With Russia embroiled in a protracted war in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on China for supplies, Beijing is rapidly seeking to expand its influence in Central Asia, a region once under the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
Russia, on the other hand, is strongly resisting.
As leaders of Central Asian countries meet with the presidents of China and Russia in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana this week, China’s growing presence in the region is visible. New railways and other infrastructure are being built, while trade and investment are increasing.
Flag-waving Kazakh children singing in Chinese greeted China's leader Xi Jinping as he arrived in Astana on Tuesday. He praised ties with Kazakhstan as a friendship that “has endured for generations.”
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin arrived in Astana on Wednesday for the start of the meeting, an annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and met with Mr. Xi, state news agency Xinhua reported.
For years, the forum was largely focused on security issues. Beijing has come to dominate the group, and as it has expanded its membership, China and Russia have used it as a platform to showcase their ambitions to reshape a global order dominated by the United States.
The group, founded in 2001 by China and Russia with the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has expanded in recent years to include Pakistan, India and Iran.
As China expands its economic influence in Central Asia, it continues to face diplomatic challenges as Russia tries to tip the balance of Shanghai Forum members in its favor.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is expected to attend this year’s summit. He is Putin’s closest foreign ally, who relies heavily on Russia’s economic and political support to stay in power. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Belarus will be made a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at this year’s summit, a small diplomatic victory for the Kremlin.
In a bigger blow to Beijing, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is skipping this year’s summit. Modi plans to visit Moscow next week to hold his own talks with Putin, sending his foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to the summit in Astana instead.
After Putin's recent trip to two other Chinese neighbors, North Korea and Vietnam, Modi's upcoming trip to Moscow signals that Putin is still capable of decoupling his own diplomatic ties from Beijing, said Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia, Europe and Asia Studies in Brussels.
“He says, 'I have other options,'” Ms. Fallon said.
India had joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2017 at the behest of Russia, when Pakistan also joined at the behest of China. But relations between India and China have since turned cold, following border skirmishes between their troops in 2020 and 2022.
While Modi sought closer ties when he took office a decade ago, the two countries no longer even allow direct commercial flights between them.
India is increasingly concerned about the geopolitical balance of power in the region as China's influence grows and Russia's declines, said Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King's College London. China and Russia have also forged increasingly friendly ties with Afghanistan's Taliban government, which has ruled the country since the departure of U.S. troops in 2021 and has long sided with Pakistan against India.
“To the extent that Russia was the dominant player, India was fine with it,” Mr. Pant said. “But as China becomes more economically important and powerful in Central Asia, and Russia becomes the junior partner, India's concerns would increase.”
More broadly, however, Russia’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is largely a rearguard action to counter the region’s seemingly inexorable shift toward China. Putin relies heavily on China to keep his economy and military production afloat amid Western sanctions, and over the years his administration has come to accept Beijing’s growing ties with Central Asia’s former Soviet republics. The vast gulf between Russia’s and Beijing’s economic muscle makes direct competition in Central Asia pointless for the Kremlin.
Instead, the Kremlin has sought to maintain a measure of influence in its former satellites on issues that remain vital to its national interests, including by attending largely symbolic events such as the Astana summit. On Wednesday, Putin will hold six separate meetings with Asian leaders in Astana, Russian state media reported.
Russia wants to maintain access to Central Asian markets to circumvent Western sanctions. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has obtained billions of dollars of Western goods through Central Asian intermediaries. These include consumer goods such as luxury cars, but also electronic components used in military production.
Russia also relies heavily on millions of migrants from Central Asia to keep its economy afloat and rebuild occupied parts of Ukraine.
Finally, Russia wants to work with the governments of the predominantly Muslim countries of Central Asia on security, and in particular the threat of terrorism. These threats came to light earlier this year when a group of Tajik civilians killed 145 people at a concert hall in Moscow, the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in more than a decade. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Russia and China are not just competing in Central Asia. They often cooperate, seeing a shared interest in stable regimes in the region that have little or no coordination with Western militaries, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research group.
“They see regional stability anchored in authoritarian regimes that are secular, non-Islamic and, to some extent, repressive at home,” he said.
William Fierman, a professor emeritus of Central Asian studies at Indiana University, said Beijing also faces deep-seated public concerns in Central Asia that China could use its vast population and migration to overwhelm the sparsely populated region. Soviet authorities stoked those suspicions for decades, and even a younger generation that did not grow up under Soviet rule now appears to share those concerns, he said.
In Astana, the elephant in the room will likely be the war in Ukraine. Few experts expect much public discussion of the war in a forum dominated by Beijing, given its indirect support for Russia’s war effort.
Mr Xi will also use his visit to promote his vision of building better transport links in the region, said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. After the summit, a state visit is planned to Tajikistan, where the US State Department recently estimated that more than 99 percent of foreign investment comes from China.
Much of China’s investment in Central Asia is in infrastructure. Last month, China signed a deal with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to build a new railway through the two countries. The railway will give China a shortcut for overland trade with Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and on to the Middle East and Europe. China has been trying to expand rail traffic through Russia for the past 12 years to transport its exports to Europe, but now wants to add a southern route.
“From a long-term strategic perspective, this railway is very important,” said Niva Yau, a nonresident researcher specializing in China's relations with Central Asia at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group.
Suhasini Raj And I am you contributed to reporting and research.
