Debating China in Central Asia

Will China continue to defer to Russia in Central Asia’s international security relations?

By John Heathershaw (Text and photocredits)

What kind of great power is China in Central Asia?  It was this question that animated our discussions in October as colleagues and new contacts of ExCAS gathered in Shanghai and London to discuss China’s emerging role in the region.  Prompted by ongoing research and the recent report by our partner Saferworld (who wrote their own summary here), we asked whether Chinese power will remain primarily economic and whether China will continue to be a singular actor in the region.

On 14 October, several of us associated with the ESRC Rising Powers and Conflict Management in Central Asia research project met in Shanghai to discuss conflict and security questions in Central Asia and China’s current role as the region’s main trading partner and foreign investor.  This event was co-organised between the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies (SIIS) and Saferworld. Participants included: Chen Dongxiao, President,  SIIS; Aisher Khamidov, Independent researcher, Kyrgyzstan; Li Lifan, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences; Bernardo Mariani, Saferworld; Anna Matveeva, Kings College London; Yang Cheng, East China Normal University.

The following week, on 23 October, a few of the participants – including Yang Cheng, Anna Matveeva and myself -reconvened in London to consider China relations with Russia including in both Central Asia and the Russian Far East.  We were joined by Bobo Lo of Chatham House, Caroline Humphrey of the University of Cambridge, Alexei Maslov of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and Marcin Kaczmarski of the Centre for Eastern Studies, Warsaw.  The event was co-organised between the universities of Cambridge and Exeter and hosted by the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House.

Several core questions reoccurred across the two events.  These included:

1.  Is China’s role in Central Asia similar to its role in its other neighbouring regions, including the somewhat comparable Russian borderlands, or is qualitatively different?

2. How does China’s relations with other great powers, especially Russia, affect its role in Central Asia?  Are these relations shifting from formally ‘equal partners’ to subservience of Russia to China?

3. How will the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) strategy with an estimated $50 Billion of investment and associated strategic engagements transform Central Asia?

4. Is China a singular actor in Central Asia where all Chinese governmental, state-owned enterprise (SOE) and private business in the region act consistently according to a single policy from Beijing (or is something more complicated afoot)?

5. How can China remain an overwhelmingly economic power in the region (as its own rhetoric claims) when history suggests that rising powers always seek wider political and security roles in their neighbouring region?

6. Will China continue to defer to Russia as the security guarantor for Central Asia?  Will China continue to play a passive or very indirect role in the management of minor armed conflicts in the region, particularly with the recurrent political violence surrounding the increasingly authoritarian regime in Tajikistan?

With a variety of views expressed in the workshops, I was struck by the sense of flux in China’s current position in the region.  Central Asia remains of less importance to China than any other region.  This is reflected in the knowledge and understanding of the region in Chinese academia and the  think-tank world.  We were fortunate to have two of the most knowledgeable Chinese experts in Li and Yang with us in Shanghai and London but such researchers with field experience of Central Asia are few and far between.  Our workshop in Shanghai also included experts on the Americas, Europe, South Asia and the Middle East echoing the reality that Central Asian is often seen through the prism of these regions – where China has estbalished political and security roles.

How far will this change under OBOR and the ‘drive West’?  In other regions, as the research of Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri shows, China becomes not just a political and security player but a decentred one as SOEs and private businesses begin to pursue agendas distinct from that of Beijing.  Tensions between ministries may emerge.  Lack of knowledge and interest, along with the relativeness newness of Chinese engagement, means that most Chinese investors presently follow Beijing’s lead in infrastructure and trade agreements.  As Central Asia is considered a ‘frontier’ region this may continue for some time.  An added complexity is the ‘Sinophobia’ apparent in Central Asia.  It is unlikely that this suspicion of China will change rapidly even as more Central Asians go to China as students and traders.  One important factor will be whether Chinese companies become significant employers of the local labour force.  The current impression – not entirely unjustified – is that Chinese businesses employ their own, pay their workers poorly, and keep themselves to themselves.   This may soon change as Chinese and Central Asian governments seek to generate real economic growth in the region to meet the ambitions of OBOR.  But impressions often last long.

