Statecraft in the Steppes: Central Asia’s Relations with China

Journal of Contemporary China ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjcc20 Statecraft in the Steppes: Central Asia’s Relations with China Li-Chen Sim & Farkhod Aminjonov To cite this article: Li-Chen Sim & Farkhod Aminjonov (2022): Statecraft in the Steppes: Central Asia’s Relations with China, Journal of Contemporary China, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2022.2136937 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2022.2136937 © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 20 Oct 2022. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1318 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjcc20 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2022.2136937 Statecraft in the Steppes: Central Asia’s Relations with China Li-Chen Sima and Farkhod Aminjonovb a Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates; bNational Defence College, United Arab Emirates ABSTRACT Central Asia and China enjoy a mutually beneficial, albeit hugely asymmetrical, relationship. Nevertheless, leaders in Central Asia have occasionally and selectively resisted a broadening and deepening of their relations with China. Framed by a ‘hedging’ foreign policy approach, this article suggests that the practice of hedging arises not just from structural and exogenous conditions but is also facilitated by domestic considerations peculiar to each Central Asian state. The claim here is not that leaders in Central Asia are effective or proficient hedgers; rather, that some are attempting to use hedging as part of their statecraft. The varying ability of leaders in Central Asia to hedge, manage, and negotiate their relations with China is often under-appreciated but deserves to be highlighted as an evolving approach. Introduction Post-Soviet Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan— and China enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship. Trade has skyrocketed from US$1.7 billion in 2000 to almost US$40 billion in 2019 thanks to the region’s role as a key energy and commodity pillar of China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). Consequently, China is the largest trade partner of all five countries bar Kazakhstan where China is second behind Russia; it is also among the largest investors in these countries.1 For Central Asia, previously landlocked states are becoming increasingly ‘land-linked’ and ‘linked in’. The World Bank estimates, for instance, that by 2030 these states are expected to reap a 1.1% increase in gross domestic product, real income growth of at least 1.24%, export growth of 1.9%, and a 7.3% increase in foreign direct investment flows as a result of BRI-related transport improvements; complementary changes to non-trade barriers would augment these outcomes.2 At the same time, Central Asian leaders have, on rare occasions, signalled concerns about China’s outsized impact on their sovereignty and regime security. These include lingering territorial claims amidst rising Chinese nationalism, potential social and political contagion in the event of a collapse of one-party rule in China, and blowback from local populations concerned about BRI-related issues over jobs and the environment. In this connection, the evolving and varying abilities of Central Asian leaders to navigate between Sinophilia and Sinophobia or what Silvius has termed ‘Sino-centering’ and ‘Sino-deflecting’ tendencies,3 motivates this research. The impression of Central Asia as a hapless policy-taker permeates many conventional analyses of the region. Blank notes that such narratives routinely ‘appropriate Central Asia for what it can do for CONTACT Farkhod Aminjonov [email protected] National Defence College, United Arab Emirates 1 See Figures 1 and 2 in the Appendix. 2 World Bank, Belt and Road Economics: Opportunities and Risks of Transport Corridors (World Bank 2019). 3 Ray Silvius, ‘China’s Belt and Road Initiative as nascent world order structure and concept? Between Sino-Centering and SinoDeflecting’ [2021] 30(128) Journal of Contemporary China 314–29. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 2 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV us rather than what it is to and for the people who live there’.4 The region is typically perceived as a ‘battleground’,5 a ‘geostrategic playground of the world’s major civilizations’,6 or as an arena that facilitates the development of strategic convergence between Russia and China.7 Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made light of Kazakh statehood, a noted Russian academic observed in 2016 that Central Asian states ‘hardly have a clue or even properly reflect on a few security-related dilemmas’,8 while a 2018 book on Eurasia sponsored by a well-known Russian think-tank, the Valdai Club, offered perspectives by major powers while omitting viewpoints from its inhabitants, including Central Asia.9 By contrast, works by Kavalski, Cooley, Laruelle and Perouse have increased appreciation of the role and interests of local actors in regional affairs.10 Nevertheless, writing in 2021, Kazantsev et al observed that while there was a large body of work on Russia-China relations in Central Asia, ‘far fewer works . . . consider the stances of Central Asian actors’.11 This article argues that some Central Asian states possess the resources and capabilities to exercise agency vis-à-vis their relations with China more often than is generally recognised in the extant literature. What resources are available to them, which tool of statecraft they deploy, and how effective these efforts are comprise focusing questions in our research. We frame our research with a theoretically-driven approach in foreign policy analysis known variously as ‘hedging’, ‘omnibalancing’, or ‘multi-vectorism’. Although the foreign policies of Central Asian states have been labelled as hedging or one of its associated terms, conceptual discussions were largely absent in these works. Consequently, our contribution lies in a more systematic approach to examining hedging behaviour. First, we engage with hedging as a theory by arguing that hedging becomes a viable foreign policy option for secondary powers only under certain conditions; it is hence not as ubiquitous as it seems. Second, we suggest that hedging in Central Asia arises from domestic considerations (such as governance deficits, limited economic reforms, and concerns about regime security) as much as from exogenous pressures. We do this by offering empirical evidence of hedging behaviour in institutional, economic, and security settings. Third, we go beyond categories of hedging to identify the nuances that render some Central Asian states ‘light’ hedgers and others ‘heavy’ hedgers. This comparative analysis draws upon studies of hedging in Southeast Asia and in so doing adds value to mostly single-country studies of hedging in Central Asia.12 Ultimately, this article argues that the ability of leaders in Central Asia to selectively manage and negotiate their relations with China is a significant but often under-appreciated part of the narrative about Central Asia— China relations. Central Asian countries are not the equals of China, but neither are they mere policytakers nor are they simply ‘Sinostan’.13 4 Stephen Blank, ‘Rethinking Central Asia and its security issues’ [2012] 28 UNISCI Discussion Papers. 5 Frederick Kempe, ‘Central Asia emerges as strategic battleground’ Wall Street Journal (6 May 2006) <https://www.wsj.com/ articles/SB114773013006053364&gt> accessed 15 June 2020. 6 Yu Bin and John Feffer, ‘Central Asia between competition and cooperation’ Foreign Policy In Focus (29 November 2006) <https:// fpif.org/central_asia_between_competition_and_cooperation/&gt> accessed 20 January 2021. 7 Julie Wilhelmsen and Geir Flikke, ‘Chinese—Russian convergence and Central Asia’ [2011] 16(4) Geopolitics 865–901. 8 Safranchuk Ivan, ‘Central Asian regimes: stability and reform’ in Piotr Dutkiewicz, Richard Sakwa and Fyodor Lukyanov (eds), Eurasia on the Edge: Managing Complexity (Lexington Books 2018) 181. 9 Piotr Dutkiewicz, Richard Sakwa and Fyodor Lukyanov (eds), Eurasia on the Edge: Managing Complexity (Lexington Books 2018). 10 Emilian Kavalski, Central Asia and the Rise of Normative Powers: Contextualizing the Security Governance of the European Union, China, and India (Bloomsbury Pub 2012); Alexander Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia, Great Games, Local Rules (Oxford University Press 2012); Marlène Laruelle and Sébastien Peyrouse, The Chinese Question in Central Asia: Domestic Order, Social Change and the Chinese Factor (Hurst 2012). 11 Andrei Kazantsev, Svetlana Medvedeva, and Ivan Safranchuk, ‘Between Russia and China: Central Asia in Greater Eurasia’ [2021] 12(1) Journal of Eurasian Studies 58. 