The Asian Spotlight Shines on China

When the Obama administration unveiled its New Silk Road Initiative in October 2011, officials asserted that it was about re-embedding Afghanistan firmly into the economic life of Central Asia through the provision of US assistance to develop infrastructural links between the country and its neighbours to both the north and south. The argument is that it would assist in ‘removing the bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people’.

When the Obama administration unveiled its New Silk Road Initiative in October 2011, officials asserted that it was about re-embedding Afghanistan firmly into the economic life of Central Asia through the provision of US assistance to develop infrastructural links between the country and its neighbours to both the north and south. The argument is that it would assist in ‘removing the bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people’.

However, many observers at the time also noted the broader geopolitical logic behind the initiative. Its success would not only contribute to the consolidation of an amenable regime in Afghanistan but would also provide Washington with the capacity, through the development of vital north-to-south infrastructural and economic links, draw the wider Central Asian region away from the orbit of its ‘traditional’ great power, Russia.

Yet with its attention distracted by multiple challenges, the Obama administration has failed to perceive Central Asia’s other great power interlocutor: China.

The New Silk Road Initiative was hamstrung from its inception in 2011. The Obama administration was unable to commit sufficient economic and diplomatic resources to the initiative, and the security situation in Afghanistan continued to deteriorate. The United States had simultaneously announced its ‘pivot’ to Asia. From the perspective of Central Asia’s elites, this signalled a decline in US attention and commitment to the region.

Meanwhile, Russia had renewed its efforts to maintain its power and influence in Central Asia. In 2011, President Vladimir Putin called for the creation of a supra-national body to ‘coordinate economic and currency policy’ as a means of providing a ‘new post-crisis’ development model in the Eurasian space. However, his own push for the ‘Eurasian Union’ —, which would encompass not only Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus but also the Ukraine — fatally jeopardised this project.

In the midst of this and under Xi Jinping’s leadership, Beijing has signalled its intention to further entrench its growing power and influence throughout the region by developing the One Belt, One Road strategy. One Belt refers to Beijing’s plans to construct a Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) to ‘open the strategic regional thoroughfare from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea’. One Road refers to its goal to reconstitute a Maritime Silk Road linking the Chinese economy with those of Southeast and South Asia, Africa and Europe.

Much of the One Belt strategy has a great deal to do with Beijing’s state-building imperatives in Xinjiang. Greater economic interconnectivity between that restive province and the economies of Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East is an important mechanism for delivering economic prosperity and stability. But One Belt also has an important function to play in China’s foreign policy: it ensures China’s position in the context of the Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia.

China’s ‘march westward’ is a strategic necessity. The ‘eastward shift’ in strategic focus of the Obama administration otherwise threatens to lock Sino–US relations into a zero-sum game in East Asia. From this perspective, Central Asia is a strategic ‘safety valve’ for the expansion of Chinese influence, following the perceived decline of US influence and interest in the region after it withdrew from Afghanistan.

The Maritime Silk Road complements this strategic shift by seeking to bolster economic interconnectivity between China and the maritime states of Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. A crucial commonality between both the ‘land’ and ‘maritime’ roads — as far as Beijing is concerned — is their potential to deliver greater access (and security of supply) to the oil and gas of both Central Asia and the Middle East.

Most importantly, the motives behind Beijing’s desire to build the SREB complement those of many of the Central Asian states. China is focussing on greater economic interconnectivity in the region by improving critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines, highways, railways and telecommunications networks. This gels well with the long-held desires of Central Asian capitals to diversify export routes for their oil and natural gas beyond Soviet-era infrastructure controlled by Moscow.

Realising greater infrastructure links beyond oil and gas would also enable these states to diversify their economies beyond the resource extraction sector. China contributed US$40 billion to a Silk Road Fund to assist in developing necessary infrastructure for the SREB. Central Asian states see this as a token of the seriousness of Beijing’s commitment to the project.

But politically and strategically speaking, the SREB is not unproblematic for a number of Central Asian states. Despite Russia’s protests to the contrary, the SREB runs counter to Moscow’s largely protectionist agenda for the Eurasian Union. Beijing is clearly focussed on facilitating freer economic interaction throughout Central Asia.

A real challenge for both the US and Russia is that China’s ‘business-is-business’ approach toward Central Asia stands in stark contrast to that of both Washington and Moscow. The largely authoritarian Central Asian regimes have long bridled at Washington’s tendency to leaven its commitments to the region with sermons about the necessity for political liberalisation and reform. They have been equally disturbed by Russia’s naked attempts at geopolitical leverage under Putin.

Beijing has insisted on the centrality of ‘sovereign equality’ and ‘non-interference’ in ‘domestic affairs’ as the basis for interstate relations. From the vantage point of Central Asia’s capitals, the view of this is far more favourable.

China takes its Eurasian moment is republished with permission from East Asia Forum