In this dim light, China’s potential security role in the Central Asian republics seems distant indeed.  However, a glance across the border to China’s emerging role in Afghanistan suggests that a more activist foreign and security policy make just be a matters of the eventfulness of international politics.  History and logic also suggest that China is unlikely to allow Russia gate-keeping rights over security cooperation in Central Asia for perpetuity.  It is China which borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan after all, despite Russia’s claim to its ‘near abroad’.  Such deference would be rather like early 20th century America allowing a foreign power to be the security hegemon for Mexico or the Caribbean states (something which had already ruled out with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, of course).   This is a problematic historical analogy – as the US was reacting to European colonialism, not a post-colonial world, and the America were its primary neighbour - but at a certain level it is telling.  Geopolitics is a constructed phenomenon not a pattern which emerges from simple physical and political geography.  It may be constructed in a manner which belies the supposed eternal truths of political realist thought.  But it would be surprising, perhaps unprecedented, if China did not internalise classical geopolitical discourse and play a more assertive role in all its borderlands, even the most distant from the populous East.

The question is made the more urgent by the multiple incidents of minor armed conflict which have taken place in one of China’s Central Asian neighbours since 2008.  Tajikistan has experienced no fewer than six serious incidents of political violence over that time, largely involving senior officials or former officials and mid-ranking security officers.  In addition, it saw the head of its special forces Gulmurod Halimov defect to ISIS/ISIL in March 2015. Losing both Halimov and the recently promoted deputy defence minister Abdulhalim Nazarzoda to rebellion in the same years must say something about the (in)stability of the Tajik state.  More particularly, it tells us that it is the regime which is producing these rebellions as it seeks to narrow its circle and expel all those whose absolute loyalty it doubts.  Will China stand by if a future rebellion causes wider instability?  Its notable 8 September statement in support of political stability, following the violence associated with Nazarzoda on 4 September, suggests it is watching closely.

A greater security role for China in Central Asia – beyond its formal cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – may be far off.  But rather than strategy dictating we may expect events beyond Beijing’s control to play a profound role.

This blog post was originally published by the Exeter Central Asian Studies Network on 30 October 2015 (revised on 2 November 2015).

What are Russia's grand designs in Central Asia?

By David Lewis, University of Exeter, originally published on The Conversation

While international attention has focused on Russian military operations in Ukraine and Syria, Moscow has also been involved in a flurry of diplomatic and security initiatives to address the growing instability in northern Afghanistan.

But its moves to bolster regional security are more than just a response to local security concerns. Russia has a broader strategy that could leave it as the dominant security actor across much of Eurasia.

Even before the shock of the Taliban occupation of Kunduz in late September, Russian officials were concerned about the fragile security situation in northern Afghanistan, including the rise of Islamic State in northern Afghanistan and its potential spread to Central Asia and thence to Russia’s large Muslim community. As if to emphasise the domestic threat, on October 12 Russian police announced that they had uncovered a terrorist plot in Moscow apparently involving a group of Central Asian militants.

Insecurity in Afghanistan may pose a potential security threat for Moscow, but it is being seized upon as a major geopolitical opportunity. Against a backdrop of failed Western policies across much of Russia’s southern flank, Moscow is moving quickly to fill a security vacuum in the region. It is strengthening existing alliances to consolidate its hold over former Soviet republics in Central Asia and reshaping the security dynamics of the region around its own favoured security groupings – the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

The first step has been a series of meeting with Central Asian leaders, all on the front line in case of renewed Afghan insecurity. A meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rakhmon, the president of Tajikistan, led to promises of more attack helicopters to bolster the existing Russian military based in the country, which has become the hub of a well-developed defence system against cross-border infiltration.

Crisis and opportunity

Putin also took time out of his birthday celebrations in Sochi to meet Almazbek Atambayev, the president of Kyrgyzstan, a country that has become the linchpin of Russia’s security strategy in the region. Until 2014 Kyrgyzstan hosted a US airbase, but as I explored in a recent paper, Russia has been remarkably successful in ousting the Americans and turning Kyrgyzstan into a dependable ally in the region.

If Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are relatively relaxed about an enhanced Russian military presence, the Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, is instinctively allergic to talk of renewed Russian influence and pulled out of the Russian-led CSTO in 2012.

Now the northern Afghan crisis offers an opportunity to bring Uzbekistan back into Moscow’s embrace. A delegation from the Russian MOD, led by deputy minister Anatoly Antonov, has recently paid the country its first high-level visit since 2007.