12 See Assel G. Bitabarova, ‘Unpacking Sino-Central Asian engagement along the New Silk Road: A case study of Kazakhstan’ [2018] 7(2) Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 149–73; Luca Anceschi, Analysing Kazakhstan’s Foreign Policy: Regime Neo-Eurasianism in the Nazarbaev Era (Routledge 2020); Kemel Toktomushev, ‘Regime security and Kyrgyz foreign policy’ (PhD diss., University of Exeter 2014). 13 From Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen, Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire (Oxford University Press 2022). JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 3 The rest of the article is organised as follows. Section one provides a brief overview of hedging in international relations. The intention is not to engage in a comprehensive literature review of the concept but to highlight the conditions which facilitate hedging and to underline their applicability to our study of Central Asia—China relations. Section two identifies various hedging pathways and how these are deployed by leaders in Central Asia. Section three examines the interplay between the exogenous and endogenous sources of hedging by Central Asian states and suggests why some states are more successful than others. Section four examines China’s apparent tolerance of hedging by these states, in particular the extent to which this is predicated upon support for authoritarian values and political systems. The concluding section summarizes our argument and suggests how hedging in Central Asia’s relationship with China may evolve within the next few years especially given the new regime in Afghanistan. Concept and Practice of Hedging ‘Hedging’ has become an increasingly established concept in international relations. Over the last decade, the number of articles published on this topic in Scopus-indexed journals has grown from 9 in 2011 to 42 in 2020 (see Figure 3). Much of the scholarly literature has focused on the foreign policy calculus of countries in East and Southeast Asia, although the Middle East has attracted increasing attention of late. Indonesia’s ‘thousand friends, zero enemies’ approach since 2010, Vietnam’s ‘multidirectionalism’, and Armenia’s ‘complementarism’ are variations of hedging.14 Hedging is most often deployed by small and medium states to maximise the twin imperatives of security and autonomy in the face of relatively circumscribed material capabilities, although some scholars also use the term with regard to the foreign policy of major powers.15 In Central Asia, hedging is most often associated with Kazakhstan, the region’s earliest proponent of a ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy; with Tajikistan, whose ‘multi-vector policy’ is enshrined in its constitution and foreign policy concept; and with Kyrgyzstan, whose founding president argued that multi-vectorism did not mean ‘either/or’ but ‘and/and’ in terms of relations with major powers.16 Goh offers an oft-quoted definition of hedging as a set of strategies that cultivate a ‘middle position’ if a state ‘cannot decide upon more straightforward alternatives such as balancing, bandwagoning, or neutrality’.17 The flexibility ascribed to hedging appears attractive because pure balancing against a rival could be costly in terms of defence expenditure and the possibility of ‘entrapment’ in an unwanted conflict, while pure bandwagoning with an ally may entail a loss of sovereignty that is unacceptable to domestic elite stakeholders. Our article, however, conceptualizes hedging as more than fence-sitting. We adopt Kuik’s formulation of hedging as the concurrent and selective pursuit of two mutually opposite or countervailing policies; one set pleases a big power while the other action defies the same power.18 In this regard, to equate hedging with foreign policy diversification per se short-changes the former. Suorsa and Thompson for instance, describe 14 See Evi Fitriani, ‘Yudhoyono’s foreign policy: is Indonesia a rising power?’ in Edward Aspinall, Marcus Meitzner and Dirk Tomsa (eds), The Yudhoyono Presidency: Indonesia’s Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS Publishing 2015); Nicholas Chapman, ‘Mechanisms of Vietnam’s Multidirectional Foreign Policy’ [2017] 36(2) Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 31–69; Sergey Minasyan, ‘Multi-vectorism in the foreign policy of post-Soviet Eurasian states’ [2012] 20(3) Demokratizatsiya 268–73. 15 See, for example, Evelyn Goh, Meeting the China Challenge: The U.S. in Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies (East-West Center 2005) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep06541&gt> accessed 18 May 2021; Suisheng Zhao and Xiong Qi, ‘Hedging and geostrategic balance of East Asian countries toward China’ [2016] 25(100) Journal of Contemporary China 485–99; Khalid S. Almezaini and Jean-Marc Rickli (eds), The Small Gulf States: Foreign and Security Policies before and after the Arab Spring (Routledge 2016); Stefan Meister, ‘Hedging and wedging: strategies to contest Russia’s leadership in Post-Soviet Eurasia’ in Hannes Ebert and Daniel Flemes (eds), Regional Powers and Contested Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) 301–26. For hedging by major powers see Xiaodi Ye, ‘Explaining China’s hedging to the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy’ [2020] 20(3) China Review 205–38; Harsh V. Pant and Yogesh Joshi, ‘Indian Foreign Policy Responds to the U.S. Pivot’ [2015] 19 Asia Policy 89–114. 16 Toktomushev (n 12) 121. 17 Goh (n 15) 2. 18 Cheng-Chwee Kuik, ‘How do weaker states hedge? Unpacking ASEAN states’ alignment behavior towards China’ [2016] 25(100) Journal of Contemporary China 500–14. 4 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV ‘omnidirectional hedging’ as ‘the diversification of states’ economic, diplomatic, and security relations with multiple regional stakeholders’19; in a similar vein, Medeiros likens hedging to a ‘geopolitical insurance strategy’ in case engagement with a big power fails.20 However, betting on multiple partners to avoid risk exposure to security and autonomy is just one element of hedging; it also necessitates placing bets against those same partners. Conceiving of hedging as multiple countervailing actions narrows the frequency with which the policy occurs but does address criticisms of its vagueness.21 A second operational condition for hedging to occur is ‘heterarchy’ or the existence of multiple hierarchies at the global and regional levels, resulting in high uncertainty over power dynamics and rank.22 The rise of a more multipolar world with diffused power structure among several large powers has increased the policy space for small and medium states thereby rendering hedging less costly than under unipolar or bipolar conditions. At the same time, pressures from rival states at the regional level reinforce incentives for hedging.23 Among the Persian Gulf states, for example, perceptions of a weakening US commitment have resulted in an evolution in policy towards Iran —which they view as having facilitated the growth of a Shiite crescent with the potential to destabilize Sunni Gulf regimes—from one of balancing to hedging. A regional security complex is, consequently, an ideal breeding ground for hedging to occur. As a group of states whose overriding security concerns are each other, their evolving dynamic is complicated by the penetration of extraregional powers with pre-existing rivalries at the global level.24 Hence the reason why East and Southeast Asia and the Middle East, being regional security complexes, provide exceptionally fertile ground for scholarship on hedging as noted earlier. Conceptualizing hedging in this manner suggests that hedging tends to be available only to states in a multipolar world and/or within a regional security complex. By contrast, Koga argued that since conditions that would qualify as ‘highly contested’ are subjective, this requirement should be made redundant, thereby implying that all states can avail of hedging.25 However, as we highlight in our research, the fact that there is clearly more intense competition for influence among extra-regional powers in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan partly enables them to be ‘heavier’ hedgers relative to the rest of Central Asia. The level of structural power uncertainties is therefore a crucial condition. Heterarchy in Central Asia makes its constituent states relevant case studies. Hedging is shaped by uncertainties intrinsic to multipolarity at the global level; it is also reinforced by tangled claims of regional hegemony among extra-regional powers. Several examples should suffice. Despite China’s economic primacy and extensive soft power campaigns in the region, there is little support among the region’s highly educated youths to emulate the Chinese development model; Japan, Russia, the US, and Singapore are also touted as models. Another poll suggests that the longer Central Asia 19 Olli Suorsa and Mark R. Thompson, ‘Choosing sides? Illiberalism and hedging in the Philippines and Thailand’ [2018] 2 Panorama: Insights into Asian and European Affairs 63. Evan S. Medeiros, ‘Strategic hedging and the future of Asia-pacific stability’ [2005] 29(1) The Washington Quarterly 164. 