Is Russia
Losing Its Grip on Central Asia?
What China’s Growing Regional Ambitions Mean for Moscow
By Temur Umarov and Alexander
Gabuev
Foreign
Affairs - June 30, 2023
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/russia-losing-its-grip-central-asia
Last month marked a diplomatic milestone for Chinese
President Xi Jinping. He had invited the leaders of five Central Asian states
to the city of Xian for their first-ever joint summit with China. The
reception, with festivities worthy of an Olympic opening ceremony, was lavish
even by Chinese standards. It made official China’s foray into a region that
even today is often referred to, for better or worse, as Russia’s backyard. The
pomp, and the praise that Xi and his guests from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan heaped on one another, led some
observers to proclaim a Sino-Russian scramble for Central Asia in which
Beijing had just notched a victory at the Kremlin’s expense.
In truth, Chinese and Russian power plays in Central
Asia are complex and subtle. China’s clout is growing, but Beijing is
nowhere near usurping Moscow as Central Asia’s true hegemon. Moreover, whatever
rivalry exists is far outweighed by overlapping interests and avenues for
cooperation. Russia may be transforming into the junior party in a deepening,
asymmetrical partnership with China, but in Central Asia it is still the
dominant power, and it is becoming more, not less, willing to coordinate with China.
If Beijing’s expanding influence in the region reveals
anything, it is that Central Asian states, more than three decades after their
independence from the Soviet Union, are beginning to emerge as regional
political actors in their own right, rather than as the objects of clashing
great-power interests and ambitions. All five countries in the region must
navigate a rising China, a belligerent Russia, and a deepening schism between
these two neighbors and the West. To that end, they support Putin
without fully turning their backs on the West, and they embrace China while
hedging their bets with the help of Russia. Beijing and Moscow, in turn, are
treading carefully, intent on accommodating both each other’s interests and
those of Central Asian states.
THE ILLUSION OF ALIENATION
The prevailing
wisdom
is that if Moscow and Beijing were to come into conflict, it would likely be
over their overlapping interests in Central Asia. In this view, China is
exploiting a moment of Russian weakness occasioned by its disastrous invasion
of Ukraine, and the Xian summit was its opening move.
To be sure, Russia’s global influence has suffered
over the past year, and Central Asia is no exception in this regard. Take
Kazakhstan, where a recent Gallup survey
found that more people now disapprove than approve of Russia’s influence
abroad—a first in the country’s history. And although governments in the region
have not introduced their own sanctions over the war in Ukraine, they have
mostly complied with the Western sanctions regime. But such deviations from
Moscow’s agenda are pragmatic acts of economic self-preservation, not signs of
a real break.
Just a week before the Xian summit, all five Central
Asian leaders traveled to Moscow for the annual Victory Day military parade.
The optics of standing beside Russian President Vladimir Putin to celebrate
Soviet victory in World
War II even as he wages war on neighboring Ukraine would not have been lost
on his guests. But they likely decided that attending was a safer bet, certain
that they would not risk Western punishment for attending a parade but
uncertain how Putin, who had personally invited them, would react to a snub.
Since the start of the war, Moscow has taken care to
occasionally remind
its neighbors of their place in the regional pecking order. On numerous
occasions starting last summer, for example, it has temporarily shut down
the Caspian oil pipeline, which runs through Russian territory and
serves as a vital conduit for Kazakh oil exports to Europe. Although in most of
these instances Russian authorities cited technical issues or environmental
concerns of scant credibility, the stoppages often seemed to come after the
Kazakh government ran afoul of the Kremlin.
Moscow has plenty more levers of influence. It is a
crucial source of basic goods for Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, its fellow members
in the Eurasian Economic Union. Russian trade with all of Central Asia is
soaring, having risen by 20 percent in 2022. When Russia temporarily banned all
sugar and flour exports at the beginning of the war, it contributed to budget
deficits and record-high inflation across the region. Meanwhile, Central Asians
continue to move to Russia in search of employment: according to Russia’s
Interior Ministry, over ten
million Central Asian labor migrants arrived in 2022, two million people
more than in the previous year.
Undergirding these economic ties is the deep trust
that binds political elites across the region. In Central Asia, just as in
Putin’s Russia, power is mostly in the hands of gray-haired men who grew up in
the Soviet Union. They have known one another for decades and speak the same
language, both culturally and literally, as all are fluent in Russian. The
first trip for new leaders and senior officials is nearly always to Moscow.
More and more often, Russian officials are returning
the favor. In 2022, for the first time in ages, Putin visited all five Central
Asian nations in a single year. Almost all members of Russia’s Security Council
have made similar trips since the invasion of Ukraine, as have influential
Russian business leaders. Several recent media investigations
have shown that behind these friendly informal exchanges lie corruption schemes
through which Moscow helps line the pockets of Central Asia’s
ruling elites.
No less persistent is Russia’s role as a model of
authoritarian stability. In recent years, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Uzbekistan have all implemented restrictive laws that closely resemble earlier
Russian prototypes, from bans on “LGBT
propaganda” to tightened controls on independent media and on
nongovernmental organizations that partner with Western institutions.