There was no coverage of the Russian visit in Uzbekistan’s heavily censored press. Instead, the newpapers led on a summit with neighbouring Turkmen president, Gurmanguly Berdymukhamedov. The two presidents both have serious security concerns about Afghanistan, but both want to manage them without Russian assistance. Both states have appalling human rights records, limiting the potential for Western aid, and it may be hard to refuse Russian offers of help if unrest grows along their borders with Afghanistan.

Friends reunited

Afghan officials have also been in Moscow, seeking assistance. Vice-president and Uzbek warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum, has sought to revive old ties during a recent visit, also paying a side visit to the influential Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, to share experiences of “fighting terrorism”. If the Afghan situation worsens significantly, Dostum offers the potential for Moscow to build up a further band of loyal forces in the north of Afghanistan, in an effective re-run of its Taliban-era support for the Northern Alliance.

Other Afghan government officials attended a conference of SCO members and observers on Afghanistan in Moscow. The chief of Russia’s general staff, first deputy defence minister, Valery Gerasimov, took time out to give a speech that highlighted the failure of US policy in the Middle East, leaving little doubt that Moscow now sees Afghanistan through the same geopolitical prism as it frames Syria. Russian intelligence officials regularly claim that IS is part of a broader US plot to destabilise Central Asia and Russia from the south.

Still, there is no appetite for Russia to get involved in Afghanistan in the way it has in Syria. There are still bitter memories of the humiliating Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. But an anti-IS stance in the region provides Russia with the opportunity to consolidate its presence in Central Asia and become the centre of new alliances in the region – with SCO partners such as China, and with Iran – and to sponsor anti-Taliban and anti-IS forces in northern Afghanistan.

More intriguingly, some Russian officials see Moscow’s new strategic initiatives in Syria and Afghanistan as a chance to carve out a significant role in a wider region. State Duma speaker, Sergei Naryshkin, has been talking of a “Greater Eurasia”, linking Russia not only to former Soviet republics, but more widely to a range of allies in Syria, Iran, India and China.

This may be just another of Russia’s historical spatial fantasies for now, but in a rapidly changing international environment, Moscow will try to use its dominance in Central Asia as a first step towards shaping a new regional security order.

David Lewis, Senior Lecturer, Politics, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Cooperation or competition? China and Russia in Central Asia

By Ivan Campbell

The recent launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank highlights China's economic and strategic ambitions, and will accelerate its economic expansion into Central Asia. As geopolitical dynamics shift, Ivan Campbell considers whether relations between China and the traditional regional hegemon, Russia, are likely to be characterised by continuing pragmatic cooperation or growing competition.

On June 29 delegates from 50 countries gathered in Beijing for the signing ceremony of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The Chinese-led initiative is being seen as a diplomatic and strategic success for China, with this new multilateral financial institution set to provide an alternative to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Its creation was motivated in part by Chinese frustration at its under-representation and lack of influence in the existing international financial architecture, which remains dominated by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. However, despite opposition from the US, several of its allies – including the UK, Germany and Australia – have joined the AIIB as founding members.

The establishment of the AIIB reflects the shifting balance of global economic power from west to east, and it is expected to advance China's broader economic expansion. Intended to fund Asian energy, transport and infrastructure projects, the AIIB will support the reorientation of China's economic policy from domestic infrastructure development to infrastructure development beyond its borders. In addition, it ties in with China's periphery diplomacy and will enable China to engage more proactively, and to develop closer relationships, with other Asian countries – or as President Xi put it, to “turn China's neighbourhood areas into a community of common destiny”.

The launch of the Chinese-led AIIB is particularly significant when viewed from the perspective of Central Asia. It is likely to reinforce Chinese trade and investment in the region, which has already expanded massively in recent years. In 2013 President Xi signed deals worth a reported US$100 billion with four Central Asian states, and this came on top of a one hundred-fold increase in trade between China and Central Asia since the break-up of the Soviet Union. The AIIB supports China's vision of inclusive trade and transport integration in Eurasia, embodied in the concept of the Silk Road Economic Belt. The vision includes rail, road and air links, as well as energy pipelines. Financing will come from China's Silk Road Fund, as well as the AIIB and the Shanghai-based BRICS New Development Bank.

