A few years ago there was a joke doing the rounds amongst diplomats and international businesspeople. That joke took the former of a spurious headline from the front page of a Russian newspaper. The headline supposedly read, ‘All quiet on the Polish Chinese Border’.
Although admittedly not the funniest joke, that attempt at wit did carry a germ of truth. A truth it might argued becomes more credible with each passing year; that China’s success, especially in Central Asia, will be to Russia’s cost.
That China needs international markets and raw resources – food, rare earth minerals, metal ores, energy – to sustain its growth is not news. Neither is its declared intention of economic expansion under its One Belt and One Road policy. Consequently, as can be witnessed, China’s expansion of interest in its near abroad comes as no surprise. Probably by good fortune for China rather than design, although slightly lagging, this rise in Chinese economic activity has coincided with the creation of the independent, and independently minded, post-Soviet Central Asian states – thus providing China with both an opportunity and motive to look west – and inevitably bringing it into rivalry for these Central Asian resources with their traditional ‘owner’, Russia.
China’s relentless economic expansion, especially across Russia’s near abroad, is what led to the spoof headline. Undoubtedly China has tried and continues to try to wrest influence away from Russia and to itself. To do this, China offers seemingly cosy loans and trade deals and claims not to interfere with national and local politics. Russia, increasingly unable match China economically and politically, is being forced to mount rear-guard actions in Central Asia. This is especially so as the old pro-Russian Soviet elites and their state leaders die away and are replaced by more independently minded elites. A very simple manifestation of this shift is in the education of the region’s ruling classes who now favour Chinese universities over those of Russia for their children.
Since the mid-1980s China’s traders, followed by its diplomat’s, have spread their influence west. First in the newly independent Central Asian states on China’s western borders, then across the Steppe through Kazakhstan, over the Caspian into the Urals and on into southern Europe. China’s economic interests have also developed north into the Russian Far East where this seemingly relentless search for resources – water, minerals and especially energy – now sees Siberia and its vast woodland resources being nibbled away by Chinese settlers; a process embedded in China’s proclaimed, One Belt One Road Policy of access to world markets and resources.
Whether we ever see the headline for real is doubtful. But the fact of China’s continuing and deepening economic interest in Russia’s backyard is there to be witnessed. How the struggle between a former colonial power and an expanding China will end one cannot foretell. But if there is a straw in the wind, it is that of the One Belt One Road policy, or as it is more popularly known, China’s New Silk Road, is only just starting and that for Central Asia and its natural resources there are going to be bumps along the way.
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