Abstract

Monograph chapter part of my PhD thesis

Thesis research question: How regime security shapes China's foreign policy in Central Asia

This chapter is the second analytical section of the thesis, in which I discuss the connection between China's own domestic supply line concerns and its foreign policy in Central Asia.

The root cause is the 'Malacca Strait Dilemma', a maritime channel in the Indo-Pacific, through which most of China's trade flows, including vital imports of energy, agricultural goods, precious metals, and rare earths. China is not self-sufficient in many key areas, so in the eventuality of a conflict between the US and China, the closure of the Malacca Strait (which is also surrounded by US military bases) would essentially represent an existential threat in a long, drawn out conflict.

The Chinese elite are very aware of this dilemma, and the concept was already introduced back at the turn of the millennium by then president Jiang Zemin in a speech to the National Congress. He emphasized the need for China to prioritizing building trade routes elsewhere, so as not to be fully reliant on maritime trade in the Indo-Pacific. This is the backdrop of China's 'Great Western Development Program' and later, the Belt and Road Initiative, first announced at Nazarbayev University in 2013. In an attempt to recreate the classical silk routes, China seeks to connect itself to the important European market by creating new trade routes, logistical hubs, extraction mines, and pipelines in Central Asia to de-risk their overall trade-flow. This gives an alternative dimension to the typical framing of Chinese infrastructure projects in Central Asia.

This chapter is based on CCP primary literature (white papers, speeches, China-Central Asia events), and from my own interviews conducted in China in late 2025 with prominent scholars at Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Northwest University, and Lanzhou University - and also a previous fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2024.

The chapter is not completed yet, but will be at the time of the conference, my deadline being the end of May.