Central Asia became more attractive for Beijing since the Russian invasion of Ukraine made the northern trade routes unavailable to use for China. Growing vacuum of influence in the region is going to be filled by China, believes Brian Carlson, the head of the Global Security Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) think tank.
Brian Carlson is a renowned expert in China-Russia relations and foreign policy, holding a Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS. His research is particularly noteworthy for its emphasis on both Chinese and Russian sources.
Before joining CSS, Carlson was a Trans-Atlantic Post-doc in International Relations and Security (TAPIR) fellow at CSS, SWP in Berlin, and RAND in Washington, D.C. His doctoral dissertation focused on China-Russia relations in the post-Soviet era, and he continues to conduct extensive research in this area. Carlson is fluent in both Chinese and Russian.
Do you see any shift in China’s relationship with Central Asia a year after the invasion of Ukraine?
I think soon we may have a better idea of the answer to that question because there will be the China-Central Asia summit next month in Xi’an and it will be very interesting to see the results. I heard in meetings with Tajik scholars that some of them expect new initiatives to be announced. I also heard that during Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow last month, he and Putin may have discussed
this issue and they may have some kind of understanding about how China may start a new approach to the region; Russia expresses its understanding of that, partly because Russia is distracted and needs Chinese support anyway.
The general sense I have is that we could be entering a period in which China will become even more active in Central Asia. And Russia might not like it but they will basically have to go along with it.
What kind of initiatives do you believe are going to be announced at the China-Central Asia summit?
I think they will continue to focus on infrastructure. There’s already been the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railroad. Last September, it was announced that this project will likely go forward. So there’s line D of the China Central Asia gas pipeline, which would come from Turkmenistan through Tajikistan to China. I understand that China is investing a lot in roads in Tajikistan. And I think China might have some new ideas about infrastructure projects. We’ll see, but it might also recognize that Russia is possibly losing influence in the region, maybe Russia isn’t able to play the role of the main security provider in the region.
There’s a common opinion that China and Russia have a division of labour in Central Asia in which Russia plays the main role of security provider and China promotes economic development. But China may recognize that Russia isn’t quite in a position to uphold that role fully, and China might look for ways to expand its security role here. It’s already active in Tajikistan in that regard. It’s also cooperating with Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and other countries on its western border.
As China invests more and more in the region, it’s going to want to be able to protect those investments. But I also have the sense that China wants to have a better understanding of what’s happening here in the region. It does not want to be caught by surprise by events.
Access to Oil and Gas Resources fuels trade with China
All the Central Asian countries account for only 1% of China’s total foreign trade. How important is the region to China from an economic point of view? Or, is Central Asia of interest to China only as a corridor to Europe?
It’s true that in purely economic terms, Central Asia is a relatively minor factor. Although, it is an essential source of natural gas for China, which is more than 40% dependent on imports of gas consumption. One-third of those imports come by pipeline, and about 80% of that 1/3 comes from Central Asia.
So that’s a major source of gas for China. And while there is economic importance in this regard, there are geostrategic and geopolitical objectives that drive China’s approach here: as you said, it sees this region as a route to Europe and the Middle East. Earlier, China’s conception of the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative – ed. note) focused largely on connecting to Europe through maybe Kazakhstan, but then Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Ukraine was a big focal point of the BRI, and then the 2014 events happened.
Consequently, they shifted to Belarus, but the fraudulent elections occurred in 2020 there, Belarus fell back into the orbit of Russia, which invaded Ukraine partly through Belarusian territory. So now it’s going to be hard for China to use Russia, Ukraine or Belarus as a gateway to Europe.
That makes it more attractive for China to look more at routes through Central Asia. So the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway allows them to go onward to Uzbekistan and Iran and Turkey and so forth. So now Central Asia becomes of greater importance for China in the BRI, and of course, that’s not necessarily in Russia’s interest. But we can expect that China will focus more on the Central Asian transport corridor and Central Asian countries can benefit from this in certain ways from greater connectivity both in the region and beyond — to Europe and the Middle East, although it does raise concerns about the impact of Greater Chinese influence in the region.
Does Beijing see the Taliban regime (recognized as a terrorist organization in Tajikistan) as a threat and does it intend to hold them back in any way?
At the time of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there was a lot of analysis suggesting that this was a big opportunity for China with the reduction of US influence in the region. China, just like Russia had been engaging with the Taliban for years before they returned to power. There was a Taliban delegation that went to China in 2019. So at least as early as 2019 China was in close contact with the Taliban, and they had a couple of years to talk about what would happen if the Taliban were to return to power and then right around the time of the Taliban takeover, they made statements supporting the territorial Integrity of China: that Xinjiang is part of China and that the Taliban didn’t think that any negative influences should spread from Afghanistan into Xinjiang.
