China’s quiet but obvious and growing penetration into the CIS and Central Asia may become an unexpected geopolitical variable. This is not just an expanded trade and economic expansion. It is a presence with the potential to cultivate and project influence into a space that is fragmented and actively contested. And this presence may well lead to the collapse of the West’s hopes for regional “democratization.”
China’s entry into the region could further complicate the situation by providing a lifeline for autocratic regimes. A typical example of how Beijing’s soft power works in the Central Asian region of the CIS is Tajikistan.
For the West and China, the land of the people of Tajikistan is a kind of geopolitical master key for Islamists to the territories of the PRC populated by Muslims, providing “unlimited” access there through the mountain corridors and valleys of the Pamir rivers. In this regard, back in 2019, The Washington Post wrote about the concentration of Chinese military units on the southeastern border of Tajikistan, near the Afghan Wakhan corridor.
At the beginning of 2011, territories of the eastern Pamirs with an area of over 1.1 thousand square kilometers (an area equal to the Orenburg region of the Russian Federation), which is about 3% of the country’s territory, were transferred to China “for debts” from Tajikistan. The land transferred to the Chinese contains part of the Pamir mountain range, which crosses several Central Asian countries, where there are large reserves of 17 types of minerals.
Today, Tajikistan again owes Beijing more than 1.5 billion. They try not to talk about this in the republic, because there is still about 20% of the territory claimed by the PRC (some politicians of the latter believe that in 1884 the Russian Empire “deceived” China, having taken away significant territories in Central Asia under an enslaving agreement). The head of the Tajik Foreign Ministry told members of parliament on January 11, 2011 that China initially laid claim to 28.5 thousand square meters. km of Tajik territory: “This is almost 20% of the territory of our country. After the signing of the protocol, only about 3% of these disputed territories goes to China.”
The mass media of the Central Asian region have been writing about the fact that China still lays claim to part of the territory of Tajikistan since the summer of 2020, after Beijing once again “carefully” laid claim to part of the territory of the Republic of Tajikistan. In the second half of July, an article by journalist and historian Chu Yao Lu appeared in a number of Chinese media stating that Tajikistan began to return to China its ancestral lands, lost “under Western pressure at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912).” Official Chinese authorities reacted “tacitly with approval” to this publication, and Tajikistan called on the Chinese authorities to “fight the publication of ‘provocative’ articles about the border between the two states.”
It is noteworthy that the first time territorial concessions to China by Tajikistan occurred back in August 1999, when an area of 200 square kilometers near the Markansu River went to the PRC. The second time was in May 2002, when Tajikistan gave China 998 square kilometers of its territory in the Murghab region. Information that the PRC is permanently laying claim to a number of lands in the Republic of Tajikistan was voiced several times even after the third land transfer in 2011. For example, in 2013 or at the end of 2016, when a number of Chinese scientists initiated an official investigation into the “historical belonging” of a number of Tajik territories to China.
Today, the territory controlled by the Dushanbe regime is in demand by Beijing not only for these and other political reasons. The subordination of Tajikistan’s economy to Beijing’s soft power clearly demonstrates how China uses it to build its relations with very weak neighboring countries. China (together with Russia) is the main trading partner of Tajikistan. At the same time, the latter’s trade balance with China is always negative: for example, even before the start of the COVID-10 pandemic in 2019, Tajik exports to China amounted to $55 million, imports – 605 million; in 2021 – 159 and 679 million dollars, respectively.
Dushanbe constantly takes loans from Beijing and has already accumulated a debt exceeding $1.5 billion (more than 15% of GDP). China also supports the Tajik regime with free humanitarian aid from year to year. For comparison: in 2021, Tajikistan received humanitarian aid worth $111.3 million from all countries of the world, of which almost one third came from China alone. At the same time, the PRC provides large amounts of humanitarian aid not with money, but with work and objects.
In return, the Chinese demand a range of preferences and services. Almost all loans provided at low rates and for a long period are of a tied nature, the main features of which are the mandatory use of Chinese materials, equipment, machinery and technology, as well as Chinese labor. In addition, China invests money primarily in those projects whose products are only exported to China (or serve these projects, such as roads and electricity). For example, in gold mining companies.