What are the implications of these developments for the five Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan? For much of the time since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the international community has viewed Central Asia as a region of risk and potential instability. This has been compounded by the chronic violence and insecurity affecting neighbouring Afghanistan. As a consequence, international engagement in the region over recent decades has been underpinned by a concern to contain conflict risks and to shore up state stability, despite significant concerns about governance and human rights.

One view is that having regarded Central Asia primarily through the lens of security – especially in relation to Afghanistan – the major powers are increasingly shifting their focus to the region's economic potential. Henceforth international engagement will be driven as much by the desire to tap the markets and resources of Central Asia as by concerns about conflict risks and instability. China has led this reorientation of approach through the Silk Road Economic Belt, AIIB and similar instruments, but it can be seen also in terms of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the US New Silk Road Initiative, and India's Connect Central Asia policy.

The potential benefits for Central Asian states, in terms of increased trade, investment and connectivity are clear – but equally there are risks arising from increased economic intervention when one considers conflict dynamics within the region and broader geopolitical trends. There is a range of threats to peace and stability both within and between the five Central Asian states. These include poor governance, weak rule of law, ethnic divisions, competition over water and land resources, drug-trafficking, and widespread poverty. There are particular concerns that conflict could be triggered by the eventual presidential successions in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan when those changes come. Add in the threat of violent spill-over from Afghanistan, especially following the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and the fragility of peace and stability in the region is all too apparent.

The geopolitical significance and abundant resources of the Central Asian region have long made it attractive to great powers, and thus the locus of strategic competition. China and Russia will increasingly be the principal players on this stage, especially after the final ISAF drawdown. As China steps up its engagement in Central Asia, it will inevitably affect local conflict dynamics. It may well create great opportunities for economic development in the region, but it also risks exacerbating existing inequalities or provoking local tensions. China's growing presence and influence in the region – despite being outwardly benign and focused on economic integration – has created unease about its longer-term intentions. Chinese attempts to lease tracts of land in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, for instance, have generated considerable antipathy towards China among local populations.

Russia is the traditional regional power in Central Asia and, despite its diminished influence in the post-Soviet era, it remains the pre-eminent military and political actor. Thus far, Russia and China have co-existed relatively harmoniously in the Central Asian space, and appear keen to maintain a show of good relations – for example, President Xi's seat next to President Putin at the Victory Day parade in Moscow in May 2015. And China has appeared content to cede pre-eminence to Russia when it comes to matters of direct involvement in the politics or security of Central Asian states. However, Russia is inevitably apprehensive about China's economic expansion, especially given that China overtook Russia as Central Asia's number one trading partner in 2010. Furthermore, Russia is likely to be watching China's military modernisation programme with concern, as this will allow it to develop and project new capabilities in its border areas, including Central Asia.

Another important consideration is Russia's increasingly assertive stance in the former Soviet space. Recent events in Ukraine, and before that in Georgia, have been viewed by many as Russia seeking to reassert a dominant role in its former sphere of influence. The significance of Ukraine events for Central Asia should not be over-stated, but the repercussions may be far-reaching. Russia could potentially apply the same intervention logic – to protect ethnic Russians or identified Russian interests – to other states in its neighbourhood. This has caused unease in neighbouring regions, including Central Asia. Taken together with Russian attempts to engage the region in a closer economic embrace through the EEU, there are concerns that Russia will seek to reassert itself here too.

The AIIB represents a significant new element in the geopolitics around Central Asia. In some quarters, there are concerns about a new superpower axis between China and Russia – based on flourishing trade, growing military cooperation and shared geo-strategic interests. But equally their respective aspirations may set these two powers on an eventual collision course. Central Asia represents an important test-case. How the dynamics of China's economic expansion on one side of this fragile region and an increasingly assertive Russia on the other play out will shape the future of Central Asia and prospects for peace and stability.

In 2013-14 Saferworld undertook research into China's growing engagement in Central Asia, as well as the changing role of Russia. We analysed how this affects – and may affect in the future – the regional economic and security context. In a new report we consider how the relationship between Russia and China in Central Asia is likely to evolve – whether one of continued pragmatic cooperation or of increasing rivalry and possible conflict. The report launched today, in Chinese, Russian and English language versions, summarises the findings of Saferworld's research and the implications for peace and stability in Central Asia.

