The Shifting Geo-strategic Landscape In Central Asia Induced By Sino-Russian Energy Competition And Cooperation

Energy plays a critical role in a country's economic development and correlates with human well-being across the globe.It would be a both challenging and pressing undertaking for the international community to feed the growing energy needs in a sustainable and eco-friendly way on a long-term basis.In this regard,after the turn of the century,energy security has been elevated to a vital position in the portfolio of a country's national security,and the history following the end of the Cold War has witnessed intense competition and confrontation among great powers over the access to and control over the world's energy-rich regions.Among those resource-rich regions throughout the world,Central Asia,comprising Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan,Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan,is increasingly standing out as a hot spot arousing widespread concern.On one hand,its geographical location has always been highly susceptible to external engagement,since it lies in the hinterland of the Eurasian continent and links the East and the West.Therefore,a host of geopolitical scholars have constantly underscored the crucial geo-strategic position of Central Asia over the past century,and great-power rivalry has been more salient in this region than elsewhere from the "Great Game" between the British Empire and the Russian Empire in the 19th century to the "New Great Game" played by the U.S.,Russia,and China in the post-Cold War era.On the other hand,the exceptionally abundant energy resources which lack full access to international markets in Central Asia lie behind the visible engagement and competitive presence of external powers.Recent developments in Central Asia have highlighted China and Russia as the primary players in the Central Asian theater,now that Washington is undergoing global strategic adjustments and has embarked on its strategic contraction from Afghanistan.Russia,as the former colonial master,remains strong traditional clout over the region politically,militarily and culturally,and looks to restore its privileged status in the region under the Putin administration.In contrast,China,albeit late off the mark,is rising as the most important economic partner with Central Asian states and expanding its presence in the region with huge flows of funds,goods,technology and labor.The ongoing advancement of the Eurasian Economic Union(EAEU)led by Russia and the "Silk Road Economic Belt"(SREB)initiated by China is set to provide a new setting for geo-strategic dynamics in Central Asia.Up till now,the most remarkable field where Chinese and Russian engagement has overlapped in Central Asia lies in the energy sphere.For Russia,oil and gas resources in the region not only serve to offer economic leverage but also are a significant conduit of binding Central Asian republics with itself by means of deep involvement in Central Asian energy industries and monopoly on export outlets.From the Chinese perspective,Central Asia is a contiguous and reliable energy source without long-distance and unsecured seaborne transportation,thus diversifying China's energy supplies.Besides,through strengthening energy ties with Central Asia,China hopes to boost the economic development of lagging western provinces and impose a sustained stabilizer against threatening factors across the region such as terrorism,separatism,and extremism.By this token,tensions between China and Russia in the Central Asian energy field have occurred given their competing interests therein.However,regional realities also point to a cooperative pattern between China and Russia that has already emerged from Chinese-led energy projects in the region-most prominently,the China-Kazakhstan oil pipeline and Central Asia-China gas pipeline.Therefore,a central question arises as to whether and to what extent Sino-Russian energy competition and cooperation in Central Asia have given rise to a shifting regional geo-strategic landscape.But most of the existent literature fails to correlate the competition and cooperation between China and Russia in the Central Asian energy field with the shift of regional order,as they usually focus on the bilateral energy relationship between China and Russia or the great-power rivalry in Central Asia.Motivated by the desire to fill the gap,the thesis aims to investigate the aforementioned question through a case study that juxtaposes Sino-Russian energy interactions in three main Central Asian energy producers-Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan,and Uzbekistan.In addition,the thesis also attempts to examine whether Russia will be increasingly cooperative when dealing with China in the context of Central Asia and whether the geo-strategic tendency in the region is going to be more geopolitical or geo-economic.In Kazakhstan,China's national oil companies(NOCs)took the first step into Central Asian energy resources,and facilitated the formation of the "Central Asian Model" regarding China's operation in the field of energy.Notably,the China-Kazakhstan oil pipeline not only helped break Russian domination of export outlets but also greatly enhanced China's energy security as the first cross-border energy pipeline.Further,the case of Turkmenistan strikingly deepened China's engagement in Central Asia with the construction and operation of the genuine multinational natural gas pipeline.This gas pipeline has rid Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan of near complete reliance on Russian-led pipeline routes and is slated to connect all of the five Central Asian states with China upon the completion of Line D.However,competition was not the whole story.Russia was also involved in the construction of the pipelines,and has even exported crude oil to China over the years via the China-Kazakhstan oil pipeline.Hence despite a few presumable complicating factors such as evolving local communities,fluctuant world energy prices,major geo-strategic events,and Chinese and Russian domestic developments,the thesis concludes with the argument that Sino-Russian energy competition and cooperation in Central Asia have expedited a shift in the region's geo-strategic landscape over the past two decades,and that Russia is much likely to accommodate the rise of China in a more cooperative and down-to-earth way.