21 See the criticism by David Martin Jones and Nicole Jenne, ‘Hedging and grand strategy in Southeast Asian foreign policy’ [2022] 22(2) International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 205–35. 22 On heterarchy see Ruth Deyermond, ‘Matrioshka hegemony? Multi-levelled hegemonic competition and security in Post-Soviet Central Asia’ [2009] 35(1) Review of International Studies 151–73; Jack Donnelly, ‘The heterarchic structure of twenty-firstcentury international governance’ [2016] 14(1) The Korean Journal of International Studies 1; Alexander Korolev, ‘Shrinking room for hedging: system-unit dynamics and behavior of smaller powers’ [September 2019] 19(3) International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 419–52. 23 Jin Park, ‘Korea between the United States and China: how does hedging work?’ in Gilbert Rozman (ed), Light Or Heavy Hedging: Positioning Between China and the United States (Korea Economic Institute 2015); Daniel Twining, ‘India’s heavy hedge against China, and its new look to the United States to help’ in Gilbert Rozman (ed), Light Or Heavy Hedging: Positioning Between China and the United States (Korea Economic Institute 2015); Li-Chen Sim and Jonathan Fulton, ‘Implications of a regional order in flux: Chinese and Russian relations with the United Arab Emirates’ [2021] 34(4) Cambridge Review of International Affairs 551–69. 24 Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (University of North Carolina Press 1983); David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan, ‘The new regionalism in security affairs’, in David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan (eds), Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World (Pennsylvania State University Press 1997). 25 Kei Koga, ‘The concept of “hedging” revisited: the case of Japan’s foreign policy strategy in East Asia’s power shift’ [2018] 20(4) International Studies Review 633–60. 20 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 5 hosts Chinese investors, the less they like them.26 In the labour market, Russia’s significance as a source of employment, particularly for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, where remittances account for just over one-quarter of GDP in 2017, rivals jobs generated by Chinese investment.27 The European Union’s 2019 updated Central Asian strategy jostles with India’s ‘Connect Central Asia’ program and South Korea’s ‘New Northern Policy to broaden and deepen engagement with the region.28 IntraCentral Asian engagements offer yet another layer of heterarchy and power ambiguity. These include tensions over shared resources between energy-rich and water-rich neighbours, territorial claims, and lack of regional co-ordination institutions despite the claim by Uzbekistan’s former leader that ‘the stability of Tajikistan is the stability of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The stability of Kazakhstan is the stability of all remaining member countries [of Central Asia]’.29 Today, Central Asian and other scholars concur that the region constitutes a regional security complex, therefore lending itself to hedging strategies aimed at maximizing security and autonomy from each other as well as from major powers.30 The regional power distribution across different dimensions remains contested rather than exclusionary. This brings us to the third and final pre-condition for hedging to occur: that small and medium states within a heterarchy should possess some degree of agency. In the extant literature on small and medium states, foreign policy is largely perceived as a response to exogenous pressure from major powers or to structural characteristics of the global political system.31 At the other end of the spectrum, domestic determinants are prioritized.32 This article highlights ‘local rules’ or endogenous factors that enable or circumscribe agency in Central Asia’s relations with China; these operate in conjunction with exogenous conditions.33 We borrow from the literature on hedging in East Asia to distinguish between ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ 26 Julie Yu-Wen Chen and Soledad Jiménez-Tovar, ‘China in Central Asia: local perceptions from future elites’ [2017] 3(03) China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies 429–45; Marlene Laruelle and Dylan Royce, ‘No Great Game: Central Asia’s public opinions on Russia, China, and the U.S’. August 2020 <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/docu ments/KI_200805_cable%2056_final.pdf&gt> accessed 25 March 2021; David Trilling, ‘Poll shows Uzbeks, like neighbors, growing leery of Chinese investments’ Eurasianet (22 October 2020) <https://eurasianet.org/poll-shows-uzbeks-likeneighbors-growing-leery-of-chinese-investments&gt> accessed 20 June 2021. 27 Sam Bhutia, ‘Russian remittances to Central Asia rise again’ Eurasianet (23 May 2019) <https://eurasianet.org/russianremittances-to-central-asia-rise-again> accessed 20 June 2022; Tigran Poghosyan, Remittances in Russia and Caucasus and Central Asia: The Gravity Model (International Monetary Fund 2020) 12. 28 Murat Laumulin, ‘The EU’s incomplete strategy for Central Asia’ Carnegie Europe (3 December 2019) <https://carnegieeurope. eu/strategiceurope/80470&gt> accessed 10 June 2022; Gulshan Sachdeva, ‘India’s Central Asia challenge’ East Asia Forum (14 April 2022) <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/04/14/indias-central-asia-challenge/&gt> accessed 20 July 2022; Timur Dadabaev, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Inroads into Central Asia: comparative analysis of the economic cooperation roadmaps for Uzbekistan’ East-West Center (2019) <https://www.eastwestcenter.org/system/tdf/private/ewc_policy_studies_ 78_web.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=37122&gt> accessed 20 May 2022; Farkhod Tolipov, ‘Central Asia and Afghanistan: the Security Complex Dilemma’ [2014] 15(3) Central Asia and the Caucasus 91–102; Rustam Burnashev, ‘Security challenges in Central Asia’ [2015] 375(1) L’Europe En Formation 106–122; Evgeny F. Troitskiy, ‘Central Asian Regional Security Complex: the impact of Russian and US policies’ [2015] 29(1) Global Society 2–22; Kristian Berg Harpviken and Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, A rock between hard places : Afghanistan as an arena of regional insecurity (Oxford University Press 2016). 29 Quote by Islam Karimov cited in Filippo Costa Buranelli, ‘International society and Central Asia’ (PhD diss. King’s College 2015) 63. 30 On Central Asia as a regional security complex, see Akram Umarov, ‘Central Asia: construction of the new regional security complex?’ (2020) The Journal of Cross-Regional Dialogues/La Revue de Dialogues Inter-Régionaux; Ekaterina Klimenko, ‘Центральная Азия как региональный комплекс безопасности’ (Central Asia as regional security complex) [2011] 14(4) Central Asia and Caucasus 7–22. 31 Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambitions (Cornell University Press 1991); Brock Tessman and Wojtek Wolfe, ‘Great powers and strategic hedging: the case of Chinese energy security strategy’ [2011] 13(2) International Studies Review 214–40; Maximilian Ohle, Richard J. Cook, and Zhaoying Han, ‘China’s engagement with Kazakhstan and Russia’s Zugzwang: why is Nur-Sultan incurring regional power hedging?’ [2020] 11(1) Journal of Eurasian Studies 86–103. 32 Miriam Fendius Elman, ‘The foreign policies of small states: challenging neorealism in its own backyard’ [1995] 25(2) British Journal of Political Science 171–217; David M. Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (University of California Press 2020); Abdullah Baaboud, ‘Dynamics and determinants of the GCC States’ Foreign Policy, with Special Reference to the EU’ in Nonneman Gerd (ed), Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and the Relationship with Europe (Routledge 2005). 33 Cooley (n 10); Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw, Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale University Press 2018); and Yuval Weber, ‘Varieties of hierarchy and Central Asian resilience’ in Fabienne Bossuyt and Bart Dessein (eds), The European Union, China and Central Asia: Global and Regional Cooperation in a New Era (Routledge 2021). 