Read Central Asia at a crossroads

Ivan Campbell is Senior Conflict and Security Adviser at Saferworld. This blog post was originally published on the Saferworld website on 13 July 2015.

Researchers at Risk: Debating the Dilemmas of Research in Authoritarian Societies

By Catherine Owen

Marking the 100th day since the arrest of Alexander Sodiqov in Khorog, Tajikistan, staff and students in the Universities of Exeter, Sciences Po and Toronto met to debate the wider implications for conducting fieldwork in potentially dangerous or rapidly changing societies. On 16th June 2014, Sodiqov, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, was detained by Tajik security officials in Khorog, capital of the autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhstan, while conducting research for the University of Exeter into conflict resolution in the region. He was subsequently accused of collecting information that undermined national security and of working for a foreign intelligence service. The Tajik government soon charged him with high treason, a crime that carries a punishment of 20 years in prison. After spending more than a month behind bars, Sodiqov was released but was required to remain inside the country. Finally – and although the charges are still to be formally dropped – Sodiqov was allowed to return to his studies in Canada on 12 September.

Clearly, these events, and others like them, have serious implications for scholars. The questions driving the meetings were: what implications does the arrest of Sodiqov have for the future of ethnographic research in changing political contexts around the world? And how can we, as an academic community, prevent such events from happening in the future? In Exeter, the packed meeting was organised jointly by the undergraduate Politics and Amnesty International societies, and drew both undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as faculty and management. Questions were raised about the specifics of the Sodiqov case before developing into a broader discussion about how to protect researchers conducting fieldwork in authoritarian states. In Paris, the meeting draw researchers from a variety of institutions, who discussed whether the flurry of events similar to the Sodiqov case indicates the development of a broader trend towards greater hostility regarding foreign researchers in authoritarian states and, if so, how the academic community can and should protect those researchers.

A number of ideas were discussed that could potentially alert those planning research trips to authoritarian states to emergent dangers or changing perceptions of foreign researchers. In particular, the creation of a website to which posts detailing any difficulties encountered in various locations could be anonymously uploaded, thereby alerting the academic community to the current situation ‘on the ground’. This idea, a project of John Heathershaw and Edward Schatz, and currently in the planning stage, could serve as an important resource for researchers working in potentially turbulent areas. Ideally, such a site could allow scholars and their institutions to make informed decisions about whether or not to risk conducting research in these areas. Indeed, a similar body had been mooted by the French academic community in 2011, but alas was not pursued.

While a website that collates information about the political risks to researchers conducting work in authoritarian societies is an excellent idea in theory, there are, perhaps, a number of problems in practice. The following is not meant to be taken as pessimistic or cynical, but rather as a contribution to the on-going discussion about how to prevent the imprisonment of another researcher while also being unafraid to ask challenging research questions.

My primary concern is that the widespread use of such a site would create a culture of fear among researchers working on these countries. Would the collation of stories of arrest, imprisonment, harassment or persecution discourage scholars, particularly junior or post-graduate scholars, from pursuing their ideal object of study? Secondly, and following on from this, would such a site inflate the dangers of working such places? It could be that many hundreds of researchers conduct successful projects in a particular region, but five cases of state harassment were uploaded to the site, thus creating the impression of severe repression. In other words, it may end up exaggerating rather than reflecting potential risks. Furthermore, if individuals were uploading their own stories, they would be less likely to admit their own errors that perhaps partially precipitated their problems. It would be hard to know whether a region was genuinely risky, or whether researchers had somehow been insensitive, naïve or otherwise foolhardy. In short, would such a site inadvertently ‘shoot itself in the foot’, having been founded through a commitment to academic freedom but resulting in scholars’ self-censorship? While an online tool that collates researchers’ experiences conducting fieldwork evidently an important and much-needed resource, the big question, in my view – as someone who has also confronted the authoritarian state’s boundary of ‘appropriate’ research – is how to ensure that such a site is used to empower, not discourage, pioneering research.

Are these issues resolvable? I cannot pretend to know the answer. The most important thing is to continue a broad discussion about how to protect scholars from state persecution arising from their commitment to the furtherance of academic knowledge.

This blog post was originally published by the Exeter Central Asian Studies Network at  http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/excas/2014/10/03/researchers-at-risk-debating-the-dilemmas-of-research-in-authoritarian-societies/ on 3 October 2014