China wanted to make sure that it had a good enough relationship with the Taliban to protect its interests. The main security interest is the security of China’s western border and the security of Xinjiang and making sure that separatism, terrorism, and extremism doesn’t spill over. And in that sense, they’ve also worked closely with Tajikistan to strengthen border posts: there’s the People’s Armed Police base here in Tajikistan.
There is also another factor — China for a long time had an interest in a copper mine near Kabul. But they haven’t been able to get the mining started because of the security situation. Afghanistan also has a huge volume of rare earth minerals and there were speculations that China could tap into that and even use BRI initiatives to connect through Afghanistan.
But all of those economic objectives, I think will be very difficult for China to pursue there. They’re still nervous about the security situation in Afghanistan. Even the Taliban is not in complete control of the country. There is a branch affiliated with ISIS that’s active in the north, and for now and probably for the foreseeable future, China will be reluctant to make major investments in Afghanistan given the uncertain security situation, but they have a chance to meet their minimal objective, which is making sure that insecurity and instability don’t spill over from Afghanistan into China.
It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but it seems that Chinese politicians were involved in a possible takeover of Afghanistan.
The approach that China generally takes all over the world is that they work with whoever is in power at the moment. They’re willing to work with that regime as it is and do not express a preference one way or the other for who should be in charge.
Of course, the Taliban in 2019 wasn’t yet in power but China could see the writing on the wall — the Taliban already controlled large sections of the country and they made the assessment that there was a strong likelihood that after the US withdrawal eventually the Taliban could control most of the country.
And Russia essentially made the same calculation. China was just hedging its bets and was preparing to work with the Taliban and make sure that they would either help them or at least not actively harm their interests. And I think it was consistent with China’s pragmatic approach to relations with other countries.
What about China’s stance on the transfer of power in Central Asian states? Often, the successors in Central Asia are given the approval to transmit power in Moscow. Will Beijing be similarly exacting in its approval of the candidates?
I haven’t seen any evidence of that. It’s true that Russia does that kind of thing. But there is no evidence of them actively trying to create regime change or to make sure that someone favourable to their interests is in power. Except with Taiwan. But that’s a different case.
Advantages of the periphery
How does China plan to engage with the elites and people in the region, and what benefits can it offer them?
Well, if you look around the world there are cases in which China goes into a country and makes sure that the elites in the country get a special benefit. If they go into a small island nation in the South Pacific they can do their project in certain ways that the president and his family benefit from it. This is something that can be done in weak states.
I’m not sure to what extent that’s being done in Central Asia. I would have to look into that more but in general, I think that China has this historical idea of what they call “tianxia” which means “all under heaven”:
When the emperor ruled, he didn’t directly rule over the peripheral areas, but he wanted the peripheral areas to show deference to him and in some cases paid tribute or at least recognized that he was the supreme authority.
And in return for that the people on the periphery had some ability to manage their own affairs, but then there was a bit of a two-way exchange: the people on the periphery would show their deference to the emperor, but the emperor does things to help out the people on the periphery as a way of ensuring their loyalty and that they would view him as legitimate. There’s something like that with China now, they undertake these projects in peripheral areas that benefit those countries in certain ways. They build infrastructure and contribute to economic development, which could conceivably improve people’s lives here. Essentially, the goal is to win the loyalty of a lot of countries around the world not just in Central Asia, but in the Global South, Africa, Latin America, and other parts of Asia. The trend seems to be in their favour, especially now that Russia is distracted.
Experts often refer to Central Asia as a region that always balances between East and West. Is there a competition for influence in Central Asia between China and the United States, considering that the US doesn’t actively project its power in the region?
It’s always been difficult for people who want the United States to be deeply engaged in Central Asia, it’s difficult to convince policymakers to do that. The reason is understandable: the US has to worry about China, Asia Pacific, Russia, and European security, and the problems of the Middle East never seem to go away. Central Asia never seems to be at the top of the agenda. It’s also far away from the United States.
One idea that has been around for a long time is to try to connect Central Asia to South Asia to give Central Asia another outlet not through China or Russia or through Iran. But of course that requires going through Afghanistan and given the security situation there It’s been impossible to pursue those objectives.
There’s been talk about the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline or railroads recently, and actually, the president of Uzbekistan has revived this proposal for railroads.
Uzbekistan is already connected by rails to Mazar-i-Sharif. And the proposal is to extend the railroad from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul to connect with Pakistan’s rail system so Central Asia could ship goods all the way through Pakistan and to water ports. It would give Central Asia another outlet. But again, given the instability in Afghanistan, I think the International Monetary Fund has recommended against a major investment in that railroad not only because of the security situation in Afghanistan but also because of problems in Pakistan.
That in theory would be an excellent way for the United States to engage to help Central Asia connect to South Asia, especially given the increasingly close US-India relationship. But it’s difficult to do that.
