The Marmot’s Hole

NYT had an interesting piece on Chinese maneuvering in Central Asia — definitely something you want to take a look at. Here’s some of it:

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.”

Make sure to read the rest on your own.