6 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV hedgers.34 The former have more political will and possess the material capacity to leverage advantageous structural and exogenous conditions to engage in selective hedging behaviour more effectively than the latter. In this regard, Kazakhstan is a relatively heavy hedger with regard to China; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan (although it is officially neutral) which were traditionally pro-Russian may be described as light hedgers; while Uzbekistan appears to be evolving into a heavy hedger. These countries employ a range of hedging strategies that leverage on economic, diplomatic, military, and cultural pathways. Although some scholars exclude non-military engagement in their analysis of hedging to avoid conceptual stretching,35 this article will adopt a more expansive approach that includes economic and institutional to better appreciate granularity in the behaviour of Central Asian states. Such an approach is also consistent with China’s strategic culture of security through economic development; this posits, contrary to Western approaches to international politics, that political relations and economic exchange are confidence building measures that can lead to conditions favourable to reducing security-related tensions.36 The choice to focus on endogenous determinants in this article does not imply a rejection of exogenous considerations. Ultimately, it is the interaction of system, regional, and unit level factors that drive the propensity of some Central Asian states to selectively engage in hedging behaviour. The Scope of Central Asian Agency China’s engagement of Central Asia rests on several pillars. First, as a land-based transit corridor, the region is ‘central’ to China’s Eurasian ambitions to link China’s West to South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. It provides a valuable alternative to maritime routes that carry the bulk of China’s merchandise trade but largely lie outside its control. Second, the region’s hydrocarbon and mineral resources fuel and sustain China’s economic growth and prosperity—as underlined in the concentration of China’s foreign direct investment in Table 1 – which bolsters the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party in China. Third, the region’s geographic and cultural proximity to Xinjiang render it uniquely positioned to potentially impact Beijing’s security concerns about secessionism and extremism in Xinjiang, which in turn may undermine China’s political standing in Hongkong, Macau, and Taiwan.37 In this regard, Pantucci claims that ‘Xinjiang is the primary lens through which China looks at Central Asia’.38 Central Asian leaders appear equally committed to deepening relations with China. First, as noted earlier, Chinese funded physical connectivity is expected to boost access to export markets. Second, Chinese loans, companies, and investments are critical for the growth of local economies in one of the poorer regions of the world. Towards this end, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are negotiating with China to align local economic development visions (Nurly Zhol in Kazakhstan or Taza Koom in Kyrgyzstan) with the BRI. Third, Central Asian—China relations balance against the demands of the former’s traditional hegemon, Russia.39 For Central Asian leaders, realization of these goals will ultimately strengthen instrumental legitimacy and regime resilience particularly if their key domestic 34 Gilbert Rozman and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, ‘Introduction’ in Gilbert Rozman (ed), Light Or Heavy Hedging: Positioning Between China and the United States (Korea Economic Institute 2015). 35 Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging: the logic of alignment in East Asia’ [2015] 24(4) Security Studies 696–727; John D Ciorciari, ‘The variable effectiveness of hedging strategies’ [2019] 19(3) International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 523– 55. 36 Jonathan Fulton, China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge 2018). 37 See for example Mingjiang Li, ‘From look-west to act-west: Xinjiang’s role in China—Central Asian relations’ [2016] 25(100) Journal of Contemporary China 515–28; Sebastien Peyrouse, ‘Central Asia’s paradoxical role in Chinese foreign policy’ East Asia Forum (17 August 2018) <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/08/17/central-asias-paradoxical-role-in-chinese-foreign-policy /&gt> accessed 20 April 2022; Michael E Clarke, Xinjiang and China’s Rise in Central Asia—A History (Routledge 2013). 38 Raffaello Pantucci, ‘A Steadily tightening embrace: China’s ascent in Central Asia and the Caucasus’ (18 November 2021) The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst 2 <https://www.cacianalyst.org/resources/Pantucci.pdf&gt> accessed 10 May 2022. 39 Farkhod Aminjonov, ‘Central Asian gas exports dependency: swapping Russian patronage for Chinese’ [2018] 163(2) The RUSI Journal 66–77. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 7 constituencies are beneficiaries of Chinese largess. At the same time, there are deep-seated worries that are rarely voiced publicly by leaders, about what China’s rise implies for security and autonomy. An exception was the protest note handed to China’s ambassador by the Kazakh Foreign Ministry in April 2020 following an article on a Chinese website that claimed Kazakhstan was a historical vassal eager to ‘return’ to China. A cursory glance at the material capabilities between Central Asia and China (see Table 2) reveals a large and obvious power asymmetry. This has not stopped the former from attempting to hedge, that is, to concurrently defer to and selectively defy China, as the following paragraphs indicate. Institutional Hedging With the exception of Turkmenistan, Central Asian states participate in China-led initiatives such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and are also founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Tajikistan is also a signatory to the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism in Counterterrorism established by China. At the same time, however, Central Asian states also take countervailing actions by participating in multilateral fora that do not include China. They include the Central Asia plus Japan dialogue, the Republic of Korea—Central Asia Cooperation Forum, the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the European Union’s Transport Corridor—Europe–Caucasus—Asia program and the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking Countries. China has occasionally expressed displeasure with these meetings where norms can run counter to those it champions.40 For instance, ahead of the US-led C5 + 1 meeting in February 2020, China reminded Central Asian countries of the need to ‘see through the US plot’ to smear China’s anti-terrorist campaigns in Xinjiang as anti-Muslim; moreover, in November 2020, China inaugurated its own 5 + 1 diplomatic format with Central Asia analogous to the Japanese version created in 2004 and the US one in 2015. For Central Asia, as Allison has highlighted, the value of institutional hedging lies in overlapping rules, norms, and stakeholders that hinder any potential Chinese ambition to be the unquestioned regional hegemon.41 Multilateralism at the global level also provides Central Asian states with relatively more significant leeway in dealing with their larger neighbour compared to a bilateral relationship. A case in point is the letter sent to the United Nations in July 2019 by 50 countries, including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan in support of China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were conspicuously absent from the list of signatories, a subtle normative censure probably enabled by diplomatic ‘cover’ provided by the norm of universal human rights offered at the United Nations. This behaviour, which presumably did not please China, exists alongside acquiescence with China’s requests to deport Uighurs who have fled to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan back to China.42 The July 2020 tussle over China’s new security law in Hongkong at the UN Human Rights Commission presented another opportunity for normative censure. This time, Tajikistan was the only Central Asian country out of 53 signatories who expressed support for China; Kyrgyzstan, which was in the midst of negotiations with China for suspension of debt repayments, simply issued a separate statement on non-interference in China’s internal matters while the other states remained silent. 40 Yu Jincui, ‘US won’t succeed in driving a wedge between China and Central Asia’ Global Times (1 January 2020) <https://www. globaltimes.cn/page/202001/1175414.shtml&gt> accessed 30 June 2021. This has been referred to as ‘virtual regionalism’. See Roy Allison, ‘Virtual regionalism, regional structures and regime security in Central Asia’ [2008] 27(2) Central Asian Survey 185–202. 42 ‘WUC welcomes Kazakh court decision not to deport asylum seeker to China’ (World Uyghur Congress, 1 August 2018) <https:// www.uyghurcongress.org/en/press-release-wuc-welcomes-kazakh-court-decision-not-to-deport-asylum-seeker-to-china/&gt> accessed 25 May 2020; Zholdas Orisbayev, ‘Chinese Muslims want ICC to hear former Xinjiang detainee’ Eurasianet (21 April 2022) <https://eurasianet.org/chinese-muslims-want-icc-to-hear-former-xinjiang-detainee&gt> accessed 25 August 2022. 