More broadly, Russia still wields considerable soft
power throughout Central Asia. Pro-Kremlin Russian media continue to
disseminate propaganda across cities in the region, and not without success:
Russia’s reputation may have taken a hit, but according to a
recent survey
by Central Asia Barometer, 23 percent of Kazakhstanis still blame Ukraine for
the war (27 percent think that Russia is responsible, and half the respondents
are undecided). In Kyrgyzstan, 30 percent blame Ukraine and only 19 percent
consider Russia responsible.
UNDERESTIMATED
COORDINATION
Like claims of waning Russian influence in Central
Asia, the notion that China is angling to replace Russia as the region’s
hegemonic power is inaccurate. Where the two sides disagree, Moscow has little
choice but to back down and adapt. But on many issues, Chinese and Russian
interests do not compete. The war in Ukraine and the deepening rift between
China and the United States have brought Moscow and Beijing closer together.
That interdependence extends to their relations in Central Asia.
Nowhere is China’s arrival on the scene more visible
than in trade and investment, including through projects loosely tied to the
Belt and Road Initiative. Its trade with the region is greater and growing
faster than Russia’s, reaching
$70 billion last year against Russia’s $40 billion. Yet that expansion has not
come at Russia’s expense. Much of it takes the form of Central Asian commodity
exports to China—exports that Russia, itself a leading commodities exporter,
has little use for. Beijing has also taken care not to disrupt the Eurasian
Economic Union: it has neither built a rival supranational institution nor
officially sought free-trade agreements with Eurasian Economic Union members
other than Russia. It does, of course, still conduct significant bilateral
trade with these countries, which Moscow has no option but to accept, since it
cannot compete with the market, technology, or money that Beijing has to offer.
In matters of regional security, too, Chinese and
Russian interests and influence often complement each other. The top priority
for both sides is to keep Central Asia’s current regimes in place and to keep
the West—and above all, the United States—out. And far from being sidelined, Russia
remains a towering presence: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan all sit
under its security umbrella as part of the Russian-led Collective Security
Treaty Organization. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan also host Russian military bases
and share a unified regional air defense system with Russia. Militaries in the
region have close working relationships with their Russian counterparts,
including access to Russian weapons at subsidized prices and joint training and
education at Russian academies. Even Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, although not
members of the CSTO, have bilateral agreements with Russia that limit their
ability to expand their security ties to other states. The agreements also give
Russia the ability to intervene politically and militarily in Uzbek and Turkmen
domestic issues—powers that Russia used when it led a CSTO “peacekeeping
operation” to quell intra-elite clashes in Kazakhstan in January 2022. The
episode was a forceful reminder that Moscow remains the only outside player
that can use its military to prop up friendly regimes.
Unlike Russia, which views its security interests in
Central Asia in terms of national security and geopolitical competition, China is content with
protecting its commercial interests and making sure that developments in
neighboring countries do not endanger political stability at home. Xinjiang
Province, in China’s far west, borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan,
and it resembles them in culture, ethnicity, language, and religion far more
than it resembles other parts of China. Ever since these nations gained
independence following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Beijing has sought
friendly ties with them for fear that they might otherwise inspire or foment
separatism in Xinjiang.
Another concern of Beijing’s is that Central Asia
could act as a bridge for jihadis from Afghanistan to join forces with Uyghur
extremists in Xinjiang, especially after a suicide bomber targeted the Chinese
embassy in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, in 2016. Going back decades, but
especially since the Bishkek attack, China has conducted dozens of joint
military exercises with its Central Asian counterparts and held hundreds of
high-level meetings with their military and intelligence agencies. It has also
scaled up cooperation on military technology, participated in multiple exchange
programs connecting Central Asian officers with Chinese military universities,
and conducted regular joint border patrols.
Over the course of these exchanges, Central Asia has
emerged as a testing ground for security instruments that Beijing has yet to
use elsewhere. In Kyrgyzstan, for instance, it has pioneered the practice of
deploying private security companies to guard
Chinese investment projects. Another such experiment has been to dispatch
Chinese paramilitary police units to patrol and police foreign borders: Since
2018, China has set up two such bases on the Tajik-Afghan border, acting as a
force multiplier for Tajik authorities. Although the first of these bases came
as a surprise and an irritant to the Kremlin, the second one, built in 2021,
drew no such objections. It seems that Moscow has come to view China’s
gradually growing security presence not as a competitive challenge but as an
opportunity for burden sharing.
A LOPSIDED
PARTNERSHIP
Russia’s change of heart about the Chinese bases in
Tajikistan points to a broader shift: China’s rise as a dominant player in
countries along its border—at this point an inevitable outcome—is happening not
against Russia’s will but at a time when ties between the two countries are
deepening, albeit asymmetrically and in China’s favor. Even if there is cause
for competition in Central Asia, both Moscow and Beijing see friendly bilateral
relations as a priority, especially amid their increasing confrontation with
the West.
The Central Asian states themselves are landlocked
countries wedged between two increasingly aligned great powers. They have
nothing to gain from replacing near-total dependence on Russia with near-total
dependence on China. All of them are trying to diversify their ties to the
outside world, and in that respect, both Russia and China are equally important
to them.
Down the line, the Sino-Russian power asymmetry could
of course grow lopsided enough for Chinese leaders to interfere in Central
Asian politics with little need for the Kremlin’s consent or aid. But it is
unlikely that this would diminish their shared interests and their mutual
support for authoritarian regimes in the region. The potential for cooperation
remains far greater than the risk of conflict—and Central Asia a place where
the Chinese-Russian axis strengthens rather than weakens.
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