Emil AvdalianiThe recent Central Asia-China summit in Kazakhstan was finalised with the signing of the Treaty on Eternal Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship, and Cooperation.
While the title might sound lofty in its aspirations, the gathering was indeed important, given what the sides achieved and more specifically how China is adjusting its approach to individual Central Asian states.
The first China-Central Asia summit was held in 2023, and since then, commercial relations between China and Central Asia have grown to $100 billion, while the volume of Chinese investments in the region has risen to $40 billion. Thus, expectations from the summit were quite expansive.
Key results of the summit were China’s and Central Asian states’ emphasis on win-win cooperation, mutual respect and common development. More concretely, the sides signed agreements on customs facilitation and increasing mutual trade.
The sides also agreed upon deals to develop green energy and electricity grids, besides the oil industry.
Another important point from the summit was the pledge to strengthen regional security with a focus on countering terrorism, separatism and extremism through modernisation of national defence, law enforcement and security services in Central Asian countries.
This also included joint exercises to strengthen regional security with particular attention paid to the situation in Afghanistan.
The summit institutionalised the China-Central Asia format by setting up a special secretariat in the world’s second-largest economy, which will be charged with holding biennial meetings of leaders of the informal bloc.
China and Central Asian states enjoy common interests such as cross-border security, green energy development, poverty reduction, educational exchange, ecology (manifested by the creation of the Desertification Control Cooperation Center) and connectivity.
The latter point is especially important as China’s continuous engagement with the region fits into its ‘Look West’ strategy, which aims at reducing reliance on the US-dominated sea routes, especially the Malacca Strait.
Roads to the future
One of the components of this strategy is to develop physical infrastructure such as roads, railways and ports in the territories to the west of the country.
For example, China has already initiated work on a railway to Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan’s mountainous regions.
The CKU railway – delayed for decades because of political instability in Kyrgyzstan, lack of funding, and alleged Russian resistance to a major connectivity development to its south – is now set to link China with the heart of Central Asia, including Tajikistan, and further with Iran.
No wonder that the summit reaffirmed China’s commitment to the Belt and Road Initiative – a China-led sprawling infrastructure project spanning large parts of the globe – with a particular focus on expanding rail container corridors through Kazakhstan and upgrading the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, or what is commonly known as the Middle Corridor.
To that end, Kazakhstan and China pledged to construct a large cargo terminal in the port of Kuryk, which should strengthen the capabilities of the Trans-Caspian corridor bypassing the congested routes through Russia.
China’s connectivity ambitions in Central Asia should also be seen in the context of developing connectivity in the heart of Eurasia and especially the expansion of the Middle Corridor.
The latter is an ambitious project extending from Georgia and Türkiye itself to Central Asia and western China.
Conceived by Türkiye, Georgia and Central Asian states in the 1990s, the idea bore different acronyms and consisted of roads, railways, and pipelines.
Yet, it was also limited in scope as maritime routes and the corridor through Russia linking China with the European Union served as major commercial highways.
Only 2-3 percent of overland containerised shipments passed through the Middle Corridor before 2022.
The war in Ukraine drastically changed this dynamic as the Middle Corridor is now increasingly seen, if not as an outright alternative to the route through Russia, but certainly as a strong complementary way, with the potential of attracting up to 20 percent of overland containerised shipments between China and the EU.
As a reflection of China’s growing interest in the Middle Corridor is Beijing’s political and investment moves along the route.
For instance, a Chinese company is now set to build a deep seaport in Anaklia, on Georgia’s Black Sea shore. This will be the first of its kind in the eastern Black Sea region after Russia’s Novorossiysk and is set to elevate the role of the Middle Corridor in regional trade.
Earlier attempts to construct the port failed due to political infighting and an unfavourable geopolitical situation.
This time, the wider geopolitical context is different, with China and the EU interested in the development of the port.
To this should be added Beijing’s push to build closer political ties with Georgia – the two sides signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2023, and Chinese companies are expected to be major bidders in a tender to build a new massive airport in the Georgian capital.
Further eastward, China signed two strategic partnership agreements with Azerbaijan, pledged to boost the country’s ports on the Caspian Sea and pushed ahead with the implementation of the CKU railway.
This creates a semblance of one continuous corridor from China’s western border to the Black Sea.
A pragmatic shift
The recent summit also underscored a strategic shift which has been ongoing for some time in China’s perception of the BRI.
Beijing has over the past year or so shifted its focus from investments in heavy infrastructure to green energy.
This shift reflects both Central Asia’s potential for renewable energy and China’s efforts to align its investments with environmental sustainability and greening the BRI. China has thus embraced a more holistic approach, which would involve various elements such as soft power and technology.
The calculus is clear: to build closer ties with the Central Asian states beyond heavy infrastructure projects or mere resource extraction. The latest summit also registered another change in China’s approach to Central Asia.
In contrast with previous similar gatherings, Beijing is now pushing forward softer tools for cooperation. Education, ecology, cultural exchange, as well as a heavy emphasis on green energy development, are meant to position China as the leading and, most of all, attractive power to the Central Asian countries.
These tools serve China’s interests in other ways as well.
Firstly, Beijing is now focusing on more practical needs that the Central Asian states have. And, secondly, these allow China to make its standards of governance and development models more appealing to the neighbouring countries.
Long-term, the geopolitical situation in Central Asia is propitious for China. The region’s five countries seek less reliance on Russia and instead favour close ties with as many big actors as possible.
A multipolar world requires multi-aligned foreign policy, and in that regard, ties with China fit into Central Asian states’ foreign policy diversification drive.
Nor are other powers strong or geographically close enough to compete with China in investments and trade.
But what the latest summit showed is that China is looking beyond that and increasingly applying softer tools to elevate its presence in the region.
