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Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech at a convention in Beijing on July 29, 2022Credit: Yao Dawei/Xinhua Getty Images
After nearly three years of virtual participation in overseas meetings, Chinese President Xi Jinping made his return to the global level in user on Wednesday of his vacation in Kazakhstan.
Aside from a trip to the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong in July, Xi hasn’t left mainland China since January 2020, when Beijing’s COVID 0 policy caused the country to close its borders. This makes Xi’s trips this week important.
During his trip, Xi will also travel to Uzbekistan to attend an assembly of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional industrial and security bloc whose other members are India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The SCO’s first in-person meeting since 2019 and Xi is expected to seize the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin, the first since the Russian leader introduced a war against Ukraine in February.
Read more: Putin’s meeting with Xi comes at a time for Russia
But Xi’s first step is Kazakhstan, where he will hold talks with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Here’s why Kazakhstan means so much to China and why Xi will make Central Asia the center of his first overseas stay in just about 1,000 days.
Kazakhstan is China’s neighbor to the northwest. The two countries have more than 1,600 kilometers of border and this will be Xi’s fourth visit. “China and Kazakhstan are neighbors, friends and partners,” Xi said in a letter published Tuesday in the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda newspaper. .
But friendly proposals lie in harsh geopolitical calculations.
In 2019, China had invested around $14 billion in Kazakhstan’s oil and fuel sectors. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plunging global energy markets into chaos, Kazakhstan is more than ever.
The Central Asian country of about 19 million people “is a vital energy supplier to China, very vital to Beijing’s energy security strategy,” said Baohui Zhang, a political science professor at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University.
Kazakhstan also has a border with Russia and has a giant Russian minority, which accounts for about 18% of the population. Some Xi experts may send a signal to Moscow that Beijing regards Central Asia as its sphere of influence.
Read more: Russia in Ukraine is a crisis for Central Asia
Mark N. Katz, a professor of politics at George Mason University, told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post that “Kazakhstan is understandably involved in Russia possibly one day turning its attention to the ‘liberation’ of the gigantic Russian population still living in northern Kazakhstan. “
Katz explained, “Therefore, Xi’s stopover in Kazakhstan can be seen as a sign that Beijing regards Kazakhstan as a friend and that Russia does nothing to harm Beijing’s friend. “
Meanwhile, China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a progression strategy linking nearly 150 countries in an expanding infrastructure structure program, was presented through Xi in 2013 as a stopover in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital. In addition to its economic benefits, the BRI is perceived through Beijing as a way to build its global influence and, in particular, to practice “periphery diplomacy” with the many countries bordering its borders.
By China’s own admission, the BRI has faced a multitude of challenges, ranging from adverse adjustments in the geopolitical climate to the COVID-19 pandemic. Xi to Kazakhstan can be seen as a way to revitalize the initiative, analysts say.
“This is the ‘renewal of wishes’ of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center. “The country is where it all started. That’s why he’s leaving. “
Zhiqun Zhu, a professor of political science and foreign relations at Bucknell University, who is recently a U. S. Fulbright Scholar. A U. S. official at Griffith University in Australia said that by going beyond China’s borders, Xi can also send the message that his country will gradually reopen. International may simply resume as COVID-19 subsides.
There are periodic signs that discontent with China’s COVID 0 policies is developing, which have caused severe economic disruption. But Xi would possibly be trying to prove that he firmly controls China, despite the developing challenges. He may also recommend that he is confident in his candidacy for an unprecedented third term as China’s president, at a key Communist Party assembly next month.
“Now you can travel abroad with confidence,” Zhu says.
Read more: What you want to know about the January 2022 protests in Kazakhstan
The SCO conference, after Xi’s to Kazakhstan, will have a very important importance for Xi’s geopolitical influence. Western powers to communicate recent developments in global politics and coordinate their policies. “
In a tense geopolitical environment, experts say Beijing could try to consolidate its position to counter the West.
“The message to Western powers is that they constitute the entire foreign community, and China has many friends in emerging countries and in the non-Western world,” Zhu said.
Among them, Kazakhstan is in the foreground. ” We are trusted friends and partners to trust for each other,” Xi wrote in his letter to Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, “and our other people are side by side. “