’re very compatible. That’s why central Asian, if you look at the national development strategies of central Asian states, and you can see that the main items, they are similar. They are pretty much the same with what China is trying to do with it with the BRI. And also, the participation in the BRI gives certain status. We go to this BRI forum in Beijing. So, we participate in important international events and this kind of role in international affairs is something that is quite attractive for Central Asian government because we are, I don’t know, a mall ruling independent states.
Eric: So, the G-7 recently came out with an announcement to launch a new infrastructure development initiative that nominally is intended to compete directly against the Belt and Road Initiative. It’s called the Build Back Better World Initiative. And again, it’s a whole lot of nothing right now. There’s no plan, there’s no money, there’s no timeline, but it’s an idea. And part of the offer is that they’re going to provide a more transparent, more economically sustainable, more ecologically sustainable alternative to building infrastructure. Do you get the sense that there’s a demand in Central Asia for what the G-7 is offering? Or are they satisfied with their engagement with the Chinese on infrastructure?
Nargis: Well, we are watching these developments. We’ve been watching for some time because it’s not something new, right? The European Union came up with its own Sustainable Connectivity Strategy in 2018. Then next year there was the Youth Strategy for Central Asia where this kind of Sustainable Connectivity was announced as a priority for cooperation. It’s short on details, right? And from the U.S., we hear similar rhetoric that we need to invest in quality infrastructure, and they’re ready to provide assistance. We’re waiting. We’re waiting for what exactly they will be doing, how many resources will be allocated. For Central Asia, overall, it’s good.
The more interest in the region, kind of among all these regions where this competition of infrastructure projects will be taking place, the better. Because what we are afraid of is that nobody will be interested in us, right? Or this interest will be episodic and very niche, just to take out some natural resources from the region. If others are ready to invest in the development of the region, that’s a good thing. And overall, central Asian governments will pride themselves on knowing how to play the great game, how to benefit from the competition of great powers. Probably we overestimate our capacity to do that. So far, it has been welcomed.
Eric: But you do have a lot of experience, though. You have a lot of experience playing that game.
Nargis: Yes, exactly.
Eric: I mean much more so than other countries. I often think of it a lot like here in Vietnam, Vietnam, like Central Asia, is a crossroad country. So, Vietnam is sandwiched in between China and India. And the European powers came here, the Americans came here, and the Japanese came here at one point. And so it’s this crossroad type of country. So, the great powers have been passing through here, and much the same way in Central Asia as well. And as a result of that historical experience in this new era of great power competition between the United States and China, and then Russia also thrown into that mix as well, it would strike me that central Asian countries would have an instinct to be able to navigate this more than other countries that may not have had the same experience in the past.
Nargis: Yes, the experience helps, and this kind of approach helps. Yeah, knowing that you need to balance the interests of external powers, but at the same time, it is a tricky game. Yeah. And it’ll depend, what form this competition will take and contentious it’ll be. So, we’ll see because already there is some discomfort created by it when Pompeo came to the region and started criticizing China heavily for what it’s doing in Xinjiang, but using Central Asia as a platform. That created some unhappiness among the governments of the region. So, let’s see how it’ll unfold. Because if it’s a softer competition, then I think the region can benefit greatly. But if there will be animosity and kind the external powers will start pushing the countries of the region to choose, yeah, that will be difficult. That’ll be difficult.
Eric: Let’s talk about the Uyghurs because this is obviously a very pertinent issue here. There was a lot of surprise in the United States a couple of weeks ago, and we featured this on our previous show with Shannon Tiezzi, where we ran a soundbite from Jonathan Swan, an Axios reporter who was interviewing Imran Khan. And he asked Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, said, “How is it that you are always outraged by the U.S. and European mistreatment of Muslims, but yet in China, just across the border where Pakistanis have relatives who are in the Uyghur internment camps, and yet you don’t say anything.” And there was this kind of incredulity in Washington policy circles of what is going on? How is this possible? In part because Xinjiang and Uyghurs have taken on such importance in the debate today about U.S.-China relations and human rights and whatnot. You mentioned at the beginning of the show, there are large Turkic populations, Uyghur populations in both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan across the border.
