Tag Archive for: Central Asia

Central Asia’s simmering anti-China sentiment

The Second Belt and Road Forum, which ran from 25 to 27 April in Beijing, showcased China’s progress with its Belt and Road Initiative and also demonstrated the country’s increasing global economic and political influence. Despite some notable absences, the forum attracted 36 heads of state and will likely be viewed by Beijing as a marker of success for its BRI ambitions.

Not surprisingly, in the lead-up to the forum there were no indications that China’s increasingly oppressive treatment of its Muslim minorities would influence participation. As noted by Brahma Chellaney, China’s systematic and widespread mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities has resulted in no meaningful political consequences for Beijing. Even Muslim-majority countries that ostensibly profess a commitment to the notion of Muslim solidarity have stayed silent on the question of Beijing’s abuse of the fundamental human rights of its Muslim minorities.

But there are indications that anti-Chinese sentiment, fuelled by a potent combination of growing public outrage at Beijing’s treatment of its Muslim minorities and continuing disquiet over aspects of the BRI investment model, is building across Central Asia.

China’s internment of its Muslim minorities has become increasingly topical in Central Asia over recent months as more information on Beijing’s incarceration of ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz—in addition to Uyghurs—has become available.

Reports from late 2018 outlined widespread incarceration of ethnic Kyrgyz, with around 22,000 Kyrgyz from Akqi County in Xinjiang alone interned in China. Kazakh advocacy group Atajurt Eriktileri, which supports the relatives of those who have disappeared in Xinjiang, has claimed that it has documented more than 10,000 cases of ethnic Kazakhs interned in China.

Kazakhstan had originally sought to suppress reporting on what was happening in China, but as more first-hand accounts of conditions in the internment camps came to light in 2018, the issue became prominent. The fact that the Kazakh government has since arrested Atajurt Eriktileri activist Serikjan Bilash on charges of inciting racial hatred suggests that Astana is alive to the sensitivity of this issue, but its heavy-handed attempt to suppress discussion is likely to provide fuel for further anti-Chinese protests in Kazakhstan.

Importantly, of the almost 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang, a significant number have familial links in Kazakhstan as a result of oralmandar (repatriate) emigration to Kazakhstan, which has involved nearly one million Chinese Kazakhs. In this context, the internment of ethnic Kazakhs is likely to become a more significant issue in Kazakhstan’s bilateral relationship with China. This was evident in the early 2018 agreement under which China allowed 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs to abandon their Chinese citizenship and leave China permanently for Kazakhstan.

Similarly, China’s BRI investment model has long been problematic for its partners in Central Asia, several of which are desperately poor. One key issue is the risk of heightened debt distress arising from dependence on Chinese loans. For example, from 2008 to 2017, the debt owed by the Kyrgyz government to China’s Eximbank increased from US$9 million to US$1.7 billion, which equates to 42% of total government external debt or 24% of GDP.

Debt dependency is exacerbated by the fact that most BRI projects in Central Asia use predominantly Chinese expatriate labour forces, denying employment opportunities for local workers and prompting anti-Chinese protests across the region. This has been problematic in Kyrgyzstan in particular, where the government has long been accused of under-reporting figures on Chinese labour migration. However, it recently admitted that more than 35,000 Chinese citizens arrived in the country in 2018, most as construction workers on BRI projects.

Tajikistan has also been coy on figures for BRI-linked Chinese labour migration. Official data indicate that there are around 6,500 migrant workers in Tajikistan but unofficial data suggest that the number could be as high as 150,000. Intriguingly, Tajiks generally have a positive attitude to China; a 2016 poll showed that more than 90% of respondents viewed Chinese engagement positively.

Kazakhstan experienced widespread anti-China sentiment in 2010 before the formal inauguration of the BRI. Since then, there’s been growing public discontent with BRI-related issues such as Chinese labour migration and Chinese ownership of Kazakh resources and assets. A 2018 survey of views on the BRI indicated that around a quarter of respondents held a very negative impression of the program and a further 27% had a slightly negative impression.

BRI investment and associated Chinese labour migration and Beijing’s treatment of its Muslim minorities have been most definitively linked by a series of protests in Kyrgyzstan. In December, Kyrgyz nationalist group Kyrk Choro protested outside the Chinese embassy over illegal Chinese migrants and the internment of ethnic Kyrgyz in China. There were further anti-Chinese protests on 7 and 17 January 2019, when up to 500 Kyrgyz rallied to protest the persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang. The organisers of the 17 January rally also made a number of specific demands, including a ban on issuing Kyrgyz passports to Chinese citizens who aren’t ethnic Kyrgyz, scrutiny of all Chinese-funded enterprises and Chinese loans, deportation of all illegal Chinese migrants in Kyrgyzstan and a halt to labour quotas for Chinese.

China’s relationship with its Central Asian neighbours is complicated, and while Beijing continues to enjoy favourable relations with most of the governments of the region, growing anti-Chinese sentiment could prove problematic for China’s ambitions in the region. Central Asia remains the cornerstone of Beijing’s ambitions for the land-based ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ elements of the BRI.

