“China is too powerful to seek Russia permission or inform Russia beforehand of its actions”, – an expert from the UK Bhavna Dave discusses the role of China in Central Asia in an interview, exclusively for CABAR.asia.
Dr. Bhavna Dave is Senior Lecturer in Politics of Central Asia at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on geopolitics of the Eurasian region, ethnic and language policies, and state-society relations across Central Asia and labour migration in Eurasia. She is interested in the current reconfiguration of relations between Russia and states in the Eurasian region.
She has held positions as Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) in Chiba, Japan, S. Rajaratnam Institute of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Watson Institute, Brown University. She has taught masterclasses and short courses in Russian at numerous universities across Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. She received her PhD from Syracuse University, New York.
CABAR.asia: How would you assess Chinese strategy in Central Asia it? And have China’s approaches to the region changed, especially since the war in Ukraine started?
Bhavna Dave: It’s a big and broad question.
First, China is continuously reassessing its role and its policies and strategy in the region. Thus, China is quite attuned to what’s happening, what the people think, what the governments do. While China continues to modify its strategy, it doesn’t mean that it makes significant changes, it only makes modifications, where, in terms of economic policies, where it suits China. But it doesn’t really make fundamental changes in its policies depending on what’s happening in the region.
China has already defined the broad objectives of its overall strategy toward Central Asia. These are: the principles of territorial sovereignty and non-interference and requiring the countries to pledge that they will support China in the fight against the three evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism and all that. So, security is a main objective.
And then China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, it’s not a strategy because it’s a continuingly evolving initiative, which means that China also is waiting for how these countries respond to its initiative and accordingly China will develop its policies. So, if Central Asian countries propose a project or ask for investments in something then China would provide the technology, the infrastructure, aid and certainly the loan, the investment or credit.
After the summit China-Central Asia, we observed plenty of discussions around possible competition between China and Russia in Central Asia and simultaneously around coordination on their policies in Central Asia. So, what is your opinion, do you think there’s a coordination? And, second question, is rivalry between these two actors possible in Central Asia?
Bhavna Dave: I think there is more coordination in their policies. But not knowing what the top leaders are talking about, and we do not have reliable information, so we are all trying to assess based on their public statements.
Putin is in a much weaker position vis a vis China. A country such as Russia that is used to being powerful cannot admit its weakness. I don’t think that Russia can easily accept the fact that it’s now the junior partner and ask China ‘What do you think? Should I do this? Do you think is a good idea?’ I think both Russia and China are carefully watching each other. And they’re trying not to step on each other’s toes and they’re trying not to say anything publicly about their differences., I think they’re just trying to be very careful and overtly very respectful of each other.
There is pressure on the government to regulate Russian media, but the government says that ‘it’s personal business of people what they want to watch’. They there are afraid, they don’t have the economic leverage, because Kazakhstani, Kyrgyzstani telecom companies are not competitive compared to Russian companies. Russia maintains its control still, through media, controls the informational space and is trying to influence through education. And given its hold over people’s mindset and thinking, it is not going to be easy for people to question Russia’s policies. I don’t think the Central Asian governments are in a position to directly do something to pass laws to control, to regulate Russian media.
Much attention is paid to China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project. In your opinion, which actors are really not interested in the implementation of this project and maybe could create some kind of impediments? And what are the chances of this project being implemented?
Bhavna Dave: All these countries are interested in infrastructures that suits their own needs, and that’s understandable. So why would Russia care about the China – Uzbekistan – Kyrgyzstan railroad? It will still irritate Russia that these things are happening. Because that means that Russia is less relevant.
This proposed railroad will create other roads and routes for the goods to pass through, which means less control of Russia. In the past, Russia was the main route for these countries to connect and to find other outlets. Russia doesn’t have money to spend, to develop its own necessary infrastructures to link the Russian far east and parts of Siberia with the rest of the country, there’s only 6 and a half million people living in the Russian far east and the neighbouring Heilongjiang province of China has about 35 million or so. China doesn’t have an interest in developing the infrastructure in the Russian Far East. Apart from getting irritated and not being very approving of what’s happening, there’s not much that Russia can do.
The challenge now for Russia is to also develop an infrastructure connecting eastern Ukraine to parts of Russia – if at all Russia were to make significant gains in this region. This is where Russia’s focus is at the moment – at the least, it needs to maintain the existing infrastructure.
What about Western countries? Can we imagine that European Union or some European countries can find common ground to cooperate with China, maybe even co-finance projects in Central Asia?
Bhavna Dave: The EU has already good ideas and very good policy statements that emphasise social development, human development, infrastructure, science, education, connectivity. They are careful about highlighting democracy, they don’t want to preach western democratic model, but they do emphasise democratic institutions and accountability. These are very good objectives, but the EU doesn’t have the corresponding budget and it is also very sensitive about promoting a political agenda. It does not want to do what the US was doing about democracy promotion, it does not want the governments of Central Asian states to suspect that the EU has some kind of political and ideological agenda.
The EU wants to act as a normative power, as a normative actor focusing on social, human development and science and education and overall cooperation. It has a limited budget. The Central Asian countries appreciate some engagement of the EU and they’d liked the EU to do more, but that’s not likely to happen. That budget is not certainly going to increase.
We asked several experts about their assessments of the Xi’an summit, and all of them, from all five Central Asian countries talked around the rising China’s role in regional security. So, what do you think on this? And what are maybe evaluations from Western countries regarding China’s rising role in regional security?
Bhavna Dave: So, China is very careful. If China has made this pledge to territorial integrity and sovereignty of these states and not interference in internal affairs, then China will not do anything that is directly in contradiction with these objectives. And also, from what we know, at least so far, China doesn’t send its military army in other countries. It’s the US which has its troops based abroad, it’s the US that has intervened in other countries. China has always made use of the argument to demonstrate that China does not intervene in other sovereign countries.
So, China doesn’t send its military troops. Talking of Central Asia, China recognizes that there is the CSTO, that if there is a military conflict, then it is Russia, as the key architect of CSTO, that will send troops.
But there have been several peaceful military exercises between Chinese troops and Central Asian countries, military drill and training and some peaceful disaster management efforts. And I don’t think China needs to send military troops…
We also need to note that security doesn’t just mean military and arms. China is able to obtain the information that it needs about Central Asia.
The Chinese mobile network and technology is everywhere: smartphones, digital technology. There’s a lot of stuff that the technology, the digital technology that is entirely Chinese, from the street cameras to the facial recognition, to everything. There are various smart cities and safe cities projects in which Chinese technology is critical. We see how popular Tik Tok is becoming, there is not much information on how all the data is regulated, who owns it, and where does the data go. It is clear that Chinese companies, state-owned companies have their own police and security officials who safeguard those objects and everything. And they don’t trust the locals, so I think slowly, this kind of soft security measures by China in the guise of cooperation and safety will continue and the Chinese technology will continue to expand.