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China Moves Toward
Another West: Central Asia
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: March 28, 2004
LLASHANKOU, China — With its dozen blue-roofed villas,
a brand-new sauna house, casino and three-star hotel
constituting the heart of what this frigid outpost at
the border of Central Asia fancies as downtown, this
would seem an unlikely spot for the economic and
political reordering of an entire region.
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An agreement this month to build a oil pipeline
through this tiny hamlet makes it the center of an
explosion of economic activity in what only recently
was one of the most backward corners of China. The
pipeline will traverse Alashankou as it snakes its way
past the snowbound mountain ranges of Central Asia,
still filled with tribal horsemen driving herds of
goats and camels, on its way to China's industrialized
east.
China's western ambitions do not end with the purchase
of huge amounts of energy, the main products that
Central Asia has to offer, international political
analysts, Chinese and regional officials agree.
Beijing's bid to secure vital fuel supplies is part of
a bold but little noticed push to increase its
influence vastly in a part of the world long dominated
by its historic rival in the region, Russia.
China's thrust into Central Asia comes as an almost
natural extension of its ambitious efforts to populate
and develop Xinjiang, a far-western region the size of
Texas with 18 million people, which seems
underpopulated compared with much of China. In doing
so, China hopes to neutralize a threat of separatism
by the region's Uighur minority, whose Turkik language
and Islamic faith draw them toward kinsmen in
Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics of the
region.
With Russia in sharp relative decline, a booming China
looms as the economic locomotive, and even the model,
for the entire region. That means China finds itself
in a position to call the tune in a way that it has
scarcely felt confident about in the past. Most
immediately, this means being able to hold China's
neighbors to pledges not to support Islamic militancy
or Uighur separatism.
Increasingly, there are signs that Chinese influence
is spreading. In November, at an international
conference on Kazakhstan's financial reforms,
representatives of the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank found that the governor of the People's
Bank of China was the most sought-out guest.
Recently, analysts say, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan
have followed the Kazakh example in looking toward
China, rather than to Western-dominated international
financial institutions, for new economic thinking.
China's authoritarian politics and central planning
also have a strong appeal for many of the former
Soviet republics of the region.
Meanwhile, China has been busily building new security
relationships in Central Asia to match its growing
economic ties in that region, an area of increasing
strategic competition involving China, Russia, India,
Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. The United States has not
been absent from this competition, having acquired a
military base, known as Camp Stronghold Freedom, in
Uzbekistan, as well as a presence in Afghanistan.
"Everybody is trying to secure access to this region's
oil," said Stephen J. Blank, a professor of national
security studies at the Strategic Studies Institute of
the United States Army War College, in Carlisle, Pa. "The
Chinese are very nervous about American bases in the
region. The Russians are trying to set up an OPEC-like
cartel to tie down gas in Central Asia, and the
Indians have acquired a base in Tajikistan.
"It is not Kipling's `Great Game' yet," Dr. Blank said,
"but it is a hell of a contest in its own right:
military and economic and everything else."
China has increased its security ties through the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a six-member group
founded in 2001 that includes Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. China has
committed itself for the first time to a regional
collective security agreement focused on enforcement
of borders. Beijing has followed up with joint
military maneuvers with Kyrgyzstan, and with the
continued development of rapid deployment forces based
in western China, which could be used to put down
trouble in Tibet or Xinjiang, or to help enforce
border security along with other members of the
Shanghai group.
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