41 8 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV Economic Hedging Political and business elites in Central Asia have largely welcomed trade, investment, and financing from China as sources of enrichment, regime legitimacy, and economic modernization.43 An estimated 25% of Kazakhstan’s oil and gas assets is owned by Chinese companies, more than 80% of Tajikistan’s gold is mined by Sino-Tajik ventures, Turkmenistan exports 90% of its gas to China, while Kyrgyzstan has borrowed a total of US$1.7 billion from China as at mid-May 2019 up from US $9 million in 2008.44 Although regimes in Central Asia appear to have bandwagoned economically with China, they have also attempted to occasionally balance against China’s economic influence as the following examples demonstrate. Turkmenistan ratified the Caspian Sea Treaty in December 2018 which could open up the previously disputed hydrocarbon-rich area for exploitation; it also recently increased its hitherto lukewarm support for the long-delayed Turkmenistan—Afghanistan–Pakistan—India (TAPI) gas pipeline by agreeing to start construction to connect to the Afghan section in 2021. Taken together, Turkmenistan’s allusion to a widening range of economic possibilities appears to be a bid to secure a firm commitment from its largest customer, China, to proceed with the construction of an additional route (Line D) to the Central Asia—China Gas Pipeline, which will transport extra volumes of mostly Turkmen gas to China. Nevertheless, TAPI is very unlikely to be successful as an economic hedge against Line D because Turkmenistan’s self-imposed isolation means it has few levers of statecraft to influence decisions by transit partners and end users in TAPI. Attempts at economic hedging are also visible in Uzbekistan. Economic reforms and modernization have resulted in rising, albeit manageable, public debt levels of nearly 38% of GDP at end-2020 up from 10% in 2017.45 Mindful that China has become its largest creditor (19% of total public debt volumes) outside of multilateral agencies, Uzbekistan ensured that loans for its US$3.6 billion synthetic fuels manufacturing plant came not just from China but a consortium comprising Japanese, South Korean, and Russian banks.46 Uzbekistan has also recently prioritized non-Chinese investment into the country’s renewable energy sector even while it published the country’s Development Strategy for 2022–2026 in Mandarin as a way of acknowledging China’s significant role. Particularly noteworthy was the case of China’s state-owned Singyes Solar: having awarded the company the right to build and operate a solar farm in Samarkand in 2016, the Uzbek government subsequently withdrew the offer which was then re-tendered and awarded to France’s Total Eren. Since then, companies from the Gulf have won a series of competitive auctions for large-scale solar and wind farms. The point here is that Uzbekistan exercised agency in walking away from exclusive, non-competitive, deals with China to embrace multi-stakeholder outcomes; this undercut its deference to China. Attempts to diversify economic relations away from China have at the same time been accompanied by pulling back from deeper economic engagement with China. For instance, allegedly in response to the interest of Chinese businessmen to lease agriculture land from the existing 10-year 43 Sébastien Peyrouse, ‘Discussing China: Sinophilia and Sinophobia in Central Asia’ [2016] 7(1) Journal of Eurasian Studies 14–23; Li-Chen Sim and Farkhod Aminjonov, ‘Central Asia in the Belt and Road Initiative: policy-taker or policy-shaper?’ in Jonathan Fulton (ed) Regions in the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge 2020). 44 For a recent study that likewise ranks Kazakhstan ahead of its regional peers in terms of BRI attractiveness see Alexey Kalinin et al. Chinese Grand Strategy in the Eurasian Heartland. Belt and Road Initiative in Russia, Belarus, Central Asia and the Caucasus (SKOLKOVO Institute for Emerging Market Studies 2019) <https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3403527&gt> accessed 12 April 2021. For an analysis of partnership ranks see Jonathan Fulton, ‘Friends with Benefits: China’s Partnership Diplomacy in the Gulf’ in Marc Lynch and Amaney Jamal (eds) Shifting Global Politics and the Middle East (George Washington University 2019) <https://pomeps.org/friends-with-benefits-chinas-partnership-diplomacy-in-the-gulf&gt> accessed 14 February 2021; For Kyrgyzstan’s external debt see ‘Сколько денег Кыргызстан должен Китаю — график по годам’ (How much money Kyrgyzstan owes to China—figures by year) Sputnik (6 August 2019) <https://ru.sputnik.kg/ economy/20190806/1045308431/kyrgyzstan-china-gosdolg-rost-grafik.html&gt> accessed 1 May 2021. 45 IMF, Republic of Uzbekistan: Staff Report for the 2021 Article IV Consultation—Debt Sustainability Analysis (International Monetary Fund April 2021) <https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2021/085/article-A004-en.xml&gt> accessed 20 May 2021. 46 ‘Journalists pay visit to gas processing plants’ UzDaily.uz (21 May 2019) <https://www.uzdaily.uz/en/post/49865&gt> accessed 25 May 2021. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 9 period to 25 years, authorities in Kazakhstan proposed amending the Land Code and simplifying the process of leasing land to foreigners in 2016. The fear of Chinese taking over Kazakh lands sparked rare countrywide protests. To prevent an escalation of social unrest, a moratorium was imposed on amendments until 2021.47 The current President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Zhomart Tokaev, has since declared that he will not revisit the issue; no land will be sold or rented to foreigners and no amendments would take place to the Land Code.48 Even relatively weak Tajikistan offers a cautionary tale of how local elites with close ties to the ruling regime can undermine China’s projects. In 2013, Zhejiang Congcai Heavy Machinery Manufacture invested US$25 million for a 60% stake in a Tajik cement factory. Once the factory began production in 2015, the local partner who owned the remaining 40% seized total control and accused the Chinese partner of causing environmental pollution by installing obsolete equipment. China, the source of one-fifth of foreign direct investment in Tajikistan, declined to use its leverage to intervene in this and other cases.49 Across the border in Kyrgyzstan, local protests resulted in the government’s cancellation in 2020 of a China-funded US$275 million free trade zone on the KyrgyzChina border at Naryn, while demonstrations and clashes have occasionally caused Chinese mining operations in Naryn and elsewhere to shut down temporarily.50 It is possible that rescinding the Naryn free zone was a purely commercial decision since infrastructure there was under-developed and it faced competition from the much more established Bishkek free zone; equally, however, it is arguable that it underlined a countervailing strategy aimed at not accumulating more debt to China. Security Hedging It is the security realm where Central Asia’s attempts to engage in mutually opposite policies vis-à-vis are weakest. These states have stepped up security-related engagements with China over the last decade. For instance, China was the source of 18% of the region’s arms between 2015 and 2019, up from 1.5% between 2010 and 2014.51 Bilateral Sino-Tajik and Sino-Kyrgyz military exercises have also occurred more frequently in the 2010s than in the 2000s; these exclude Russia and are over and above military exercises conducted within the framework of the SCO.52 China operates an undeclared military base in Tajikistan along with a number of outposts in the Tajikistan—Afghan border and several Chinese private security companies protect nationals and assets in the region. In addition, Chinese state-owned cyber security companies provide surveillance and facial recognition software used in schools, public transport, and policing; these are ostensibly part of the ‘smart city’ initiatives in Central Asia but can be used to monitor populations. The generally harsh measures taken against Uighur activists and supposed religious extremist groups in Tajikistan have also pleased China. Notwithstanding the above, Central Asian leaders understand the need to retain Russia as their primary security patron, a position that China does not object to. Russia may no longer be their sole security patron, but its primacy is not in doubt particularly given the dependence of Central Asia’s weak indigenous defence industry on Soviet-era linkages centred on Russia. Russia accounts for almost two-thirds of the region’s arms purchases between 2015 and 2019, participates in the vast 47 Temur Umarov, ‘What’s behind Protests against China in Kazakhstan?’ Carnegie Moscow Center (30 October 2019) <https:// carnegie.ru/commentary/80229&gt> accessed 30 April 2021. ‘Продажа Земли Иностранцам’ (Selling Land to Foreigners) Forbes.Kz (10 July 2020) <https://forbes.kz//process/budut_li_ peredavatsya_kazahstanskie_zemli_inostrantsam/&gt> accessed 25 May 2022. 