Isn't Xi lovely?: China’s strategic spend in Central Asia
Beijing pledged cash and connectivity at the China–Central Asia summit, while the region's presidents reached for buzzwords and bonhomie.
China summits are a smorgasbord.
Part infrastructure expo, part values manifesto, part investment pitch. All served in a single sitting.
But cold hard cash is the dominant dish. There is so much of it being bandied around.
Summoning his inner Oprah, Chinese leader Xi Jinping doled some out in his speech at the June 17 Central Asia-China summit in Astana.
Money for you. And for you. And for you.
All free.
Beijing will give away 1.5 billion yuan ($200 million) to Central Asian countries to fund social and infrastructure projects, Xi announced.
Why?
Because why not?
Central Asian governments like free money. And Beijing likes friends.
The Russians are bullies and demand loyalty. The Americans are erratic and fickle. The Europeans are untrustworthy and stingy.
China, though? China is fair and reliable. That was Xi’s message.
“Ancient Chinese philosophy advocates: mutual care and mutual benefit,” he sagely intoned at the close of his speech.
Xi would have stroked his beard if he had one.
But it is not all about generosity. It never is.
This is about business.
And access. Physical access, that is.
Since the first Central Asia–China summit, held in Xi’an in 2023, trade is up by 35 percent.
Large numbers of Chinese electric cars and solar panels — and much more besides — are going one way.
A correspondent for China Daily, the official English-language organ of the Chinese Communist Party, produced some enlightening, if already out-of-date, figures in a dispatch from Astana.
“Data show that 63,000 electric passenger vehicles were exported through Khorgos Port [on the Chinese–Kazakh border] in 2023, representing a year-on-year increase of 585.6 percent,” he wrote.
Honey, fruit, wheat and poultry are going in the other direction, “diversifying the dinner tables of Chinese families,” as Xi put it.
When European Union leaders came to Samarkand in April, they were light on business contracts. Nothing was signed or announced, in fact.
Chinese business delegations know better than to come to a party without something in hand.
Fifty-eight commercial agreements were signed between Kazakhstan and China on the eve of the summit – over $24 billion.
An $800 million corn plant in Zhambyl will process 1 million tons a year for amino acids. Another $420 million will fund a cotton cluster in Turkestan. The Almaty region is getting a $3.7 billion energy project – solar, transformers, and possibly a coal plant. Huawei and the city of Astana signed a summit-branded deal to pilot ultra-fast 10Gbps internet, ticking the digitalisation box on China’s high-tech checklist.
All of this underlines Beijing’s view that Central Asia is a prize worth claiming in its own right.
But in the final analysis, the region for China is first and foremost an anteroom to the real riches: consumers in Europe, the Gulf and South Asia.
Hence all the highways and railroads.
The latest one to leave the drawing board is the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway project. Completing that one will require drilling more than 100 kilometres of tunnels – a mind-boggling distance for trains to travel through mountains.
South from there, Chinese engineers are levelling entire mountainsides to cut a smoother road through Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains. A journalist for state-run broadcaster CGTN waxed lyrical about the significance in a report aired earlier this month.
“The construction of this road will be completed by next year. That means we’re going to see a lot more people and products transported along this expressway,” she said, before adding, in compliance with the mutual benefit script: “And there’s something more important than that. [This] solidifies the bond between [our] two nations.”
In Kazakhstan, work began in early 2024 on a new 297-kilometre railway running from Bakhty, a town near the border with China’s Tacheng prefecture in Xinjiang, to Ayagoz, a hub on the country’s east–west freight corridor. Once completed in 2027, the new spur will ease pressure on Kazakhstan’s two existing rail crossings with China.
To avoid sounding too instrumental, Xi dresses up infrastructure planning in the language of shared destiny. This he called, in all capitals, the “China-Central Asia Spirit.”
“We should … promote high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative, and forge ahead toward our goal of a community with a shared future for the region,” he said.
The West’s bandwidth is too limited to be paying attention to the business in Astana. Russia, meanwhile, will be keeping its eyes peeled.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked ahead of the summit if Moscow was at all nervous about the inexorably intensifying rapprochement between China and Central Asian countries.
“No, we have no such concerns,” he said, before repeating, for safe measure: “There is no reason for such concerns.”
Peskov may be protesting too much.
After all, Beijing does bring another compelling item to the table: the offer of its patronage as a diplomatic sponsor.
“China supports Central Asian countries in playing a bigger role in international affairs,” Xi told his Central Asian partners. “We stand ready to work with all parties to … oppose hegemonism and power politics, and to promote an equal and orderly multipolar world.”
The swipe there is evidently intended for the United States. But there is also scope for reading this language as a subtle warning to Moscow, who should regard China as a de facto guarantor of Central Asian autonomy.
As for the Central Asian leaders themselves, they brought little to the summit beyond a mixed platter of reheated nibbles. Heavy on friendship, light on originality.
The host, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, offered praise of China as an “eternal” and “reliable” strategic partner. Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon reprised lines about long-term peace and predictability as regional goals. Turkmenistan’s Serdar Berdymukhamedov could not avoid his idée fixe about the need to diversify his country’s energy export market. He was careful, in the same breath, to stress Ashgabat’s continued commitment to existing supply deals with China.
Some speeches did reflect one concession to modish novelty, though.
Along with the rest of the world, Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev has glommed onto the AI trend, and he used his address to propose databanks and cross-border processing hubs, likely with an eye toward attracting more Chinese investment.
Rahmon may have provoked some eyebrow-cocking with his suggestion that Tajikistan could play a leading role in developing AI. Perhaps by hosting “green” data centres for Chinese firms?
On one level, this is shameless touting.
But this language also signals that the region is deeply tempted by the allure of installing a variation on Chinese-style modernity.
One where digital progress and authoritarian governance can coexist.
And it is betting that Beijing will bankroll it.