Security and Development Approaches to Central Asia

Excerpted from external pageSecurity and Development Approaches to Central Asia: The EU Compared to China and Russiacall_made.

Long term interests

China’s key foreign policy strategies are driven by factors far removed from Central Asia; instead Beijing is focused on the relationship with the United States, regional integration in Asia, partnership with Japan and the European Union, as well as improving relations with India.[1] In this foreign policy framework their post-Soviet neighbours occupy a relatively minor place. When the Soviet Union disappeared, China’s primary objective was to maintain stability at its north and north-west borders by addressing the issue of its territorial boundaries with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and seeking confirmation that these countries would respect the “One China” discourse. Yet, in the Chinese perception of its environment, Central Asia is not only a part of the post-Soviet world, but also a part of a Muslim world with which Beijing is increasingly hoping to build a privileged partnership. Central Asia is thus part of China’s strategy for consolidating its long-standing alliance with Pakistan, and of building a long-term partnership with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.[2] Central Asia is also a space that embodies the new relationship between China and India, comprising both patterns of competition and cooperation.[3]

Central Asia is unique to Beijing in terms of its direct relationship to domestic issues. China’s proximity with the region, though an asset in some perspectives, simultaneously involves numerous challenges: its ethnic contiguity with the Uyghur world is perceived more as a danger than as an opportunity.[4] The Chinese stance is first and foremost defensive, avoiding Central Asia becoming a place for exporting the Uyghur conflict and interfering directly in China’s domestic management of this issue. At a second degree, Beijing is also in a defensive position in terms of the security of Central Asia. A fragile Afghanistan and a destabilised Pakistan creates an already negative regional environment for China, and so Central Asia’s stability is a priority, again at the least possible cost. Finally, Central Asia has come to position itself on the Chinese radar as a partial solution to two concerns. First, to secure continental energy supplies that are not subject to global geopolitical complications; the 2011 gas agreement with Turkmenistan – that will supply 65 billion cubic meters a year – will cover a large part of China’s gas needs. And secondly, to help China appear as a peaceful rising power able to play the multilateralism card, and to build a specific partnership, one that is economically-based, with the Muslim world.

However, even if energy and multilateralism remain important components of Chinese international positioning, Beijing’s interest in Central Asia will still be primarily driven by domestic stability in Xinjiang, good neighbourly relations with local governments, and the transformation of Xinjiang and Central Asia into areas of transit for the conquest of new markets.[5] Central Asia is thus paradoxically fundamental in terms of domestic stability, because of the Uyghur issue, and marginal to the preoccupations of Chinese foreign policy as a whole. It is not related to Japan, North Korea or Taiwan, since the Central Asian governments have not sought to challenge the “One China” policy. Even if the region is partly associated with relations with the United States, mainly due to the U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan, it remains a trivial problem compared to the issues of trade, currency and human rights that plague day-to-day U.S.-China relations.

In contrast to Russia and Europe, the Chinese strategy is more cohesive. The influence of its private actors is minimal and “civil society”, while vibrant on domestic issues, is not involved on Central Asiarelated issues. This does not imply, however, a uniformity of opinion among the elites: the security objectives of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) do sometimes come into contradiction with the preoccupations or modalities of action of the civil elites of the Party and the state. If Chinese activism in Central Asia today appears to be dominated by economic questions – China is the region’s largest trading partner – this is because security questions are viewed as either directly controlled by Beijing (this is the case on the Uyghur question), or as dictated in tandem with Russia (internal stability). However, the Chinese elite are concerned about Moscow’s lack of security capabilities in the region should significant instability arise.

Security

Initially China’s main priority in terms of security was to consolidate its borders and put an end to the conflicts concerning their demarcation. Between region should significant instability arise. 1994 and 2002, Beijing signed border demarcation treaties with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and today the question is deemed to have been resolved, even if the issue of cross-border river management with Kazakhstan still remains open.[6] The second security objective was to manage Central Asia’s Uyghur diaspora of about 300,000 people. The issue has today been brought under control, all of the autonomist Uyghur associations have been dismantled, the Central Asian governments are in control of their own Uyghur minorities, and the bilateral friendship declarations signed between the Central Asian states and China all include provisions for the common struggle against separatism, and sometimes for procedures to expel Uyghur dissidents to China.[7] The symbol of Chinese security involvement in Central Asia is obviously the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Once the SCO’s original aims of demilitarising the Sino-Soviet border zones and of facilitating their delimitation were attained, it set itself the goal of forging a common struggle against the so-called “three evils” (san gu shili) of fundamentalism, extremism and secessionism.[8] The SCO has helped to ease long-standing tensions between the Russian and Chinese worlds, to put in place cooperative mechanisms for former Soviet states to learn about their Chinese neighbour, and to establish a collective discourse on the common threats they face, one based on China’s own security terminology. Now that this threshold of development and institutionalisation has been reached, the organisation faces new challenges. Since 2008, the SCO seems to have entered a growth crisis. It has not defined any positive long-term goals; has no well-defined priorities; and refuses to discuss divergences in its members’ priorities.[9] It has, in particular, failed to coordinate joint activities against drug-trafficking, or to become a forum for discussion on the water issue despite such calls from Bishkek, Dushanbe and Tashkent. The obsession with consensus and for maintaining the status quo has hampered the SCO’s effectiveness and risks delegitimising it in the future.