How do they deal and feel about the Uyghur issue and the well-documented instances of human rights violations in China within the Uyghur population?
Nargis: Actually, it’s not Tajikistan. The biggest Uyghur community is in Kazakhstan, and there are communities in…
Eric: Kazakhstan, yeah.
Nargis: Yes, in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Eric: So, spread throughout the region, really, more or less, along the borders.
Nargis: Yes. The biggest groups, communities are in Kazakhstan. But it’s not the Uyghurs and mistreatment of Uyghurs that is an issue. It is exactly what we said, these are our co-ethnic, Kazakh is being mistreated in Xinjiang because Uyghurs, they had been mistreated for the longest time. And the second half of the ’90s, the Strike Hard campaign started. And central Asian governments, they have been complicit in it, and the crackdown on Uyghur activism in the, in the region. Although, I wouldn’t say that there were discriminations against the Uyghurs. Overall, it was fine. It’s just that they didn’t want them to create these activists, create troubles in their relations with China. But when over the past several years, these suppressive policies spread to Kazakh and Kyrgyz, and that became an issue. That became a domestic issue, really an issue in domestic politics in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Eric: Now, it’s a civil society point of tension. Is it also a governmental point of tension between the C5 countries and China? Obviously, people on the ground who’ve got relatives who are being detained or abused, they’re pissed off. But what about at the governmental level?
Nargis: Yes, it’s both. It’s both, obviously. So, the public is unhappy with the situation. They’re putting pressure on the government. So, there were requests in parliament of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to look into the situation and to report. And the government has been trying to do, well, I’m talking about the government of Kazakhstan, they have been trying to have consultations with the Chinese side quietly behind closed doors. And there have been some results. I think it was 2019 when the return of 2,000 ethnic Kazakh from Xinjiang was negotiated by ministry of foreign affairs. Yeah, they’re in a difficult situation, the governments are in a difficult situation, particularly the government of Kazakhstan because it’s part of our foreign policy to support Kazakhs in other countries, in other parts of the world.
But on the other hand, they don’t want to anger China. So, it’s not a human rights issues. It’s more nationalist issue.
Eric: More geopolitical.
Nargis: With the support of their Kazakh ethics. Yeah, because we are not, human rights champions, obviously in Central Asia. For some people, the small civil societies that we have, it is a human rights issue. They are concerned. Overall, irrespective of what ethnic groups have been affected. But overall, it’s more caring about ethnic Kazakhs. And also there is this thing that, okay, Muslims are being repressed.
Cobus: So, during the time that we saw this very sharp increase in pressure coming from the U.S. about the Uyghur issue, you spent a lot of time in the U.S., so I was wondering, coming from a Kazakh background and then having spent obviously a lot of your life there, and then now spending a lot of time in the U.S., what was it like for you to see the rise of this issue kind of to the mainstream in the U.S., and what do you feel the U.S. debate is getting wrong and right about the situation there?
Nargis: I’m glad it became a big issue because it’s horrendous what’s happening in the region. I probably should mention that I’m partially Uyghur. My mother’s Uyghur and she was born in Xinjiang. So, they migrated before the Cultural Revolution in 1961, I think they migrated. We have relatives who have been affected by these policies. And so, probably I know more about it and care more about it than an average citizen. Well, so I’m glad it became such a big issue internationally, and I think Russia should be too, but I don’t know how effective it can be. My sense is that the Chinese government made an existential mistake in Xinjiang, pumping up the repressions to this level, and will be difficult to unwind it.
Eric: Yeah. A lot of people have said that there’s no way for them to back down. And what they’re doing is they’re also radicalizing large segments of the Muslim population within China who are not necessarily Uyghurs as well. But there’s no way out because they’re too far into it right now, and any backing down would make, in the eyes of maybe Xi Jinping, look weak or look like he’s making concessions, so where do they go? And I think that’s a very interesting point that’s been brought up many times.