The United States has long been a major investor in the Central Asia energy sector, and that’s still true. There’s a discussion about helping Central Asia to export more oil and gas to the west across the Caspian Sea now, as you know, Europe cut off its purchases of gas from Russia and is interested in alternative sources. Trans-Caspian pipelines have to be connected to Baku and the existing oil and gas pipelines from there. But China is also interested in connecting with Baku, so there could be competition for whether the gas goes east or west.
So in general it’s difficult to put together a US strategy for the region. I think that probably in a lot of ways, the best bet is to engage on the level of civil society.
When I was in Kazakhstan the other day, I was asking experts what can the United States do and I was thinking in terms of geopolitics and competing with Russia and China, but they all said “Leave those third countries out, don’t drag us into your competition with China”, “engage with us on a bilateral level and help us with our needs in education”, “make it easier to get visas”, “help with the clean energy” and the other things. Maybe that’s the most promising approach but it’s going to be difficult to compete with China.
When I lived in the region, I remember hearing the expression “Optimists study English, pessimists study Chinese”. In terms of soft power and culture, I think the United States has an advantage over China. I think the United States is more attractive overall to the people of Central Asia.
People of Central Asia worry about China. They don’t understand it. They don’t know what to expect from it. In that sense, the United States has an advantage but the problem is that China has put a lot more money into concrete projects that promote economic development, and connectivity and possibly raise the standard of living here. It’s hard to compete with that.
For example, when I was in Kyrgyzstan last week, students asked me what would happen if China would invade Taiwan and there would be a war with the United States, — what would be the impact on Central Asia? I hadn’t really thought of that question before but my answer was that the United States would try to get Central Asian countries to join sanctions against China, and cut off gas supplies. But then I talked to people here, and they said it’s not going to happen. The countries would do everything they could to maintain neutrality.
The risks of a vacuum in Central Asia
How would other influential players, like Turkey, Iran, and maybe even India feel about China’s increasing role in Central Asia? What do you think about the prospects of these players in this region?
I know less about Turkey and Iran. My understanding is that a lot of people thought Turkey could expand its influence in the region and it didn’t really happen. The last few years have been a period of greater engagement of Turkish foreign policy, they’re playing an important role in the Middle East and trying in some ways to act as a mediator in Ukraine; Turkey is very ambitious and it wants to be a major regional power and we can suppose that Turkey will try to play a greater role here, but I just I don’t know enough to really give a good answer.
Iran could be a good outlet for Central Asia geographically, but of course, it has problems with the United States in the sanctions. There’s also the idea of the north-south corridor, which is basically Russia-Iran-India that is involved in it.
But again that could be a bit complicated by the US sanctions on Russia and Iran and the United States might not want India to get too involved with them in that project. So then in terms of India, as I already said there are difficulties in connecting Central Asia to India and South Asia because of the problems in Afghanistan.
All of these countries — Turkey, Iran and India, have a chance to play a role in the region somehow but it seems like China is better positioned than all of them.
Do you think there are going to be any changes in the region if Russia fails in its military operation?
Yes, I think that would have a big impact on the region and I think we already see Russia’s declining influence in Central Asia. Russia is distracted and there are already questions about whether Russia can really play the role of the main security provider here. At the time of the fighting between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan last September, there were people who asked why Russia didn’t step in and stop this fight.
If Russia was to be totally defeated you would expect that the problem would be far worse and Russia might have to almost just pull out of the region entirely and then completely let China take it over. I mean that would be in the case of a total Russian defeat in which the military was so badly destroyed that it would take years and years to rebuild it. Under those circumstances, Russia couldn’t really lead the CSTO effectively in the region.
I don’t know if it will come to that, maybe Russia will be able to achieve a relatively favourable outcome from their standpoint in Ukraine and maybe they’ll avoid that kind of catastrophic defeat. But if they were that badly defeated it would be a huge blow to Russia’s presence here in the region and probably create a vacuum.
Do you see any potential threats coming from the Taliban?
The Taliban isn’t really in control of all of the country. There’s a group in the north that’s affiliated with ISIS. And the Taliban doesn’t actually completely control them. I think the concern is mostly that terrorism, separatism, extremism, these types of forces could come out of Afghanistan and the Taliban would be either unable or even unwilling to control it.
My impression is that the Taliban is struggling just to control all of Afghanistan right now. And so their concerns are inwardly focused and I’m not aware of them having ambitions beyond the territory of Afghanistan.
In August of 2021 just around the time that the Taliban completed the takeover, Russia conducted joint military exercises within the CSTO here in Tajikistan, not far from the border. Russia wanted to signal that it would protect the Central Asian countries against any instability coming out of Afghanistan. That’s important for Russia because they don’t want terrorism and instability to spill over first into Central Asia and then maybe into Russian territory.
At that same time, China also invited Russia to participate in domestic military exercises in China and those exercises had a strong counter-terrorist component to them. So there’s some discussion that if things would really get out of control here in Central Asia, China and Russia might consider some kind of joint military intervention.