The Asian Spotlight Shines on China

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

However, many observers at the time additionally noted the broader geopolitical reasoning behind the initiative. It’s success would not only contribute to the consolidation of an responsive regime in Afghanistan but might also provide Washington with the capacity, through the development of vital north-to-south infrastructural and economic links, draw the actual wider Central Asian area 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: The far east.

The New Silk Road Effort was hamstrung from its inception this year. The Obama administration was not able to commit sufficient economic and diplomatic resources to the initiative, and the security situation in Afghanistan ongoing to deteriorate. The United States experienced simultaneously announced its ‘pivot’ to Asia. From the perspective of Central Asia’s elites, this signalled a decrease in US attention and commitment to the region.

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

In the actual midst of this and below Xi Jinping’s leadership, Beijing offers signalled its intention to further entrench its growing power and influence throughout the region by creating the One Belt, One Road strategy. One Belt refers to Beijing’s plans to construct a Man made fiber Road Economic Belt (SREB) to ‘open the strategic regional thoroughfare from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea’. 1 Road refers to its objective to reconstitute a Maritime Silk Road linking the Chinese economic climate with those of Southeast as well as South Asia, Africa and Europe.

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

China’s ‘march westward’ is really a strategic necessity. The ‘eastward shift’ within strategic focus of the Obama administration otherwise threatens to locking mechanism Sino–US relations into a zero-sum game in East Asia. From this perspective, Central Asia is really a strategic ‘safety valve’ for the growth of Chinese influence, following the recognized decline of US influence as well as interest in the region after this 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 Asian countries, South Asia and the Middle East. A crucial commonality between both the ‘land’ and ‘maritime’ roads — so far as Beijing is concerned — is their potential to deliver greater access (as well as security of supply) to the oil and gas of both Main Asia and the Middle Eastern.

Most importantly, the motives at the rear of Beijing’s desire to build the actual 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 sewerlines, highways, railways and telecommunications systems. This gels well using the long-held desires of Central Oriental capitals to diversify export routes for their oil and natural gas beyond Soviet-era infrastructure managed by Moscow.

Realising greater infrastructure hyperlinks beyond oil and gas would also enable these states in order 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 actual SREB runs counter to Moscow’s largely protectionist agenda for the Eurasian Marriage. Beijing is clearly focussed on facilitating freer economic interaction throughout Central Asia.

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

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

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