China lures Central Asia republics out of Russian orbit

CHINA - Chinese President Xi Jinping's recently concluded tour of Central Asia was not just an ordinary list of state visits; it was a victory lap through the region.
China has won the competition with Russia over who will have the upper hand in Central Asia.

It was an epic tussle which took over two decades and whose outcome was determined as much by Russia's tactical mistakes as by China's strategic ingenuity. But it is now largely over, with profound implications for global security arrangements. Seldom before has a battle of such importance been conducted so quietly, but with such decisive results.

China's policymakers largely ignored the vast, four million sq km area which stretches from the Caspian Sea to Mongolia, known generically as Central Asia, during the Soviet era. Even when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Chinese continued to ignore this region.

A major reason for this attitude was that Beijing had few experts who knew anything about Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the five countries which emerged out of the Soviet empire. But Chinese policy planners did know that all five newly independent Central Asian states were Muslim, that all were relatively poor though some possessed considerable energy resources, and that their governments exercised a very tenuous control over their national territory.

The fear in Beijing was that the Central Asian republics would become a hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism, threatening China's Xinjiang province.

It was only in 1997 that the first Chinese agreement to develop oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan, the biggest Central Asian republic, was signed. And it was only in 2000 that China began investing in Central Asia. It has since made up for lost time: trade went up from a paltry US$1 billion a year in 2000 to US$30 billion in 2010 and US$115 billion.