How do US-Chinese contradictions affect the geopolitical picture of Central Asia? Are there any concerns in the US about the growing role of China in the regional security of Central Asian countries? How do the US experts assess China’s soft power? These and other questions were discussed with Johns Hopkins University Sinologist and Professor Andrew Murtha, exclusively for CABAR.asia.
Prof. Andrew Mertha is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies since 2018 and Vice Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Faculty 2020-2021. Dr. Mertha has spent the past quarter century examining and analyzing Chinese bureaucratic institutions that are often invisible to observers but play an outsized role in politics, economics, technological development, and societal responsiveness of Beijing, including interactions between the national bureaucracies and their local counterparts, and, most recently, the role of the Chinese Communist Party in colonizing these hitherto government bodies. His current China research project looks at the bureaucratic politics of rectification (整风) from the 1950s up to the present day.
CABAR.asia: As you know, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the announcement of BRI. How would you assess the BRI preliminary results in Central Asia? And can we say that the initiative is effective? Will we continue to observe its influence in Eurasia?
Andrew Mertha: So, it’s a great question. I’m not an expert on Central Asia, but 10 years is a long time, in others, it is a relatively short time. If you compare what China has been doing in Africa, I think, it has a long track record. I think in Central Asia, from what I’m able to see, it seems a little bit less high profile, it seems a little bit less dominant and the impression that I get is that a lot of what China is doing is not as front and centered as it is in other parts of the world. That said, my understanding is that there is a fair amount of elite linkage between China and some of these countries in Central Asia. But there is also a fair amount of skepticism among analysts here about the relationship. And I think it’s still a little bit too early to tell, but I think skepticism is both warranted, but there does seem to be the possibility of being a positive sum, or a win-win situation, as long as both sides are transparent with each other, as well as to the people of the region.
How do you assess China’s influence on infrastructure projects in the region? And what are the prospects for the implementation of the project for the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway?
Andrew Mertha: I think that, in general, infrastructure is, on balance, a good thing. And one of the interesting things about this particular project is that I was speaking to some US officials based in Uzbekistan and the interesting thing is that they are not opposed to it. Which is a very different tone than I hear in Washington DC. I think that people who are familiar with the region recognize that projects like the railway are actually helpful economically to all parties in the region. It’s an example, maybe a rare example, of what China refers to as a win-win situation. That said, one of the things that I might be concerned about is somebody who wants to see the region prosper and develop in a way that benefits the people in the region is that if there’s too much infrastructure, or if the infrastructure somehow leads to kind of imbalances or distortions of economic development, that is something that could be problematic. So I think, again, it’s not a bad idea to be skeptical, even about something that is generally a positive policy outcome because I think it behooves each actor to be fully cognizant how well or how badly it affects its own interests.
In your presentation, you fairly emphasized that “international relations specialists must take into account the messiness of China’s international behavior rather than focus solely on elegant models of great power politics.” Can we say that China considers the Central Asian countries as a single region, especially after the launch of the C5 + 1 format? Or is Beijing still inclined to distinguish its approaches to each country in the region separately?
Andrew Mertha: Well, it was brought up during the discussion that China prefers a bilateral approach. But I think that it is useful, certainly for countries in the region, to find some sort of a collective voice that might provide leverage vis-à-vis Beijing in terms of negotiating interests. I think there’s a bit of a challenge given some of the tensions between individual countries in the region. But I think one of reasons why it is a good thing not to force countries in the region in one direction or another, you know, whether it would be pro-Russia at the expense of pro-China or vice-versa, or an overwhelming influence of the US, is to give these countries the freedom to maneuver according to their own interests. One of the things that, I think, Americans often forget is the importance of geography. And one of the things that has been made very, very clear to me is just how central geography is in this part of the world to explain stability, instability and prospects for moving forward.
Over 30 years of sovereign development, the Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, have faced the problem of a debt trap. Based on China’s international behavior with other countries, what predictions can you make about how China will be able to return its financial investments, given that the economies of these two countries may not be able to withstand the burden of debt?
Andrew Mertha: So, I’m probably going to speak a little bit out of school here. But if you take the framework that I introduced during my presentation today and you apply domestic politics to international politics, one of the things that we see in China is, particularly with state-owned enterprises over the past several decades, is the role of banks in bailing out state-owned enterprises and local governments. Which is to say that China’s banking system has perennially been essentially a channel to maintain political stability by erasing debts incurred locally. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if China might re-assess its initial investments in a particular country. And one of the calculus that Beijing would make might be: is it worth renegotiating? Is it worth writing off? Is it worth the political fallout of engaging in what’s referred to as debt trap diplomacy? I think any of those options are likely. And in the next few years when as many of these initial loans are going to become due, we’re going to see kind of the direction which Beijing goes forward on a country-to-country basis.
I do think that, if Beijing creates challenges for these countries, it provides an opportunity both for the US and the international community to come in and assist with the financing and to fill the need that China was initially filling. I hope that is something that will at least be considered. But it is something that, I think, there would need to be a fair amount of lobbying on the part of the countries in this part of the world to these international institutions to come to their assistance.
One additional question regarding China’s rising role in regional security in Central Asia. Are there any concerns in the United States regarding this issue?
Andrew Mertha: The simple answer is I don’t know because I don’t have the kind of expertise that I wish I had. But I do get the sense that in the US we see a lot of foreign policy as being reactive and so as long as there isn’t a crisis in, you know, a particular part of the world, it might not get the type of attention that a more proactive process would provide. I think that right now the attention that the US is giving to the region has a lot to do with what Russia is currently doing in Ukraine and trying to shore up or at the very least to kind of maintain sanctions against Russia…so that’s an opportunity for countries in this part of the world to kind of seek US support and, you know, not just when the US needs support from the region, but at other times as well.
