Economic security

China and Russia in Central Asia: Rivalries and Resonance

China’s Belt and Road Initiative, by fiat of geography, cannot ignore Central Asia on its way to Europe and Central Asia’s shared border with China’s Xinjiang boosts the economic logic with security rationale. The Belt and Road, which isn’t so much a set plan as an opportunistic stitching of relevant projects together, nonetheless brings the heft of actual funding into a region in desperate need of infrastructure development.

The Eurasian Economic Union, on the other hand, is “a customs union among former Soviet states orienting their economies towards Moscow.” The customs union aims to promote free trade and movement within the union, and imposes tariffs on external imports. Sharper critics see the EEU as an attempt to resurrect the Soviet Union, while more nuanced observers — such as the authors of a Chatham House report on the EEU, released earlier this year — view the EEU as part of Moscow’s effort to “strengthen its own global influence,” but that Russia is not “preoccupied with making it work.”

Crisis Group’s report walks through each initiative, highlighting areas of concerns. Along the Belt and Road, challenges include anti-Chinese sentiment. One of the most clear outpourings of this sentiment were the 2016 spring protests touched off by rumors that new land code laws would allow foreigners (i.e., Chinese) to buy up Kazakh land.