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Abstract

The five Central Asian countries are major recipients (albeit to different degrees) of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was officially announced in 2013 in Kazakhstan. Since then, China has funded more than 100 infrastructure projects in this region. These are primarily meant to boost China’s exports, allow for importing much-needed energy from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and help develop and stabilize China's northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. For the landlocked Central Asian countries, reduced transportation costs, infrastructure development, and overall improved regional connectivity stand out as key benefits.

The paper suggested for presentation at the CESS annual conference in Almaty delineates protest and resentment in Central Asia in the context of China’s BRI, which have emerged since the mid-2010s. Specific aims of protests and grievances vary. They are directed against the BRI as a whole or individual BRI projects and associated obstacles, but sometimes additionally against Chinese conduct not immediately related to the BRI. As we show, protests are directed at the BRI as a potential “debt trap”, BRI-related environmental problems, conditions for land acquisition or lease, abuses against ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, or generally at the (perceived) growing influence of China in a given country.

Yet it is puzzling that pertinent protests have almost exclusively occurred in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The key aim of the paper is to explain this variance. Potential explanatory factors are different degrees of repression, dissimilar BRI-related drawbacks, and varying numbers of ethnic Central Asians repatriated from Xinjiang which may (not) act as catalysts for grievances and protest. To corroborate our arguments, we use data from the Tracking Protests in Central Asia database of the Oxus Society which distinguishes protest causes as per country and issue area. To delve more deeply into single demonstrations if necessary, we use sources particularly from RFE/RL, BBC, and Eurasianet. To ascertain the attitudes of respective populations in Central Asia, we draw on polling data from the Central Asia Barometer.

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How does an in-depth and comparative picture of China’s soft power in Kazakhstan look like amidst a shifting society and evolving geopolitical environment? This paper utilizes a novel theoretical framework bridging Strategic Narrative Theory (SNT) and soft power literature to apply a measured analysis on China’s soft power across metrics of the Soft Power Matrix – encompassing systems, identity, and issue narrative levels, as well as economic, cultural, and political dimensions. As one part of a comparative trio, alongside equivalent soft power analyses on Russia and the EU, this paper employs a mixed-methods approach, combining statistical trends from an online survey of students in 4 leading Kazakhstani universities (N = 848) conducted between October-November 2022 with qualitative data from 14 in-person focus groups and interviews (42 participants in total) conducted on the same target population between November-December 2022. The findings paints a nuanced picture of China’s soft power that, while revealing weaknesses noted in the previous literature, also highlights significant areas of strength, particularly in its systems level narratives and its economic and political dimensions of attraction, all of which seem to benefit from favorable geopolitical conditions. Furthermore, statistical survey patterns and focus group data generally confirm this author’s hypotheses regarding the relationships between the different variables of the soft power matrix, as well as on the predictors of these variables - namely of the intensity and positivity of people-to-people relations as soft power amplifiers, as well as the impact on opinions from triggering events, such as the Ukraine War or China’s ethnic policies in Xinjiang.

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Abstract

Today, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) has been the largest project not only in Asia but also globally. The B&R includes both historical areas along the ancient Silk Road as well as “new” regions that connect a vast area across Eurasia and beyond. The Central Asian Republic (CAR) has played a crucial role in this initiative as a starting point for the flow of Chinese goods and technologies westwards.

Currently, Beijing is increasing its presence in the region through a variety of national structures and partnerships with local political leaders. The Chinese government is adjusting to the customs, traditions, and practices of countries with which it interacts, while also integrating them into its operations. This approach may be viewed as China's strategic advance, while also serving to successfully implement its Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) in Central Asian countries.

There are several challenges that need to be addressed to ensure effective collaboration between China and countries in Central Asia. Transportation and economic infrastructure are among the most significant issues, as are social stratification, interethnic tensions, and economically and geographically underdeveloped regions.

In exchange for financial investment, technological support, and assistance in implementing innovative projects, countries in the region offer natural and energy resources. These resources are essential given China's increasing demand for resources due to its rapid economic growth.

The inclusion of Central Asia in the Belt and Road Initiative is a significant factor in establishing bilateral supply chain networks for goods and resources, especially in the energy sector. For decades, China has been the primary foreign trading partner of Central Asian countries, with an imbalanced trade turnover inherent in an economically unbalanced partnership.

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In the era of globalization, the interaction between population and geopolitics has become a new academic research topic. This article explores the interactive mechanism between demographic change and geopolitical change, analyses the impact of China's demographic change on geopolitics, and draws the following conclusions. First, demographic change is a complex social phenomenon that can have a profound impact on geopolitics. Second, China's population is undergoing irreversible and historic changes in both quantity and structure, especially in terms of low fertility, population ageing and migration. As a large country with an important geopolitical position and influence in the world, China and its demographic changes will have far-reaching and lasting impacts on the geopolitical landscape of neighbouring countries, regions and even the globe. Third, China's demographic changes will profoundly affect the world's economic landscape at the global level, intensify the long-term competition and strategy games between the major powers of China and the United States, and increase the uncertainty of the international order. Fourth, the outflow and distribution of Chinese immigrants have shaped the geopolitical relations of East Asian countries to a considerable extent. Fifth, China's demographic change also affects the bilateral relations with neighbouring countries, manifesting both in positive impacts linked to labour and economic development and conflicts from national identity, culture, and values.

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The upsurge of national populist movements across the globe, and the accompanying ‘chauvinistic’ turn that it represents, have largely been elusive for the globalists. It is the lack of historical perspective that explains globalists' elusion. A comprehensive analysis of this historical conjuncture calls for a critique of the state-form, a critique that can open up its fault lines. Nation-states as a political form for long have been a pile of contradictions, both internally and externally. The internal as well as the external contradiction of this political form are disguised by the trajectory of two categories, the people and the state. This paper proposes to critically examine and map the trajectories of these two categories in modern China in relation to the question of ethnicity.

Ethnicity is one significant fault line in modern China, a fault line that goes back to the very formation and foundation of it. Several scholars have largely overlooked the question of ethnicity in China, given its pre-dominant Han identity. However the supposed ethnic unity and homogeneity of China has come under critical scrutiny in recent times. The rise of ‘ethnic’ movements, if not nationalist, like Uyghurs and Tibetans, have challenged the homogeneity claim and drawn attention to the problematic status of a homogeneous Han identity. This paper builds upon the experience of Uyghurs in modern China to bring out the problematic status of Uyghurs in the construction of Chinese nation and Chinese people. The Uyghur experience draws attention to some of the insidious aspects of Chinese state and Chinese nationalism. The Uyghurs, inhabitants of Xinjiang region, experienced Chinese state and ‘unification’ of ‘Chinese people’ not only differently but also as a coercive apparatus. The political necessity of ‘unification’ and curbing of ‘vociferous’ elements in Chinese society impelled identification of ‘divisive’ elements. The Uyghurs with their own distinct culture, religion and world outlook appeared as an obstacle in the path unification of the people and the state. The Chinese policy towards the Uyghurs therefore took the twin forms of assimilation and coercion. There is an entire historical trajectory of Chinese policy towards the Uyghurs. Given that these identities were not completely malleable, Chinese state mobilized a range of instruments and policies to ensure its implementation. This paper maps the contradiction of ethnic difference in the making of modern China to bring out the element of violence as an immanent part of Chinese nationalism.