49 Kristin Huang, ‘Chinese investors struggle to gain a foothold in Tajikistan’, South China Morning Post (7 October 2017) <https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2113810/why-chinese-investors-are-struggling-gain-foothold&gt> accessed 27 May 2021. 50 Catherine Putz, ‘Kyrgyz-Chinese joint venture scrapped after protests’ The Diplomat (20 February 2020) <https://thediplomat. com/2020/02/kyrgyz-chinese-joint-venture-scrapped-after-protests/&gt> accessed 1 May 2022. 51 Bradley Jardine and Edward Lemon, ‘In Russia’s shadow: China’s rising security presence in Central Asia’ [2020] 52 Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute 1–15. 52 Matthew Stein, Compendium of Central Asian Military and Security Activity (Foreign Military Studies Office 2019). 48 10 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV majority of military exercises that involves these states, and maintains military bases with long-term leases and other military infrastructure in three of the republics.53 For Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, Russia is also the source of subsidised education opportunities at Russian military institutes and discounted Russian weaponry, which function as ‘side payments’ to keep the CSTO members within the alliance. As the region’s largest weapons purchaser, Kazakhstan’s example is noteworthy: it turned to China for US$23 million worth of arms sales in 2018 but purchased more than 10 times this amount from Russia.54 Central Asian states have also attempted, with less success, to attract additional security stakeholders to the region to hedge against China (and Russia). Most of them continue to participate in multilateral security platforms such as the OSCE and the NATO’s Partnership for Peace program; Kazakhstan, on its part, has conducted joint ‘Steppe Eagle’ military exercises with the US and United Kingdom and is also manufacturing armoured vehicles in a joint venture with a South African company. Since such activities are mainly aimed at counterterrorism readiness and border security, they align with China’s own security interests in the region and hence are not frowned upon by China. They certainly constitute security diversification by Central Asia but not hedging. Probably the only example of security hedging involved a land-for-investment deal in Tajikistan. China had raised long-standing claims over three disputed sites in the territory of the GornoBadakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan that abut the western border of China’s restive Xinjiang province. Tajik authorities agreed in 2011 to accommodate China’s security concerns by ceding 1,100 square kilometres of land (down from the over 28,000 km2 claimed by China) and allowing Chinese farmers to till 2,000 hectares of arable land. The settlement represented a victory of sorts for agency available to a small and weak Tajik state since it was able to negotiate for less onerous terms—there were no Tajik settlements in the affected territory and the transfer coincided with large-scale Chinese investments and hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese debt relief.55 It also contrasted with the earlier transfer of 200 km2 of land to China, which was not apparently accompanied by any ‘side payment’. Conditions for Successful Hedging Against China Having established that on occasion, Central Asian elites have adopted policies that concurrently attract and repel China in diplomatic, economic, and security realms, the question arises as to what incentivises this hedging behaviour.56 As noted in section one, references to structural and exogenous factors are conventional responses; they are necessary but insufficient conditions and they are unable to explain why some countries are more frequent and successful hedgers than others. Instead, an understanding of the specific domestic context of what motivates (or limits) hedging and its interaction with structural and exogenous considerations common to the region may contribute to a superior analysis. Kazakhstan is the earliest and most successful Central Asian proponent of a ‘multi-vector policy’. Its success with hedging is a function of structural, exogenous, and material resources. Structurally, its status as a regional leader is recognised by China. Kazakhstan is China’s only ‘permanent comprehensive strategic partner’ in the region; in comparison, Uzbekistan is a ‘comprehensive 53 Çağlar Kurç, ‘The puzzle: multi-vector foreign policy and defense industrialization in Central Asia’ [2018] 37(4) Comparative Strategy 316–30; Jardine and Lemon (n 51) 1–15. 54 Richard Weitz, ‘Moscow’s evolving southern strategy’ Middle East Institute (7 January 2020) <https://www.mei.edu/publica tions/moscows-evolving-southern-strategy&gt> accessed 20 January 2022. 55 William A Callahan, ‘China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the New Eurasian Order’ (2016) NUPI 10 <https://nupi.brage.unit.no/ nupi-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2401876/NUPI_Policy_Brief_22-16_William_Callahan.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y&gt> accessed 1 February 2022. 56 An in-depth examination of the elites in policy-making in Central Asia is beyond the scope of the paper, but see Kristin Fjæstad and Indra Øverland, ‘Energy elites in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan’ (August 2012) RussCasp Working Paper <https://www.nupi.no/en/publications/cristin-pub/energy-elites-in-central-asia-kazakhstan-turkmenistan-anduzbekistan&gt> accessed 9 February 2022. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 11 strategic partner’ while Turkmenistan is a ‘strategic partner’. Kazakhstan’s hydrocarbon bounty has attracted international suitors which have, in turn, allowed Kazakhstan to maintain a diversity of trade and investment partners. In 2017, China’s share among the top five import partners was just 25% in Kazakhstan compared to 36% in Uzbekistan or 49% in Tajikistan; China’s share of FDI in Kazakhstan by 2018 was only around five per cent compared to 29% by the Netherlands, 18% by the US, 14% by Switzerland, and six per cent by Russia.57 Additionally, Kazakhstan has access to three well-endowed sovereign wealth funds (SWF), two of which are among the top 25 largest in the world, which facilitates a good degree of financial independence; this partly accounts for the low level of Kazakhstan’s debt to China (10%) compared to its Central Asian peers.58 The only other SWF in Central Asia is in Uzbekistan but it boasts far fewer assets. Beyond these considerations, Kazakhstan’s ability to hedge against China is also a result of regime politics. In this regard, Anceschi convincingly argues that Kazakhstan’s foreign policy was a tool to enhance former President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s legitimacy among domestic and international audiences through creating and reinforcing his credentials as a nation-builder, a defender of Kazakh sovereignty, and leader of Eurasian integration.59 Kazakhstan’s negotiations with China during the second half of 2018 to allow some detained ethnic Kazakhs to leave Xinjiang is a case in point. These talks leveraged on pressure against China at that time—including detentions in Xinjiang, trade friction with the US, criticisms of the BRI’s debt-trap implications—as well as on Kazakhstan’s higher standing with China relative to the rest of Central Asia, and popular domestic interest in selected cases of ethnic Kazakh refugees, to shore up Nazarbayev’s regional leadership claims. The latter had been steadily undermined by the Sino-Russian agreement to merge their respective projects into a Greater Eurasian Partnership. Current President Tokayev has used a similar playbook.60 For example, he agreed to elevate Kazakhstan’s relations with China through an upgraded ‘permanent comprehensive strategic partnership’ in September 2019; at the same time, he demonstrated a lack of deference when engaging in norm censure against China in July 2019 and July 2020 when the country was conspicuously absent from letters of support for China’s policies in Xinjiang and Hongkong respectively. In contrast, Kyrgyzstan is a ‘light’ hedger disadvantaged by a lack of sustained interest from extraregional powers, its lack of recourse to material resources (see Table 2), and the fact that at least 41% of its foreign debt accounting for no less than 30% of its GDP is owed to China.61 Its sporadic attempts to hedge against China are the result of two endogenous factors. One is the rise of a nascent nationalist movement, as underlined by the rise of President Sadyr Japarov, that is beginning to undercut traditional clan-based politics rooted in divisions between the north and south of the country. The other is that Kyrgyzstan plays host to Central Asia’s most lively civil society and independent media.62 These two factors work in tandem to give voice and visibility to criticisms about acquiescence over the fate of ethnic Kyrgyz in Xinjiang, high-profile corruption scandals, and indebtedness that result from Kyrgyzstan’s engagement with China. The above analysis is not meant 57 OECD, ‘Sustainable infrastructure for low-carbon development in Central Asia and the Caucasus: hotspot analysis and needs assessment’ (2019) <https://www.oecd.org/publications/sustainable-infrastructure-for-low-carbon-development-in-centralasia-and-the-caucasus-d1aa6ae9-en.htm&gt> accessed 5 June 2022. 