Nargis: Yes. And that affects the public opinion. In the early ’90s, I remember kind of China was seen as developing state producing more terribly high-quality goods. And then it has grown in gravitas, right? It became a much more important international player, and it started producing this higher quality good. So, it became this powerhouse, and the image of China in the eyes of Central Asians improved. But this issue, this Xinjiang issue definitely made a very big dent. Overall, I didn’t mention the xenophobia in the region. No, actually, I did mention, right? At the beginning, there are these fears of China concerns about what the implications of this growing dependence are. People are worried. And the image of China has been improving, and now it wasn’t again. It wasn’t again, and it does affect the overall cooperation. That’s one issue. Overall, if you look at the BRI, how much success it can happen, there are two main impediments. The first one is the public opinion and the fear of China that results in blocking some projects, and develops that will be favorable, for example, like the new land legislation in Kazakhstan that, in the end, didn’t take place because of the land protests linked to the fear of China and Chinese companies. And the second impediment is the problematic business environment in the region.
Eric: Let’s wrap up our discussion. Just looking ahead, is the region going to become more important to China going forward, especially in this new era of great power competition? Or is the BRI allowing it to source a lot of the raw materials that it used to get out of Central Asia from other parts of the world, and that it doesn’t need Central Asia quite as much? Which direction is Central Asia going in terms of the priorities for the Chinese?
Nargis: I think the importance of Central Asia for, the prime importance of Central Asia for China is linked to the fact that it’s the neighborhood of Xinjiang. And the second is the trade and the markets and the resources. And the third being that it’s the land that is on the way to Europe, to West Asia. Yeah, so these are the three kind of interests. And I think they will stay. Definitely, Xinjiang will continue to be an issue and that’s why the attention will be drawn to Central Asia. Well, China will be investing more and more in the security and stability of the region. We see it now. And it is part of the kind of this new periphery policy, yeah, China’s periphery policy strategy that we see unfolding. And with what’s going on in Afghanistan also, the attention will be on Central Asia.
The other projects will kind of… the natural resources will continue to be there. The gas from Central Asia is important. Metals from Central Asia are relatively important. I think that that will stay. There’s just too much compatibility there. We’re next door, it’s easy to bring these things to China. The infrastructure is already there. With the gas, the big question was whether these gas from Central Asia can be brought to the energy-thirsty eastern parts of China. They build this giant gas pipeline, so now it’s there, and it’ll stay there and will work. With this economic corridors, with the connectivity there, I think there are more questions to what extent, what’s envisioned, to what extent will work, but Central Asia-China connectivity will be there. Yeah, because I don’t see any other way.
Eric: What they say in real estate — location, location, location, geography is destiny right here. There is no getting away from the fact that they’re neighbors. Nargis Kassenova is a senior fellow on Central Asia at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies at Harvard University. She’s also an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Thank you so much for taking the time this morning to help introduce this part of the world to us and to the audience who, I’m sure, is very interested in it. And if they would like to find out more about what you’re reading and writing, you are on Twitter, what is your Twitter name that they can follow you?
Nargis: I think it’s Kassenova Nargis. It should be something like that.
Eric: Don’t worry about it.
Nargis: [laughing] But it’s my first name and last name. I should be easy to find.
Eric: I will put a link to it in the show notes. Easy to find. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes so that everybody can follow you. And thank you so much again for taking the time. We really appreciate it.
Nargis: Thank you so much, Eric and Cobus.
Eric: Cobus, we drifted very far away from our normal focus on China-Africa relations, but it is so important to understand what’s happening outside of the home region if you will. And I think this is a chronic problem when we look at China in Africa, China in South America, and China in all the different poles if you will. And if you’re not looking at them across and connecting the dots, you’re really missing something. And Central Asia is one of those regions that does not get enough attention. And I will admit, I don’t spend enough attention looking at it, but it is so absolutely fascinating, and I am so glad that we had Nargis on today to help explain some of these things. Because I think there’s a lot that African policymakers can learn from how countries who have been dealing with great power struggles, who’ve been dealing with the Chinese on so many different levels, not just in terms of infrastructure, trade investment, but also again, that very complex ethnic level, which is so fascinating.
Cobus: Yeah, it’s completely fascinating. And there are so many parallels to draw. For example, in reading for today I came across, because I don’t follow nuclear power very, very closely, so I was surprised to see how many new nuclear power stations the Chinese are building in relation because of their decarbonization goals. So, they’re building at least 17 new full-on nuclear power installations. And the two places they’re getting the most of their uranium from, as I briefly mentioned, is Kazakhstan and Namibia. It’s just a little detailed point to show how even though these countries are so different, they occupy a very similar kind of structural position in the world.
