China And Central Asia Republics’ Connectivity Through CPEC: A New Bloc Of Economic Cooperation – Analysis

The CPEC is just not a road but a network of connectivity, industrialization, trade promotion, energy generation, and much more. The main purpose of the package is to create a land link between western China and Pakistan by providing access to the southern port of Gwadar in Balochistan province.

This port was especially designed to cater the needs of China and Central Asian Republics. CPEC route provides immense opportunities to Central Asian Republics to expand trade with Pakistan and also go through China and expand their trade. Chinese Xinjiang enjoys centuries old cultural traditions and trading links with Central Asia. The ancient Chinese Silk Road first connects with Central Asia than rest of the world. Central Asia is thus central to Silk Road. It is believed that Gwadar Port and its allied road infrastructure is a Suez Canal for China and Central Asia. With abundance of natural resources such as oil, gas, gold, and other metals, Central Asian Republics have great potentials to investment in CPEC-related projects and also to investment in the new industrial zones. Pakistan’s location at the crossroads of West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East makes it the natural gateway for the landlocked Central Asian Republics.

The Central Asian Republics have been historically connected to the world through the ancient Silk Road, situated at the crossroads of East Asia, West Asia, South Asia and Europe, their location is excellent for trade. The CARs states are literally a goldmine of energy reserves with Kazakhstan having 30 billion barrels of oil reserves while Turkmenistan’s natural gas is estimated at 265 trillion cubic feet, this wealth makes the region central in the battle for resources between world powers and portend to play an important role in determining global supremacy.

Central Asian countries have always looked to access regional markets, including Pakistan, China, India, and the countries of West Asia. In this regard, CPEC could serve as a strategic opportunity for Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to transport their goods and market them more competitively to regional and global markets. Pakistan also desires to access the rich resources of Central Asia via Afghanistan to meet its energy needs, as well as transport goods to Central Asia. It becomes pertinent at this point to state that indeed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has great potential to become a gateway to Central Asia and to provide the region with the much needed economic uplift. It would be a natural extension of that strategy by connecting Central Asian countries with CPEC, China intends to cultivate new markets with significant growth potential in the region and evolve goodwill with neighbouring countries.

In this context, several Central Asian countries have welcomed the implementation of the CPEC by emphasizing the role of the project in promoting progress and prosperity. For instance, Turkmenistan has been allowed to use the crown jewel of CPEC, the newly modernized Gwadar deep-sea port in Pakistan, which gives Turkmenistan access to the Indian Ocean.

Tajikistan is also eying access to Gawadar port, as it would be a junction to connect the landlocked Central Asian state with the rest of the world. Uzbekistan expressed a similarly supportive stance about CPEC. The participation of energy-rich Uzbekistan in the CPEC project has the potential to double Pakistan’s energy output for the next six years, ensuring the country with permanent access to electricity.

Kazakhstan is also seemingly eager to launch joint projects under CPEC and highlighted the importance of the CPEC project for Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region. Kazakhstan would like to join the mega project as it would provide an alternative route to the Central Asian State for access to sea. Kazakhstan and Pakistan concluded that both countries had a large scope for trade in textile and cotton products, pharmaceuticals, food items, engineering equipment and machinery and construction enterprises. They ended up signing Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) for cooperation in the areas of trade and investment, defence and strategic studies and training in foreign services along with establishing the need of cooperation for bringing peace in the region.

The Central Asian Republics happen to be the nearest and most dependable source of energy supply via fastest trade routes for China’s burgeoning economic growth. Three of the Central Asian states have common borders with the Chinese province of Xinjiang so it is being planned as a future economic and transportation hub for 75% of Chinese trade with CARs.

Further down the route Xinjiang connects with Pakistan so it is all set to function as a key trade centre on the economic belt. An extensive highway network is to be laid for transporting oil, coal and agricultural products from Xinjiang which would be shipped out from Pakistan’s Gwadar Port.

Thus Central Asia is unlocked once it links to these trade routes and it gains access to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. China’s BRI kicked off with its first corridor, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, it would connect the Central Asian Republics (CARs) to the world with Pakistan becoming a center-point where most routes converge. The CPEC lies at the very heart of an intricate network of corridors working their way through land and sea as they connect vast regions, it can be defined as the most important of the six OBOR corridors and it is the linchpin of the entire strategy.

The Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) transport corridors are key conduits, improving connectivity and facilitating cross-border movement in the region. Most CAREC countries are landlocked and rely almost exclusively on overland transport for trade within the region and with markets just outside. Comprising an extensive, but still underdeveloped, network of roads and railways spanning the region, the six CAREC corridors are intended to expand trade and improve competitiveness, and in the process augment regional economic cooperation.

The notion of a ‘corridor’ was developed to address the trade and accessibility problems of landlocked countries. The corridor concept has since evolved to include transport, trade, logistics, economic, and even supply chain corridors. In addition, these corridors have exceeded their primary functions, and are now indispensable in promoting global and regional economic development. The map shows the three CAREC corridors.

Where there are advantages there are drawbacks too and here the negative factor is the presence of various radical Islamist movements that could destabilize the entire region, so it is essential that CARs be integrated and stabilized with trade and economic opportunities to stem militancy before it spreads across the length and breadth of Eurasia. China would like to quell Uighur rebellions in its territory and prevent the influence of militants from the Central Asian countries. Consequently, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formed as a confidence building forum aimed to promote the integration of the region, borders were demilitarized and the vision is to reduce the influence of Western influenced world forums like the United Nations. The focus of the SCO is on economic initiatives, India and Pakistan also became members recently and the mandate has been broadened to include joint security, trade and anti-war pacts.

Central Asia is important in its own right because it is the vital fulcrum between the dynamism of East Asia and the wealth and technology in Western Europe. Pro-actively, Central Asia is being reoriented into the new Silk Road and Eurasian Economic Union to promote the joint objectives and unity of the region. The US would certainly like to have unrestricted access to the CARs energy reserves and maintains military bases at this valuable strategic location, Russia feels that the US is intruding in its territory and has its own military bases to counter American invasive intentions. The Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are members of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) while all the Central Asian Republics are part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well and are well consolidated with China and Russia.

While highlighting the significance of Pakistan in the CPEC connectivity initiative it is observed that the country is actually one of the supercontinent’s most important economic hopes, as it has the potential to connect the massive economies of the Eurasian Union, Iran, SAARC, and China, thereby inaugurating the closest thing to an integrated Pan-Eurasian economic zone.” Moreover, the strategic significance of all this enhanced connectivity can mean the end of an empire and result in a multi-polar world, shifting the ‘power base’ to Eurasia. US geopolitical strategy has received this setback at a time when it is a progressively weakened force, this is why analysts call this the Eurasian Century, the integration and economic prosperity it offers make its success inevitable.

To conclude, CPEC is instrumental in economically uplifting the entire region not only through the land routes but also through sea channels, not only benefiting Pakistan but also the Central Asian Republics.

*The writer is a Foreign Policy Analyst and Research Head at a think tank based in Islamabad. She has done Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Governance and Public Policy. Her areas of research incorporate regional as well as extra regional subjects especially United States, Russia, China and Central Asian Republics. She can be reached at [email protected]