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The Jamestown Foundation (19 October 2020)

Sergey Sukhankin

Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of a three-part China Brief series about the Chinese government’s efforts to exert greater influence over regional security arrangements and policy in the states of Central Asia. The first part, “The Security Component of the BRI in Central Asia, Part One: Chinese and Regional Perspectives on Security in Central Asia,” appeared on July 15; the second part, “The Security Component of the BRI in Central Asia, Part Two: China’s (Para)Military Efforts to Promote Security in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan,” was published in our August 12 issue. In this third and final installment, Jamestown Fellow Sergey Sukhankin analyzes the ways in which China’s growing presence is affecting developments and security relationships in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

Introduction

Addressing the 56th Munich Security Conference in February, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized Central Asia’s strategic importance for the realization of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the crown jewel foreign policy program of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Belt and Road News, June 4). President Tokayev’s speech failed to mention that the opportunities for regional development along the BRI are balanced by security-related challenges. The first two articles of this series provided an overview of the general security environment in the region, followed by an analysis of the PRC`s security activities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (China Brief, August 12). This third article will examine the PRC’s military and paramilitary security initiatives in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan—three of the larger and more economically developed countries in the macro-region of Central Asia.

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