Central Asia is also fundamentally important to China’s security. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan share a 3,300-kilometre border with China’s Xinjiang region that is difficult to police, making their continued cooperation critically important to Beijing’s security objectives in this ‘restive’ region. If growing public resentment of China in Central Asia translates into government policy, the region could prove to be a spoiler for more than just Beijing’s BRI ambitions.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia: insurmountable obstacles and unmanageable risks?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Asian Development Bank.

At the mid-May Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summit in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $124 billion to expand transportation links and infrastructure between Asia, Africa and Europe, showcasing his commitment to the massive project.

Central Asia is a key component in BRI. The five Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—all feature heavily in the plans for the land component of the BRI initiative, and all have responded positively to it. Central Asia and the Caucasus saw a tenfold increase in Chinese investment between 2005 and 2015, from US$5 billion in 2005 to US$48 billion in 2014, reflecting China’s growing geopolitical interest in the region.

But BRI has dramatically escalated the scale of Chinese investment. Uzbekistan alone recently received promises of US$20 billion in investments, including a three-year natural gas supply contract and funding for a synthetic gas plant. That plan reflects the region’s fundamental importance to China’s BRI plans, with key western land corridors passing through the Central Asian republics. BRI will also greatly improve China’s ability to extract critical mineral and agricultural resources from its Central Asian neighbours.

The Chinese model of investment creates some challenges for recipient states. It’s already clear that BRI will follow the traditional Chinese investment model of using expatriate Chinese workers and Chinese technology and equipment for funded projects. That approach arguably creates very few direct benefits for the recipient state, such as critical jobs creation of skills and expertise in the local population.

But the republics of Central Asia, with their corrupt authoritarian regimes, widespread inequality and unemployment, and a potentially inflammatory mix of growing Islamic fundamentalism and latent ethnic tensions, may prove to be insurmountable obstacles for China’s ambitions for a new global Silk Road. As the experiences of the US, NATO and Russia (historically the region’s hegemon) show, the republics can be fickle and frustrating partners.

First, given the scale of institutionalised corruption across the region—all five republics feature towards the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption index—there’s a real risk that Chinese investment may be misdirected or syphoned off by the region’s elite. The Chinese model of foreign investment, with most of the money remaining in the hands of Chinese companies carrying out the work and ethnic Chinese workers completing it, may mitigate that risk.

However, the scale of Chinese investment may result in the region’s governments seeing themselves as largely freed from the need to fund major infrastructure themselves. That may embolden them to be even more irresponsible in their budgeting and more rapacious in their tendency to siphon off earnings from natural gas, mineral and agricultural resources, many of which still reside in the hands of state-owned enterprises. Over time, this will put the countries in the unenviable position of potentially defaulting on loans, or ceding even more control of assets to Chinese interests.

Second, an inflow of Chinese investment may further harden the authoritarian tendencies of the local governments. They’ve already demonstrated a willingness to do Beijing’s bidding, even before China possessed the levers of influence provided by large-scale investment. Kazakhstan, in particular, has regularly acquiesced to China on ‘domestic issues’, including targeting ethnic Uighurs on China’s behalf.

And lastly, Chinese investment, accompanied by highly visible Chinese companies and significant numbers of ethnic Chinese expatriate workers, may attract the attention of militant groups. While the debate continues on whether militant Islam will gain momentum across the region, it’s feasible that a reinvigorated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or a new Islamic State-aligned group could emerge in the near future.

Two main factors could see the religious dynamic in Central Asia change dramatically in the near future. First, there has been a dramatic increase in mosque building across the region in recent years, with the overall number of mosques in Kyrgyzstan alone increasing from 39 in 1991 to around 2,300 today. Many of those mosques were funded by Saudi interests and espouse the narrow Wahhabi form of Islam that’s most often linked to modern Sunni terrorism. And second, the collapse of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria could see a significant number of Central Asian foreign fighters, estimated at between 2,000–4,000 returning home, potentially seeking a new theatre of operation.

China’s increasingly visible presence in the region may make Chinese investment projects attractive and relatively soft high profile targets for militants, especially given the local population’s potential for animosity towards China. And China’s ‘cultural genocide’ against the Uighurs of Xinjiang—a Turkic-speaking Muslim population closely related to the ethnic groups in Central Asia—has already raised China’s profile with both Islamists and the general population.

Baloch separatists in Pakistan have already established a precedent by attacking workers on a Chinese-funded BRI project, with the local armed forces bearing responsibility for protecting expatriate Chinese workers. Similar attacks in Central Asia could prove disastrous for Chinese ambitions in the region. They’d also likely prompt a brutal government response that would further marginalise local populations already disenchanted with their corrupt and authoritarian governments.

Institutionalised corruption, authoritarianism and a potential for Islamic militarism all create a dangerous recipe for governments across Central Asia. The overarching problem for China is that not only does BRI do little to encourage the Central Asian governments to deal constructively with those issues, it could exacerbate existing problems.