It will be interesting to see the degree to which the US may or may not try to balance China’s influence because, you know, there are different types of influence, whether it’s Russian or Chinese, they seem to be quite different in this region.
How do US-Chinese contradictions affect the geopolitical picture of Central Asia? And with the outbreak of war in Ukraine there is an opinion that China’s influence in the region will grow while Russia’s influence will decline. To what can it lead? To what consequences, in your opinion?
Andrew Mertha: These are two very challenging questions. I think one of the ways of thinking about the contradictions between US foreign policy and Chinese foreign policy is that, I’m going to quote a colleague of mine, Mel Gurtov, who gave a very interesting and illuminating presentation a couple of weeks before I came to Central Asia. He made the distinction that for the United States, they look at international stability in global terms. For China, they see international stability in domestic terms, which is to say for China everything is in the service of maintaining a degree of domestic stability, and so it is going to look at the same issue somewhat differently than the United States may see it.
I think that things are particularly challenging right now given the fact that I don’t think China is very happy with the situation that Russia has put it in. But it also recognizes that it cannot leave Russia’s side because that could potentially lead to a kind of greater Russian presence or tip the balance in favor of Russia in the region here, or at least kind of create a situation of potentially more competition between the two. So, it’s best for Beijing and Moscow to get along and maintain the status quo, rather than deviate sharply from it. I’ve spoken earlier about the importance of geography and that is certainly true in the case of China. So, I think that perhaps the most useful way forward is a combination of ambiguity, of not overcommitting and maintaining some degree of flexibility among all of the actors in the region, so that they can respond to changes in the international situation in ways that don’t lock them up into a course of action that might hurt them a couple of steps down the road.
A question regarding your assessment of Chinese soft power in Central Asia. How would you rate this Chinese resource and maybe also beyond Central Asia? Can Chinese soft power adapt to changing realities, update itself accordingly and reduce maybe Sinophobia in Central Asia?
Andrew Mertha: I am not terribly confident, and the reason why is that I think for soft power to be effective it has to conform to this idea of “show, don’t tell.” And I think China is so focused on the “tell” part, in terms of managing the narrative, that it’s something that first of all makes China, I think, unable to adapt to the changing conditions. I think it makes [China] generally not terribly sensitive to local conditions and it is something that, from the impressionistic information I get in talking to people, it is not particularly effective. So, people certainly welcome Chinese aid but they don’t necessarily accept the kind of the other trappings that come with it. I think that it’s different from place to place. My sense is that in places like Africa and in the Middle East there might be more of an openness to it, or an acceptance of it. I think in Central Asia, the impression I get is that there’s a bit more skepticism, which I think is warranted. Although one of the things that I heard is that a lot of kind of acceptance of soft power has to do with the presence or absence of alternatives. And that’s, I think, that’s an important policy question for the United States and the West, for example, to consider. I think that if China was less focused on managing and dominating the narrative, it could actually be quite effective.
I’ve lived in China for seven years, I know just how compelling an advertisement for all the good, as well as all the bad, of humanity China actually is. But you’re just not going to see that come through given just the intense preoccupation with managing the narrative. And I think as long as that’s the case, China is not going to be terribly compelling. Let me just say one or two other things in response to that question. First of all, I think that one of the things that one of you said about the resistance of Confucius institutes for example to interact with NGOs – the person said that that’s a bureaucratic politics question – I completely agree. But that’s a particularly lost opportunity for Chinese soft power, the bureaucracy and the state getting in the way. The other thing, this is an observation you can do with this what you want, but I talked to my Chinese interlocutors and they say that ‘oh when, you know, when China becomes a superpower, people will stop criticizing us’, and my response then is ‘I think you have to change your expectations…the US has been a superpower and all people do is criticize the US, so you’re going to have to thicken your skin a little bit because’… That, I think, that speaks to just a lack of understanding of how the international community seems to work these days and the burdens that a powerful country must bear. And so, I think that speaks volumes in terms of how far China has yet to go in terms of really understanding and accepting the responsibilities that it is now seeking.
Fair. And the last question regarding some concerns in Central Asia again. China is implementing its project regarding safe cities in Central Asia, in Astana, Bishkek, Dushanbe et cetera. So, can it be argued that China is successfully importing its model of political regimes such as digital dictatorship to the countries of Central Asia?
Andrew Mertha: So, I think that’s a fear of observers in the West about China. I don’t think that the fear is unjustified. I think there might be something to it. But just to complicate the situation a little bit further, based on, you know, the talk I was giving today about China’s domestic politics, one of the things that’s very interesting to me right now is how China manages its localities, down to the level of urban districts, through this process of grid management. And one of the things that’s really interesting to me is that you have this high tech equipment, this sophisticated AI, algorithms, and these high tech cameras, and integrative systems and all of that. But at the end of the day, to manage a neighborhood of, I think, 1000 or 2000 people, you basically have one person managing all of this along with three or four volunteers. And so, it would not be surprising to me that you have all of this kind of gleaming high-tech stuff, but you don’t have the human resources or the human capital to actually make it work properly. And that’s a story we see over and over again in China. So, I think that , these types of technologies really depend also on human elements and the degree to which that they’re designed to take that human element into account.
I think it’s a cause for concern but, at the same time, if you look at the kind of surveillance infrastructure that you see in places like New York City and London and other parts of the world that are not China or do not buy those technologies from China, I think ultimately it comes down to how are those technologies used. And the big question there is could Chinese technologies be used in a way that would benefit, or that would be of use to a country that does not necessarily seems to have an ultra-authoritarian outlook to managing its population. And I don’t know the answer to that, but I think the answer to that would really go a long way in explaining whether or not it would be a threat on its face.