soft power
Kazakhstan’s civil society is eying the rapprochement with China with suspicion. This is primarily because people don’t trust their own elites, said Temur Umarov, a researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies in Berlin.
«The majority of researches on Chinese topics focus on studying the exceptionally positive aspects of cooperation with China. At the same time, any attempts at a more or less critical consideration of various aspects of Chinese expansion in Tajikistan are characterized in the spirit of Soviet times – as “intrigues of external enemies” or “geopolitical competitors” of China», – states Parviz Mullojanov, the political scientist from Dushanbe, in his article written specifically for the analytical platform CABAR.asia.
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