58 Linda Yin-nor Tjia, ‘Kazakhstan’s leverage and economic diversification amid Chinese connectivity dreams’ [2022] 43(4) Third World Quarterly 811. 59 Luca Anceschi, Analysing Kazakhstan’s Foreign Policy: Regime Neo-Eurasianism in the Nazarbaev Era (Routledge 2020). 60 Rachel Vanderhill, Sandra F Joireman, and Roza Tulepbayeva, ‘Between the bear and the dragon: multivectorism in Kazakhstan as a model strategy for secondary powers’ [2020] 96(4) International Affairs 975–93. 61 For the role of viable interlocutors see John D Ciorciari, ‘The variable effectiveness of hedging strategies’ [2019] 19(3) International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 523–55. Data on debt to China as a share of GDP was from Sebastian Horn, Carmen Reinhart, and Christoph Trebesch, ‘China’s overseas lending’ (2019) Kiel Institute for the World Economy 15. For a discussion of the relationship between debt and diplomacy, see Kevin Acker, Deborah Brautigam, and Yufan Huang, ‘Debt relief with Chinese Characteristics’, (2020) China Africa Research Initiative Working Paper 2020(39) <http://www.sais-cari.org/ publications&gt> accessed 20 February 2022. 62 Freedom House, ‘Freedom in the World’ (2021) <https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world&gt> accessed 1 September 2022. 12 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV to suggest that Kyrgyzstan is a successful hedger against China, merely that its domestic capacity to engage in limited hedging is derived from its unusually vibrant politics and civil society. Bringing up the rear are in terms of ‘light hedgers’ are Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. They rarely engage in hedging against China given the lack of domestic factors which may support foreign policy hedging against China. Turkmenistan is constrained structurally by its ‘positive neutrality’ status embedded in the constitution. Used interchangeably with ‘permanent neutrality’ by the country’s officials, it disavows military alliances and hosting of foreign military bases. Turkmenistan is also hamstrung by the absence of a viable economic partner since China is its primary creditor and the destination of over 93% of all gas exports in 2018 (with gas export revenues comprising over 90% of total export revenues); being landlocked, it is unable to tap opportunities in exporting liquefied natural gas.63 Signalling support for TAPI and resuming gas exports to southern Russia in 2019 for the first time in a decade mark the extent of very few attempts to hedge against China. They are probably best understood as responses to exogenous shocks during the past two years, specifically China’s economic slowdown. Consequently, the gradual post-coronavirus resumption of China’s manufacturing activity and consumption is likely to dampen further attempts at hedging. Like Turkmenistan, Tajikistan has little endogenous inclination to adopt an effective or consistent hedging policy against China, even though multi-vectorism is institutionalised in its foreign policy concept. The unwillingness of the family of President Emomali Rahmon to give up near monopoly over the domestic economy implies that Tajikistan is unlikely to attempt to hedge against China economically by joining the Eurasian Economic Union, which does not include China. Hedging against China in the security realm is also unproductive: that China apparently reached out to Russia before deploying forces along Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan suggests that Rahmon has little room to play Russia against China even if he was so inclined.64 In this regard, the SinoRussian relationship, pithily and accurately formulated by Trenin as ‘never against each other; not necessarily always with each other’,65 is a key exogenous consideration that circumscribes Tajik agency. Uzbekistan lies somewhere in between the ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ hedgers. Since 2016, President Mirziyoyev has tried to hedge against growing Chinese influence by reinvigorating ties with Russia, its peers in Central Asia, and other major powers. Domestic factors that facilitate hedging include the country’s long-standing doctrine of ‘self-reliance’ – introduced under former President Islam Karimov which translates into hedging in foreign policy and into justifications for severe restrictions on political liberties at home.66 They also include Mirziyoyev’s market-oriented economic reforms which have been praised as a ‘Tashkent spring’ and led to Uzbekistan named as ‘Country of the Year’ in 2018 by The Economist magazine. Such reforms are also aligned with reducing the corrupting influence of Soviet-era business elites by amending regulatory and trade policies that had favoured these groups and opening up the economy to foreign and domestic competition67; the resumption of membership negotiations with the World Trade Organization in 2020 after a 15-year hiatus will further this objective. 63 Simon Pirani, Central Asian Gas: Prospects for the 2020s (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies 2019) 2; Horn, Reinhart, and Trebesch (n 61) 15; Morena Skalamera, ‘The 2020 oil price dive in a carbon-constrained era: strategies for energy exporters in Central Asia’ [2020] 96(6) International Affairs 1637. 64 Stephen Blank, ‘China’s military base in Tajikistan: what does it mean?’ (18 April 2019) The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst <https://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/13569-chinas-military-base-in-tajikistan-what-does-it-mean ?.html&gt> accessed 15 June 2021. 65 As quoted in Jongsoo Lee, ‘Russia, China, and the Indo-Pacific: an interview with Dmitri Trenin’ The Diplomat (18 September 2020) <https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/russia-china-and-the-indo-pacific-an-interview-with-dmitri-trenin /&gt> accessed 1 September 2022. 66 Bernardo Teles Fazendeiro, Uzbekistan’s Foreign Policy: The Struggle for Recognition and Self-Reliance under Karimov (Routledge, 2018). 67 Kristian Lasslett, ‘Revolving doors, invisible hands: how the state and private sector are merging in the New Uzbekistan’ OpenDemocracy (30 May 2019) <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/revolving-doors-invisible-hands-how-state-andprivate-sector-are-merging-new-uzbekistan/&gt> accessed 1 June 2022. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 13 China’s Response to Hedging China has, to some extent, tolerated the above attempts by Central Asia’s leaders to hedge and negotiate the conditions of the asymmetrical relationship so it is more in line with the latter’s political and economic interests. One explanation for China’s behaviour relates to its supposed interest in ‘autocracy promotion’ as part of its rivalry with the US; this could take place either intentionally by influencing a regime to adopt anti-democratic behaviour or indirectly through a diffusion of authoritarian values.68 Although the academic literature on this is inconclusive, the point is that Central Asian regimes do not need China’s help to promote an autocratic form of governance. Moreover, deeper engagement with China has produced inconsistent outcomes: it is correlated to declining levels of democracy in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, but to higher levels of democracy in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan between 2010 and 2018.69 Central Asian regimes do, nevertheless, appreciate the ‘alliance shelter’ provided by Chineseled institutions from de-stabilizing trends such as democracy, good governance, and market reforms.70 For instance, Chinese loans are preferred despite the fact that they are generally repayable at interest rates of two to three per cent, compared to interest-free loans and outright grants extended to low-income developing countries by most bilateral or multilateral lenders. Such loans are also often collateralised by commodities or the profits of state-owned companies in Central Asia (this is not a systematic practice elsewhere).71 Central Asian leaders prefer Chinese loans because they are not conditional on political, economic, or human rights reforms, unlike loans and grants disbursed by Western countries or multilateral lending agencies. For China, accommodating the occasional demands of local elites is useful because the negotiated settlements imply acceptance of some degree of legitimacy of China’s regional role.72 In a break with previous practices, for example, Kazakhstan refused to extradite selected high-profile refugees back to China (which displeased China) but managed to ‘persuade’ a third country outside the region to accept them (which appeased China). Another example concerns the long-standing complaint of excessive reliance on Chinese workers and limited jobs for locals: a recent report found that the number of locals hired by Chinese companies has increased over the years, partly in response to pressure from local activists and labor protests (Kyrgyzstan) and local government (Tajikistan).73 Some degree of conferred legitimacy in turn reduces the enforcement costs of acting as a unilateral hegemon (or co-hegemon with Russia). Security and stability in Central Asia, viewed as China’s strategic rear, is seen as essential given that China must focus on the primary source of strategic pressure from the other direction, namely in east Asia, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea. 74 Taking into account local demands also aligns with President Xi Jinping’s 68 For a balanced discussion of the issue see Peter Burnell, ‘Is there a new autocracy promotion?’ (March 2010) Working Paper FRIDE 96 <https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/130597/WP96_Autocracy_ENG_mar10.pdf&gt> accessed 20 June 2021. World Bank, ‘Worldwide governance indicators’ (2020) <https://databank.worldbank.org/source/worldwide-governanceindicators&gt> accessed 12 March 2022. 70 For a further discussion of ‘alliance shelter’ see Alexander Libman, ‘Regionalisation and regionalism in the Post-Soviet Space: current status and implications for institutional development’ [2007] 59(3) Europe-Asia Studies 401–30; Alyson J. K. Bailes, Bradley A. Thayer, and Baldur Thorhallsson, ‘Alliance theory and alliance “Shelter”: the complexities of small state alliance behaviour’ [2016] 1(1) Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 9–26. 71 Horn, Reinhart, and Trebesch (n 61). 72 For a conceptual discussion of cooperative or negotiated hegemony, see Thomas Pedersen, ‘Cooperative hegemony: power, ideas and institutions in regional integration’ [2002] 28(4) Review of International Studies 677–96; Filippo Costa Buranelli, ‘Spheres of influence as negotiated hegemony—the case of Central Asia’ [2018] 23(2) Geopolitics 378–403. 73 Dirk van der Kley, ‘Chinese companies’ localization in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’ [2020] 67(3) Problems of Post-Communism 241–50. 74 Huasheng Zhao, ‘Eurasia: a view from China’s security perspective’ in Piotr Dutkiewicz, Richard Sakwa and Fyodor Lukyanov (eds), Eurasia on the Edge: Managing Complexity (Lexington Books 2018). 69 14 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV Table 1. Chinese investments and contracts in Central Asia in million US$ (2005–2019) (AEI 2020)75. Country Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Energy 24,420 2,890 3,490 750 6,800 Transport 3,540 1,690 460 560 N/A Chemicals 3,910 N/A 550 N/A N/A Metals 2,330 150 190 540 N/A Agriculture 240 N/A 180 N/A N/A Real Estate 350 N/A 720 300 N/A Table 2. Measures of power – China vs Central Asia76. Country China Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Economic size (US$ million)a 13,608, 152 179,340 8,093 7,523 40,761 50,500 GNI per capita (US$)a 9,460 8,070 1,220 1,010 6,740 2,020 Population (in million)a 1,393.7 18.3 6.3 9.1 5.9 33.0 Military strength (rank out of 138 countries)b 3 63 98 94 77 52 Chinese Trade Turnover with the Central Asian Countries (billion dollars) 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Import Export Turnover Figure 1. Trade between Central Asia and China77. instructions in 2018 – in response to growing international outcry about BRI governance— that going forward, Chinese-funded projects must be transparent and bring tangible and sustainable benefits to partner countries. 75 OECD, ‘Sustainable infrastructure for low-carbon development in Central Asia and the Caucasus: hotspot analysis and needs assessment’ (2019) <https://www.oecd.org/publications/sustainable-infrastructure-for-low-carbon-development-in-centralasia-and-the-caucasus-d1aa6ae9-en.htm&gt> accessed 5 June 2022. 76a World Bank, ‘World development indicators’ <https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators&gt> accessed 12 March 2021; b Global Firepower Index, ‘Military Strength Ranking’ (2021) <https://www.globalfirepower.com/ countries-listing.php&gt> accessed 17 March 2021. 77 Temur Umarov, ‘China looms large in Central Asia’ Carnegie Moscow Center (30 March 2020) <https://carnegie.ru/commentary/ 81402&gt> accessed 17 May 2021. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 15 Figure 2. China’s share of FDI in Central Asia, 201778. Number of Scopus-indexed articles on hedging 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Figure 3. Scopus-indexed articles about hedging in international relations. Source: Authors’ calculations. Conclusion This article argues, through the framework of hedging and supported by relevant empirical evidence, that Central Asia is not simply a region to be controlled and pulled inexorably into China’s sphere of influence. The region is represented in some cases by increasingly assertive leaders who can, on selective issues, leverage structural, exogenous, and domestic considerations to manage and negotiate their relations with China. Although Central Asian regimes possess different resources and capabilities, hedging beyond mere diversification of partners appears to be the strategy of choice to minimise economic and security risks while maximizing the political benefits of reinforcing legitimacy. The claim here is not that leaders in Central Asia are effective or proficient hedgers akin to some countries in Asia, but that to varying degrees they are beginning to use hedging as part of their statecraft to interact with China. This involves calibrated behaviour that defers to China on one issue but yet defies it on another. 78 ‘China global investment tracker’ (American Enterprise Institute—AEI) <https://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker /&gt> accessed 12 March 2022. 16 L.-C. SIM AND F. AMINJONOV Going forward, although Central Asia’s engagement with China will continue to be hugely asymmetrical, several challenging issues will likely frame this relationship and the evolution of hedging capabilities. The first relates to the region’s youth who may be less deferential to Soviet-era networks or Chinese largess thanks ironically to the connectivity provided by China and other multilateral agencies, a point highlighted earlier in the article. The second concerns the deteriorating security situation in nearby Afghanistan following the withdrawal of US forces in 2021. Although Russia took steps to strengthen its security preponderance through joint military drills with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as well as the conclusion of military cooperation agreements with the latter two in April 2021, Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine (and a subsequent post-war rebuilding of Russia’s military) could render it unable or unwilling to maintain its security role. With Europe and the US focused on China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific and with Iran still under sanctions given the near-impossibility at the time of writing of reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, heterarchy in Central Asia will decline in China’s favour and with it, the scope for hedging. These challenges impact on the policy space for hedging in opposite ways and hence bear watching. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Notes on contributors Li-Chen Sim is an Assistant Professor at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, USA. She is a specialist on the Russian energy industry and its impact on the country’s politics, economic development, and foreign policy. Her concurrent area of research is the political economy of energy in the Gulf and wider Middle East. Her books include The Rise & Fall of Privatization in the Russian Oil Industry (2008), External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies (2019), and Asian Perceptions of Gulf Security (forthcoming in 2023). She holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. Farkhod Aminjonov is an Assistant Professor at the National Defence College in the United Arab Emirates. He is a specialist on Eurasian energy and its intersection with international politics, development and security. His works appeared in RUSI Journal, Social Science Quarterly, UNISCI Journal, NUPI-OSCE Academy CADGAT Reports as well as multiple edited volumes by internationally recognized academic and policy-focused presses. He has experience engaging in individual and collaborative research projects with the German, Canadian, Norwegian, American, and Turkish top-tier think tanks and such international organizations as the OSCE and the UN. He holds a Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University and M.A. from Tsukuba University.