Xi Jinping's Central Asia trip aims to strengthen China-Russia ties as China seeks to increase influence | Xi Jinping

Leaders of China, Russia and Global South meet in Kazakhstan for the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a group that has been described as anti-NATO.

The summit is part of China's push to establish what it calls a multilateral world order that is not dominated by the United States. But it is also a forum in which the strategic partnership between China and Russia will be tested by their competing desires for influence in Central Asia.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Astana on Tuesday for a five-day trip that will include state visits to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. More than a decade ago, Xi used an official visit to Kazakhstan to launch the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive Chinese development project that has seen $9.55 billion (8 billion euros) invested in Kazakhstan since 2013, according to the China Global Investment Tracker.

The investment is part of China’s campaign in Central Asia to help countries develop outside Russia’s shadow. The war in Ukraine has shown Central Asian countries that diversifying their ties with the world is key to their success in the region, said Temur Umarov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Although former Soviet republics have been trying to de-Russify their countries since the fall of the Soviet Union, the war in Ukraine has made the process of replacing Russia even more difficult. [with China] It will happen faster, he said.

Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have stressed the importance of establishing a multipolar world order to countries in the Global South that feel abandoned by U.S.-dominated geopolitics. Zhou Rong, a senior researcher at Beijing's Renmin University, said in a Chinese state media report released Sunday that the SCO sends a message to the Western world that many different voices from emerging economies need to be heard and represented.

Relations between Xi and Putin, which the two men pledged to deepen in May, could be strained this week by the shadow of Putin’s recent visit to North Korea. Putin signed a mutual security pact with Kim Jong-un, an agreement that China says could create the appearance of a Cold War-style bloc and undermine Beijing’s influence in East Asia.

In recent months, Central Asia’s role in facilitating the flow of goods from China to Russia to support Moscow’s war machine has come under scrutiny. Chinese exports to Kyrgyzstan have increased from $7.5 billion in 2021 to nearly $20 billion in 2023, with much of that going to Russia, according to the China-Russia Report newsletter. Analysts say countries like Kyrgyzstan will be impervious to Western pressure to intercept that trade. Not having good relations with China is completely out of the question, says Niva Yau, a fellow at the Atlantic Council.

This week, the SCO has many more pieces on its chessboard. Created in 1996 as the Shanghai Five, the group began as a forum for founding members China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to resolve their border disputes. Since then, its membership and scope have expanded to include countries as diverse and mutually at odds as India, Pakistan, and Iran. This year, Belarus is expected to be welcomed into the group.

But the growing size of the group, which already represents about 40% of the world's population, does not necessarily make the summit more relevant. India's newly re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to skip the summit, although he plans to travel to Moscow next week to meet with Putin.

ignore newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Within the SCO, some countries have fundamentally different views on almost every issue, Umarov says. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario that could lead India and Pakistan to put aside their problems and mutual conflict in favor of something else. India and China have similarly tense relations; Modi’s trip to Russia is partly aimed at ensuring that India-Russia relations are not jeopardized by Moscow’s strengthening ties with Beijing.