And for that reason, a lot of their preoccupation is also very similar. So, even though Kazakhstan has such a different relationship with just having China right across the border, and that’s obviously very different from Namibia, their preoccupations around how to sell their raw materials and their structural positioning as a seller of raw materials as that kind of economy unites them in really fundamental ways.
Eric: So, one of the points that she brought up is that there were disruptions in the sea lanes, and this, what she was referring to was the Suez Canal blockage that occurred earlier this year. And during that period, the overland rail routes from China into Europe saw an increase in business. And the Chinese went to great efforts to really promote their new railway as being more reliable, more dependable than the sea lanes going through the Suez Canal. They said, ‘If this happened once, it can happen again.’ And they’re really trying to promote these overland routes. That’s another area where you see central Asia, in some ways, competing directly with Africa. So, number one is on minerals, natural resources, Russian oil passing through these overland routes because the oil that comes from Africa has to pass, oftentimes, through very volatile sea lanes, whether it’s through the Suez Canal or, in other ways, around India and up through the Straits of Malacca.
And that again is a very important choke point that the Chinese are reluctant to rely on more. So, the more that they can shift overland, either through Pakistan overland and then into Western China or through Central Asia and oil from Russia and whatnot, is very important. So, there are going to be these areas of direct geopolitical competition in terms of transportation and access to vital strategic resources. I thought that’s so very interesting as well.
Cobus: Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think it’s also important to extend that kind of reasoning beyond the geopolitical side of it, to just also look at the kind of global logistics side of it. Because I thought a really crazy statistic where, and I’m now a little worried that I might be misquoting this, but as I remember it, someone was mentioning that the global shipping industry as roughly the same carbon footprint as South America.
Eric: Yeah, it’s enormous.
Cobus: Yeah. Just in terms of global carbon goals, for example, the overland train route between China and Europe is a game changer. It really has massive implications for just how we get stuff around in the 21st century without killing ourselves. We, speaking as the west coast of Canada and the U.S., are experiencing record heat waves, for example. In that sense, these countries are really key to how these problems are going to be solved in the future.
Eric: So, just the same way that we had Nargis on the show and we’ve talked to folks from different parts of the world, we’re incorporating this more and more into our coverage, and it’s one of the reasons why the name China Africa project is a little bit of a misnomer now because we are broadening out the focus to be much more about Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, really the global south, and even daily coverage of what’s going on in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. So, if you’re following China, you certainly want to follow what we are doing. You get our newsletter every day, we do about five to 10 stories a day. We’re doing daily columns and analysis. We have some new team members who are going to be joining us in the month of July and August. So, we’re super excited about that.
We’re going to tell you all about that coming up in a few weeks once everything is finalized. So, some really cool things that are coming out. Our new homepage is going to be launching in August, and on the new homepage we’re going to have Asia… It’s going to be, Asia, Americas, and Africa, and the Middle East. That’s going to be on the homepage, again, to reflect this broadening out of our focus so that you can understand not just what’s happening in one region, but the transnational issues as they’re happening throughout the global south. So, we’ll have more on all this cool stuff that we’re working on for the summer. But if you’d like to subscribe and get full access to everything we’re doing, go to chinaafricaproject.com/subscribe. Once again, that’s chinaafricaproject.com/subscribe. If you have any questions whatsoever, just email me directly, eric@chinaafricaproject.com, and I’ll be happy to answer all of your questions.
So, that’ll do it for this edition of the show. Cobus and I are going to take a little bit of a break next week for our summer holiday. It’s July 4th weekend in the United States. We do follow the U.S. holiday calendar, so we’re going to be back in two weeks with another edition of the show. Until then, thank you so much for listening. For Cobus van Staden, I’m Eric Olander, we’ll see you soon.
Outro: The discussion continues online. Head over to facebook.com/chinaafricaproject to share your thoughts on today’s show or follow the guys on Twitter — Eric’s @eolander and you can find Cobus @stadenesque. For more information about the China-Africa Project and to sign up for our free weekly email news brief, go to chinaafricaproject.com.
