By Najia Badykova
June 27, 2017, the CACI Analyst
In May, Beijing hosted a summit of global leaders on its One Belt and One Road (OBOR) initiative, a most ambitious project aimed to recreate the ancient Silk Road, connecting China’s industrial heartland to Europe via Central Asia and the Middle East. Given the gigantic scale of the scheme, the geostrategic and economic impact on Central Asian trade and development will be significant. Yet it is unlikely to benefit everyone equally. The less developed and poorer countries along the proposed routes, including those in Central Asia, will face serious challenges if they assume that this initiative alone can fix their economic problems, and use it as an excuse to further delay needed market reforms while coping with the effects of the massive Chinese initiative.
By Fuad Shahbazov
June 19, 2017, the CACI Analyst
In May 2017, China hosted an international summit in Beijing gathering 28 heads of state from four continents and representatives of various international organizations. The summit was devoted to the Belt and Road Initiative, referring to overland and maritime routes across the Eurasian landmass. One of the most significant moments of the summit was the meeting between China’s and Pakistan’s leaders and the signing of a new agreement (MoU), adding to the US$ 46 billion already pledged for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a network of rail, road and energy infrastructure. During the event, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, requesting their investment in CPEC.
By Farkhod Tolipov
June 6, 2017, the CACI Analyst
In April this year, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev made it clear that Kazakhstan intends to change from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. Thereby, this country took a new step in the overall course of its post-Soviet development as an independent state. Kazakhstan became the third state in Central Asia after Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan that decided to undergo such a change. Kyrgyzstan will supposedly be the next country to move in the same direction. The change of alphabets was met with geopolitically saturated aversion in Russian political circles and media, in contrast to the relatively peaceful manner with which it is being introduced in the countries themselves.
By Tristan Kenderdine
April 28, 2017, the CACI Analyst
There are two major policy shifts occurring simultaneously in China which will open new markets for Central Asian agroindustrial development and exports. The first is monumental. China is not only relaxing subsidies on domestic agricultural production while promoting the market mechanisms required to import more grains, it is genuinely letting go of domestic production as a food security ballast, and will begin to let other nation states feed its populace. The second is industrial international capacity cooperation, the policy solution to China's overcapacity malaise. The program envisions moving whole production chains offshore, essentially shifting Chinese industrial capacity to external geographies.
By Stephen Blank
March 22, 2017, the CACI Analyst
Central Asia has never ranked high on U.S. priorities. That is unlikely to change under the Trump Administration. Yet recent developments in Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan, do offer an opportunity to advance U.S. interests through a greater economic-political presence in the region, whilst also countering growing Chinese economic dominance and Russian efforts at military hegemony at a relatively low cost. The two key countries in this possible opportunity for the U.S. are Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.
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