Asia In this section: 38: Central Asia: The Beginning of a Conflict? 40: India’s Revocation of Articles 370 and 35A: A Call for Development or a Geo-Political Strategy? 42: Do Protests Have a Place in Democracy? A Look at the 2019 Indonesian Student Protests
Central Asia: The Beginning of a Conflict? By Umberto Tabalappi
During September, Kazakhstan saw its two largest cities, Nur-Sultan (formerly known as Astana) and Almaty, flooded with demonstrations. Most activists were protesting against China’s influence over the country and, more in general, in the Central Asian region. Only one month before, in Kyrgyzstan, villagers crashed and protested against a Chinese-owned gold mine, leading eventually to its closure. Clearly, these events display the rising feeling of resentment against China in Central Asia. However, different reasons lie at the heart of such protests. Ever since the 1990s, relations between China and Central Asian countries have been friendly, stable KCL Politics Society
and mutually beneficial. One can debt that Central Asian countries think of the buy-off of ‘Petro owe to China. Just to give an idea Kazakhstan’, a petrol company of the magnitude of such debt, formerly owned by Kazakhstan, by according to the ‘Carnegie ‘China National Petroleum Moscow Center’, Kazakhstan Corporation’ in 2005 as an currently owes China over $11 example of this. Similarly, China is billion. Even if such figure is the Kyrgyzstan’s largest trading largest of the region, it is a partner, especially after the sustainable debt, representing only creation of a free-trade zone in 6% of Kazakhstan's GDP. What this Naryn, a central region in the latter means is that, if Kazakhstan was to country. Indeed, even though the fully payback China for its Naryn region contributes to only investments, it would only use up 3% of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP, per the 6% of its produced output. ‘Institute for Applied Systems On the other hand, ‘The Analysis’, it has significant reserves Washington Post’ suggests China of coal. With China’s ever owns around 50% of Kyrgyzstan’s increasing demand for energy, it debt . From this figure, it is not comes with little surprise that the hard to comprehend Kyrgyz’s region attracts growing large shares of concerns about Chinese capital Chinese investment. interference in In light of this, “Events display the rising their economy. one would such feeling of resentment Clearly, reasonably debt ratio is question why anti against China in Central difficult to -China sentiment sustain. Hence, Asia.” is rising in the citizens possibly region and, fear that, in the furthermore, how future, did it lead to the Kyrgyzstan will above-mentioned protests. The become increasingly dependent first culprit could be the increasing from China, up to the point where
