Both Kazahkstan and China profit from BRI 
Despite fears of Chinese colonisation, Kazakhstan has succeeded in aligning the belt and road projects with its own development plan, something that can be a lesson for other middle powers.
Both Kazahkstan and China profit from BRI 
Geurasia

Both Kazahkstan and China profit from BRI 

Photo: AFP/Xinhua
Eurasia 23/09/2023 07:00

Despite fears of Chinese colonisation, Kazakhstan has succeeded in aligning the belt and road projects with its own development plan, something that can be a lesson for other middle powers.

Kazakhstan is taking advantage of its strategic location to diversify its partners and pursue its national interests. It could yield some lessons for other middle powers on how to coexist with China, wrote David Morris, former Australian diplomat in an opinion piece published at South China Morning Post. 

Morris noted, that after decades of Russian domination as a former republic of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan’s post-independence leader Nursultan Nazarbayev developed a strategy for a multi-vector foreign policy, seeking to benefit from engagement and cooperation with multiple partners and in overlapping regional initiatives. The new president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has doubled down on Nazarbayev’s strategy. 

In the context of this strategy Kazakhstan has sought closer links with the United States and European Union, including as a member of the Nato Partnership for Peace. It joined the Organization of Turkic States. It also enthusiastically joined the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and was the location where President Xi Jinping unveiled his ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.

When it comes to the initiative, Kazakhstan has bent it to its own interests, the former diplomat argued. "It offers an opportunity to diversify away from its traditional dependence on Russia. Rather than replacing one dependency with another, Kazakhstan has aligned belt and road projects with its own domestic infrastructure development plan."

Under this plan, Kazakhstan seeks to leverage its oil and gas resources to develop processing industries and invest in its minerals and manufacturing and production capacity in other industries.
AFP/Xinhua
Kazakhstan has in most cases provided much of the finance and many of the workers for belt and road projects. It has developed a major new dry port at Khorgos, on its eastern border with China, and built new pipeline, road and rail connectivity to the Caspian Sea to its west, Morris noted.

"In ensuring these are aligned with its own industrial strategies, projects are geared to local interests. The World Bank has assessed that Kazakhstan could grow its GDP by up to 9 per cent as a result of belt and road investments if the government implements complementary reforms including trade liberalisation and more efficient border crossings."

As Morris wrote, Xi Jinping chose Kazakhstan as his first overseas visit after the long isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, he demonstrated the importance of the country to China as a key link in the Belt and Road Initiative as well as being as a valuable supplier of resources and energy.

"The emerging multipolar world order might suit Kazakhstan, with a relatively declining but still dangerous Russia, a growing China and greater connectivity to the Middle East and Europe. Kazakhstan has shown it can assert its own interests – including, unfortunately, its elite kleptocratic traditions – and direct belt and road projects to its own imperative to develop more trade connections across Eurasia."

If China can succeed in supporting countries such as Kazakhstan in developing more efficient trade corridors spanning the continent, it will succeed in integrating Central Asia more than Russia was able to do. On the basis of Kazakhstan’s story so far, this need not involve any loss of sovereignty, Morris concluded.

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