The gap between the SCO’s narrative about the fight against non-traditional threats and its mechanisms that enable collective, or at least concerted action, is immense. As it was not designed to be a supranational organisation, since this would imply the reduced sovereignty of its members, the SCO does not have a defined military structure like the CSTO. It is neither a military defence alliance like NATO, nor does it seek to create multilateral military or police units. Despite the establishment of an anti-terrorist centre in Tashkent in 2004 – the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), designed to develop common approaches to combat terrorist movements – any multilateral security dynamic remains embryonic.[10] The SCO does not provide any military guarantees in cases of domestic crisis. Nor does it offer the structure of a “rapid intervention force”, or a collective troop force like that of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Russia, which would make it possible to intervene in natural disaster situations or a refugee crisis. It has never managed to react to large-scale crises in any one of its member states. Its silence during the Kyrgyz events of 2010 confirmed this, as does its incapacity to offer anything collective to a state that is as strategic as Afghanistan, albeit a non-member. Its greatest successes are probably the extradition treaty between member states and the formation of a ‘black list’, which includes about one thousand people and forty organisations considered as ‘terrorists’.[11] The SCO seems therefore primarily to be a reflection of Chinese willingness to support a so-called “healthy Central Asian order”, free of the “three evils” and devoid of pro-Western forces that might act to destabilise China.

For the time being, Chinese bilateral military presence in Central Asia is also limited, unable to rival Russia’s major role. Its aid is restricted to electronic material, automobiles and textiles, and includes almost no military hardware sales. However, Astana has expressed its intention to obtain military equipment from the PLA and hopes to take advantage of free transfers of decommissioned military assets when the Chinese army engages in modernizing its equipment.[12] Finally, aid in the form of training is, while modest, slowly developing. Exchanges have been organised to train military cadres, but cultural differences, the language barrier and the cautious attitude of the Central Asians hinders prospects. Courses for Central Asian officers in Chinese military academies are taught in Russian, as Chinese instructors are unable to speak Central Asian languages or Central Asian officers, Chinese. For the Central Asian governments, materiel and training from the PLA is a still theoretical balance to the supplies of outdated Soviet equipment, but for the time being Chinese aid remains focused on nonmilitary support and involves little training.[13]

Development

China has formulated a relatively well-structured narrative on the security-development nexus, originally based on its analysis of its domestic situation, and subsequently transcribed onto foreign policy. Ever since the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2007, Hu Jintao has promulgated the concept of a “harmonious society” (hexie shehui), which is to say one in which development and security are linked together. Due to the country’s extraordinary boom Chinese society today appears highly divided, involving contradictory interests and a sharp rise in economic and cultural disparities between peasants, workers, the middle-classes and the elites, but also between the maritime and continental regions. The need for a better distribution of wealth is therefore considered by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a solution to a sizeable political liability that might imperil the regime’s stability and the state’s long-term interests. As far as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is concerned, Beijing, taking its “harmonious society” principle as a point of departure, believes that the political and ethnic tensions among the Uyghurs will attenuate with economic development and their integration into overall Chinese dynamism. Beijing has therefore adopted a carrot-and-stick policy. The carrot is the economic development of Xinjiang ($300 billion of planned investments by 2015); while the stick is the willingness to eliminate any elements the Chinese authorities deem to be potentially subversive. However, ethnic riots in 2008, 2009 and 2011 confirmed the inadequacy of the Chinese strategy. Investing massively in the local economy and infrastructures is not enough to defuse secessionist tensions and identity conflicts.[14]

This narrative also has an external component. Under Hu Jintao, the CCP’s aim has been to establish China unambiguously as one of the leaders of a so-called multipolar world, increasingly confident and keen to show it can undertake greater responsibilities in international affairs. This presumes that it can speak as an equal with the major powers, develop cooperation with regional organisations and international donors, as well as foster relations with developing countries by stressing common prosperity. Henceforth, China aims to be a “responsible stakeholder”; an approach that it has tried to stress in its dealings with Africa, Latin America and Central Asia, through a rhetoric of mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, but also via mechanisms of development aid.[15] China has no official definition or central institution for its development aid. In of-ficial rhetoric, however, it does not use this term and prefers to talk about “cooperation” between the developing countries.[16] It wants to be an alternative to the major international donors, even though Beijing also participates financially in the Asian Development Bank, in a few of the UNDP’s African programmes, and, as regards Central Asia, has also invested in the CAREC programme.

