By Tristan Kenderdine

October 19, 2017, the CACI Analyst

International Capacity Cooperation is China’s policy answer to comparative advantage, a vast state-planning exercise to coordinate China’s trade and investment strategy in external geographies. It is the practical industrial policy matrix allowing industries, local governments, and policy banking to intersect with partner economies as part of the wider geoeconomic Belt and Road strategy. For China’s aluminum sector, which is already heavily state subsidized and widely considered to be dumping on international markets, it represents an opportunity to extend the lifespan of the industrial policy and policy bank model. The formation of an aluminum capacity cooperation enterprise alliance should be a warning signal to the non-ferrous metals industries of China’s trading partners in Central Asia.

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.