Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held talks in Kazakhstan Wednesday at a security summit aimed at countering what they describe as U.S.-led “hegemony” on the world stage.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, established in 2001 by China and Russia, serves as a forum to discuss Eurasian security concerns.
“We believe that the SCO, as well as the second major association of BRICS, are the main pillars of the new world order, a locomotive in the context of establishing genuine multilateralism in world affairs,” said Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov ahead of Putin's arrival.
BRICS refers to a grouping of emerging economies. Its core members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Six other countries — Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — were later invited to join.
China has also addressed the importance of the SCO summit. Earlier this week, its foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said the talks would "help build more consensus among all parties and make contributions to promoting security, stability and development of member countries."
The summit also serves an opportunity for host Kazakhstan, along with other Central Asian countries participating in the discussion, to strengthen their cooperation with their more powerful neighbors.
The summit comes at a time when China and Russia have been building their relationship. In 2022, China declared a "no limits" partnership with Russia when Putin visited Beijing. China has also portrayed itself as a neutral actor in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Xi and Putin last met in May when Putin traveled to Beijing, and since then China has offered diplomatic support to Moscow and is a top market for its oil and gas.
Despite the growing political, economic and military relations between China and Russia, Central Asia remains an important area for both countries.
For Moscow, Central Asia comprises five former Soviet republics and has deep-rooted historic cultural, linguistic and economic ties to Russia. For China, Central Asia is integral to its Belt and Road international infrastructure development project, and its investment may pose threats to Russia’s influence over the region.
Analysts say the discussions at the summit may have underlying implications because China and Russia will need to balance their competing interests in Central Asia with their desire for closer cooperation elsewhere.
“The SCO allows China and Russia to have a collective dialogue with the Central Asian states that allows Beijing and Moscow to manage some mutual suspicions about each other’s intentions to exert power in Central Asia,” Eoin Micheál McNamara, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told VOA’s Mandarin Service.
Despite potential differing objectives within the Central Asia region, maintaining cooperation is important, McNamara said. “The SCO is therefore useful to keep the China-Russia alliance together as a force in wider great power politics,” he said.
Carol Saivetz, a senior fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program and a research associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said she expects the participants at the meeting “to discuss security in the abstract and economic projects.”
“It used to be that there was some kind of tacit agreement between Beijing and Moscow that China would take care of the economic issues and Russia would be the security guarantor for the region,” she told VOA in a written statement.
However, with the war between Russia and Ukraine, she said China now has the potential to take advantage of instability within the Central Asia region.
She said the fact that Xi arrived early to meet with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and will go on afterward to the Tajikistan capital, Dushanbe, “is indicative that he is not surrendering all his options to the multilateral format or to Moscow.”
While the war in Ukraine overshadows the meetings, Saivetz wrote, a public discussion about it is not likely because of a “divergence of opinion on the war among the Central Asian states.”
Tina Dolbaia, a research associate with the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that any discussion about the war in Ukraine was unlikely to be held in public.
The Central Asian states, especially Kazakhstan, “are trying to balance between an expansionist Russia, rising China, and the West. … However, I am not sure if the Ukraine issue would be discussed openly or behind the closed doors [but my bet is on the latter],” she told VOA in a written statement.
She explained the relevance of the war in Ukraine to the power struggle between China and Russia within Central Asia.
“Since countering the West in Ukraine and establishing a multi-polar world order are important foreign policy goals for Putin [and since China plays a pivotal role in achieving both of these objectives], Putin is currently willing to underestimate and overlook China's rising role in Russia's ‘backyard,’" she said in the statement.
Despite both China and Russia’s influence over the region, Dolbaia believes that Central Asia’s loyalties “do not necessarily lie with Russia or China,” and that the region’s countries understand that they need to tread very carefully with both.
VOA Mandarin Service contributed to this report. Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