In the case of Central Asia, this translates into a “good neighbourhood” principle centred on massive involvement in the construction and upgrading of extraction infrastructures (the Caspian Sea- Xinjiang pipeline for Kazakh oil, the Sino-Central Asian gas pipeline, the massive purchase of Kazakh uranium, and a growing interest in rare minerals in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), transport facilities (upgrading roads, construction of tunnels and bridges in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, building turnkey hydroelectric stations, and delivery of railway material) and communications (huge investments in mobile telephony, internet networks, optic fibres, etc.). China has become, in a mere decade, the main trading partner of Central Asia, with €23 billion in trade in 2010.[17] Beijing sees poverty as the major matrix of the destabilisations in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and the largest share of its aid is directed to those two countries. In 2004, it announced a loan of $900 million to Central Asia, most of which was given to Dushanbe; and in 2009, China extended $10 billion to Kazakhstan, half of the sum being made up of a loan from the Export- Import Bank of China (Eximbank) to its counterpart, the Development Bank of Kazakhstan.[18]

Chinese aid for development is granted either by subsidies, which are generally paid in kind through delivery of goods and material in order to reduce the risks of corruption, or by preferential or concessional credit.[19] Though the money from loans is, on paper, granted to the beneficiary country, it is generally transferred to the company or enterprise in charge of the project, which makes it possible to keep the money within the Chinese system.[20] China’s aid has seen successes for a number of reasons: it is not conditional, as it is not dependent upon reforms of any kind; loans are offered at very advantageous rates; and the “turn-key” services proposed by Chinese companies are inexpensive. However, Chinese aid does not involve competencebuilding and does not help Central Asian economies to become autonomous actors in their own development. On the contrary, it exacerbates their economic dependency on Chinese aid and products. This aid is therefore not devoid of financial and strategic interests. China is trying to create new export markets for its products; landing contracts for its companies, which are the main benefactors of its bank loans; guaranteeing itself new energy supplies; and making Central Asian governments its “debtors” or even its “vassals”.

[1] B. Gill, Rising Star. China’s New Security Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007); Hongyi Lai, The Domestic Sources of China’s Foreign Policy: Regimes, Leadership, Priorities and Process (London: Routledge, 2010).

[2] G. Kemp, The East Moves West. India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010).

[3] See M. Laruelle, J.-F. Huchet, S. Peyrouse and B. Balci (eds.), China and India in Central Asia. A new “Great Game”? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

[4] C. Mackerras, and M. Clarke (eds.), China, Xinjiang and Central Asia: History, transition and crossborder interaction into the 21st century (New York: Routledge, 2009).

[5] M. Laruelle, and S. Peyrouse, The Chinese Factor in Central Asia: Domestic Order and Social Change (London-New York: Hurst-Columbia University Press, 2012).

[6] In the framework of the “Far West” development programme, Beijing has increased its withdrawal of water upstream from the Ili and the Irtysh, thus reducing the water reserves available to Kazakhstan.

[7] A. Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest for Central Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[8] Also called the three extremisms (sange jiduanzhuyi) or the “Shanghai spirit”. See, for example, M. Oresman, “Catching the Shanghai Spirit”, Journal of Social Sciences (Shanghai), no. 12, December 2003, republished at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/05/01/catching_ the_shanghai_spirit.

[9] A. Cooley, “The Stagnation of the SCO. Competing Agendas and Divergent Interests in Central Asia”, PONARS Memo no. 85, September 2009.

[10] A.J.K. Bailes, P. Dunay, P. Guang, and M. Troitskiy, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation”, SIPRI Policy Paper no. 17, May 2007.

[11] More in A. Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest for Central Asia.

[12] S. Peyrouse, “Sino-Kazakh Relations: A Nascent Strategic Partnership”, China Brief, vol. 8, no. 21, 2008, pp. 11-15.

[13] S. Peyrouse, “Military Cooperation between China and Central Asia: Breakthrough, Limits, and Prospects”, China Brief, 5 March 2010.

[14] S. Peyrouse, “external pageSecurity and Islam in Asia: Lessons from China’s Uyghur minoritycall_made”, FRIDE Policy Brief, no. 87, July 2011.

[15] J.M. Blanchard, “Harmonious World and China’s Foreign Economic Policy: Features, Implications, and Challenges”, Journal of Chinese Political Science, vol. 13, no. 2, 2008, pp. 165-192.

[16] N. Kassenova, Aide au développement : la percée chinoise au Tadjikistan et au Kirghizstan (Paris: IFRI, Series Russie. NEI. Vision, no. 36, 2009), p. 8.

[17] external page2011 European Commission’s statisticscall_made (accessed 22 October 2011).

[18] “external pageChina loans 10 bln dollars to Kazakhstancall_made”, Energy Daily, 17 April 2009

[19] N. Kassenova, Aide au développement : la percée chinoise au Tadjikistan et au Kirghizstan, p. 10.

[20] Ibid, p. 11.