Abstract:

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is one of Central Asia’s primary foreign economic partners, and it has invested billions of dollars in the region as part of its emerging global infrastructure. By the end of 2022, trade between the five Central Asian economies (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and the PRC reached $70 billion (AFP 2023). Beijing’s ‘soft power’ strategy also includes expanding education and cultural cooperation.

Despite China’s increasing involvement in the region, people in Central Asia tend to view China negatively. Anti-Chinese sentiments have deep historical roots embedded in folklore (Gupta 2020). Anecdotes about potential territorial expansion to the West have also contributed to these negative perceptions. In some cases, mutual infrastructure development and economic expansion of Chinese businesses in Central Asian countries have led to anti-Chinese protests and a backlash against Beijing’s presence in the region.

However, recent geopolitical changes, including the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine and a new war in the post-Soviet region, have led to re-evaluating Central Asia’s attitudes toward its big neighbors, China, and Russia. Previous studies that used data from the Central Asia Barometer (e.g., Woods & Baker, 2022) have confirmed that people in Central Asia generally hold a negative view of China, with the situation deteriorating further in some countries (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) and remaining consistent in others (Kyrgyzstan). At the same time, some local surveys have indicated that citizens in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan expect the PRC to play a growing role in the region and overtake Russia’s presence there (Chen and Jiménez-Tovar 2017).

This study uses World Poll data to examine the evolving perceptions of China and Russia in Central Asia over the period from 2016 to 2022. These data measure public opinion about the leadership of China and Russia (along with the U.S. and Germany) as these views reflect the relative soft power of each global actor.

Descriptive and statistical analyses are used for this purpose. This method allows for a thorough exploration of the data, providing insights into the relationships and trends within the variables over time.