With Russia mired in a long war in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on China for supplies, Beijing is moving quickly to expand its dominance in Central Asia, a region once in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
Russia, for its part, is pushing hard.
As the leaders of Central Asian countries meet with the presidents of China and Russia this week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, China’s growing presence is visible in the region. New railway lines and other infrastructure are being built, while trade and investment are increasing.
Flag-waving Kazakh children who sang in Chinese greeted Xi Jinping, China’s leader, upon his arrival in Astana on Tuesday. He praised the ties with Kazakhstan as a friendship that has “endured for generations”.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is expected to arrive on Wednesday for the start of the meeting in Astana, an annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional grouping dominated by Beijing. The forum for years focused heavily on security issues. But as the group has expanded its membership, China and Russia have used it as a platform to showcase their ambitions to reshape a world order dominated by the United States.
The group, which was founded by China and Russia in 2001 with the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has expanded in recent years to include Pakistan, India and Iran.
Although China has expanded its economic influence across Central Asia, it still faces challenges in its diplomacy as Russia seeks to tilt the balance of membership in the Shanghai forum in its favor.
Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko is expected to attend this year’s summit. He is the closest foreign ally of Mr. Putin, who relies heavily on Russia’s economic and political support to stay in power. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Belarus will be named a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at this year’s summit. This would be a small diplomatic victory for the Kremlin.
A bigger setback for Beijing is that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is skipping the summit this year. Mr Modi plans to visit Moscow next week to hold his own talks with Mr Putin and is instead sending foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to the summit in Astana.
After Mr. Putin’s recent trip to two of China’s other neighbors, North Korea and Vietnam, this upcoming trip by Mr. Modi to Moscow shows that Mr. Putin is still able to weave his own diplomatic relations separately from Beijing, Theresa Fallon said. the director of the Center for Russian, European, Asian Studies in Brussels.
“He’s saying, ‘I have other options,'” Ms. Fallon said.
India had joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at Russia’s behest in 2017, when Pakistan also joined with China’s encouragement. But India’s relations with China have cooled since then, following border skirmishes between its troops in 2020 and 2022.
While Mr. Modi had favored closer ties when he took office a decade ago, the two countries no longer even allow direct commercial flights between them.
India is more concerned about the region’s geopolitical balance of power as China’s influence grows and Russia’s declines, said Harsh V. Pant, professor of international relations at King’s College London. China and Russia have also forged increasingly friendly relations with Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which has ruled the country since US forces leave in 2021 and has long sided with Pakistan against India.
“So far when Russia was the dominant player, India was fine with that,” Mr. Pant said. “But as China becomes more important economically and more powerful in Central Asia, and Russia becomes a smaller partner, India’s concerns will grow.”
In broader terms, however, Russia’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is largely a rearguard action to offset the region’s seemingly inexorable pivot toward China. Mr. Putin relies heavily on China to sustain his economy and military production amid Western sanctions, and over the years his government has come to accept Beijing’s growing ties to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The huge gap between Russia’s economic power and Beijing’s makes direct competition in Central Asia futile for the Kremlin.
Instead, the Kremlin has sought to retain a measure of leverage over its former satellites on issues that remain vital to its national interests, including participation in largely symbolic events such as the Astana summit. On Wednesday, Mr Putin will hold six separate meetings with Asian heads of state in Astana, according to Russian state media.
Russia wants to maintain access to Central Asian markets to circumvent Western sanctions. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has acquired billions of dollars worth of Western goods using Central Asian intermediaries. These include consumer goods such as luxury cars, as well as electronic components that have been used in military production.
Russia also relies heavily on millions of migrants from Central Asia to support its economy, as well as to rebuild the occupied parts of Ukraine.
Finally, Russia wants to work with the governments of the predominantly Muslim nations of Central Asia on security, particularly the threat of terrorism. Those threats were exposed earlier this year when a group of Tajik civilians killed 145 people at a Moscow concert hall in Russia’s deadliest terror attack in more than a decade. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Russia and China are not only competing in Central Asia. They often cooperate because they perceive a common interest in having stable regimes in the region that have little or no coordination with Western militaries, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research group.
“They see regional stability anchored in authoritarian regimes that are secular, non-Muslim and, to some extent, repressive at home,” he said.
William Fierman, professor emeritus of Central Asian studies at Indiana University, said Beijing also faces deep public concern in Central Asia that China may use its huge population and migration to overwhelm the sparsely populated region. Soviet authorities nurtured those suspicions for decades, and even a younger generation that didn’t grow up under Soviet rule now seems to share those concerns, he said.
In Astana, the elephant in the room is likely to be the war in Ukraine. Few experts expect much public discussion of the war in a forum dominated by Beijing, given its implicit support for the Russian war effort.
Mr. Xi will also use his visit to promote his vision of building better transportation links across the region, said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. After the summit, Mr. Xi is scheduled to pay a state visit to Tajikistan, where the US State Department recently estimated that more than 99 percent of foreign investment comes from China.
Much of China’s investment in Central Asia is in infrastructure. China signed an agreement with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan last month to build a new railway line in both countries. The rail line will give China a shortcut to overland trade with Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and beyond to the Middle East and Europe. China has tried for the past 12 years to expand rail traffic across Russia to transport its exports to Europe, but now wants to add a southern route.
“From a long-term, strategic perspective, this railway is very important,” said Niva Yau, a non-resident fellow specializing in China’s relations with Central Asia at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research group.
Suhasini Raj and Li You contributed reporting and research.