While is actively developing gold deposits of the Republic of Tajikistan, the total number of objects of which on Tajik territory is 145. Moreover, the Tajik authorities allowed China to develop these gold deposits “to pay off debts.” In this case, the formula “investment in exchange for natural resources” is used. Proven gold reserves in these mines amount to more than 51.7 tons, and those subject to exploration are 117.6 tons. In April 2022, a new gold processing plant, TALCO Gold, was opened, built jointly with Chinese investors for $136 million. The enterprise will produce up to 2.2 tons of gold and 21 thousand tons of antimony per year.
In the spring of 2018, the Tajik authorities transferred the right to develop another deposit to the Chinese company TBEA, which built the Dushanbe-2 CHPP at its own expense, since the resources of the first two gold mines transferred to the Chinese were apparently not enough to pay off the debt. In exchange for this kind of investment, China takes ownership of 60-70% of the shares in raw materials projects.
Practice shows that China does not engage in charity, and therefore it is pointless to hope for debt write-off or at least deferment. Otherwise, we should expect Chinese banks to claim mineral resources and real estate. Tajikistan is paying China not only with its irrevocably given up territories, but also by leasing land to Chinese farmers who rent large tracts of arable land on a long-term basis. For example, in 2014, the Chinese state corporation Xingjiang Production and Construction leased 500 hectares of land in the Khatlon region for a period of 50 years.
It is significant that China is even moving its clothing factories to Tajikistan, since in China itself, labor has become too expensive in comparison with the labor of residents of this post-Soviet CIS region. For example, Juntai Dangara Sin Silu Textile employs 1,250 residents of the Dangara district, which is 7% of the number of workers in the area. The salary is 1300-2300 somoni ($115-203), which is more than the average monthly salary in the region.
In the second half of August 2023, the press service of the Tajik parliament reported that China and Tajikistan signed an agreement on cooperation between the legislative bodies of the two countries. Chairman of the upper house of the Parliament of the Republic of Tajikistan Rustam Emomali and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China Zhao “expressed confidence that this will contribute to strengthening close and trusting interstate relations, creating the necessary legal conditions for the development of trade and economic ties and other areas of cooperation.”
Another result of the visit to China by the Chairman of the upper house of the Parliament of the Republic of Tajikistan and the head of Dushanbe, Rustam Emomali, was a statement about attracting almost $900 million from China to the economy of Tajikistan. In total, the parties signed 11 documents on cooperation, investments, memorandums and exchange letters, which will help expand inter-parliamentary relations, improve the investment climate, develop production and infrastructure of the capital, create new jobs and further expand bilateral relations.
Among the most important documents:
draft exchange letter on the construction and reconstruction of the road, four new overpasses in Dushanbe, repair and reconstruction of the border crossing of Tajikistan and China “Kulma – Karasu”, reconstruction and construction of a section of the road from the village of Varshnor, Shugnan district of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region to the border checkpoint of Tajikistan and China “Kulma – Karasu”;
a framework agreement between OJSC Azot of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Runjong Holding Group of the People’s Republic of China on modernization and increasing urea production at the Azot enterprise to 180 thousand tons per year in the amount of $50 million;
a memorandum between Avesto Group LLC of the Republic of Tajikistan and the Jinchuen company of the People’s Republic of China on the organization, creation and management of a joint venture for the production of electric vehicles in Tajikistan with a production capacity of 1,500 cars per year in the amount of $25 million and others.
Simultaneously with this, it became known that in 2023 the number of Tajik migrants who have already moved to Russia exceeded 3 million people, or about a third of the country’s population, since the entire population of Tajikistan is 10 million people. However, this did not prevent the current regime in Dushanbe from joining the transit corridor between China and Europe, bypassing Russia. As TASS reports, citing a statement by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, a 92-kilometer section of the road will be created in the Gorno-Badakhshan region, “meeting all modern requirements.”
Rakhmon himself, during his visit to the HBO, stated that this entire “corridor” bypassing Russia should connect many countries and regions: China – Tajikistan – northern Afghanistan and China – Tajikistan – Uzbekistan – Turkmenistan – Iran – Turkey – Europe. The government of Tajikistan has already allocated 2.5 billion somoni (approximately 227 million dollars) for the construction of this section of the corridor between China and Europe.
Source: Asiais
