Skip to main content

Eurasianet

Main Menu

  • Regions
  • Topics
  • Media
  • About
  • Search
  • Newsletter
  • русский
  • Support us
X

Caucasus

Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia

Central Asia

Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

Conflict Zones

Abkhazia
Nagorno Karabakh
South Ossetia

Eastern Europe

Belarus
Moldova
Russia
The Baltics
Ukraine

Eurasian Fringe

Afghanistan
China
EU
Iran
Mongolia
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
X

Environment

Economy

Politics

Kazakhstan's Bloody January 2022
Kyrgyzstan 2020 unrest

Security

Society

American diplomats in Central Asia
Arts and Culture
Coronavirus
Student spotlight
X

Visual Stories

Podcast
Video

Blogs

Tamada Tales
The Bug Pit

Podcasts

EurasiaChat
Expert Opinions
The Central Asianist
X
You can search using keywords to narrow down the list.
Kyrgyzstan, China, Central Asia

Perspectives | Witnessing the limits of Chinese power in Kyrgyzstan

Beijing has yet to learn how to navigate messy politics, even when ignoring them hurts its image and interests.

Srdjan Uljevic Oct 14, 2020
Xi and Jeenbekov Xi’s not the one for him. (president.kg)

The ongoing political crisis in Kyrgyzstan, triggered by tainted parliamentary elections this month, has attracted all the usual suspects from the world stage. Yet one global power is palpably absent.

The European Union explicitly backed President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, highlighting his “key role” in a solution out of the crisis. Washington followed with a message blasting the “attempt by organized crime groups to exert influence over politics and elections.” The Kremlin described the situation as “chaotic,” promised to engage all sides, and Vladimir Putin sent his personal representative to Bishkek to negotiate a deal. Even the UN is expected to send a delegation to discuss the situation with President Jeenbekov, tacitly acknowledging his legitimacy.

China, however, has been silent.  

The one brief statement on the Embassy’s webpage consists of a anodyne reply during a daily press conference at the Chinese Foreign Ministry on October 5, the first day of protests. The spokesperson merely “expresses concern” and “hopes that parties will resolve the issue.”

The lack of any meaningful Chinese engagement is even more perplexing considering that unlike the U.S. or EU, China is a neighbor obsessed with stability on its borders, while deeply fearful of chaos and social unrest. Moreover, Beijing has in fairly short time become Kyrgyzstan’s single largest creditor, while the two countries deepened political relations by establishing a “strategic partnership” in 2013.

What’s more, in the wake of the flawed October 4 parliamentary vote, as chaos engulfed Kyrgyzstan, a number of Chinese-owned mines were attacked and seized. Chinese businessmen reported being targeted in their homes.

For a country that arguably has the most to lose if the crisis is not resolved, the Chinese statement is not only awkwardly bland and devoid of any meaningful detail – making it easily applicable to any country experiencing similar unrest – but does not befit a rising power and is oddly out of step with the international consensus.

Elsewhere, China has been acting like a superpower. As predicted by political scientist John Mearsheimer in the early 2000s, Washington’s expectation that China’s economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization has not come to pass. Instead, China is following in the footsteps of the U.S. and trying to become the most powerful state in its region, an Asian hegemon. Its militarization of the South China Sea, aggressive posturing towards Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and a violent clash with India in June all support Mearsheimer’s 2005 prediction that China “would want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries.”

So why didn’t Beijing send to Bishkek Foreign Minister Wang Yi, or even better, Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, who has rank over Wang as a member of the Politburo?

The explanation can probably be found in one of the core – and now contradictory –principles of Chinese foreign policy: non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. While non-interference might have been a knee-jerk response in 1954 when the principle was first enumerated and China was an international weakling, much has changed. China is today is a global power and has started behaving accordingly. That includes interfering in others’ domestic affairs. From Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany, among many others, news of Chinese bullying is reported almost daily.

Others might argue that Kyrgyzstan, and for that matter the rest of Central Asia, belongs in Russia’s sphere of influence. While Moscow would agree with that assessment, and for years seemed happy for Beijing to take an economic lead while it dominated security ties, China has in recent years started eroding this division of labor. Its engagement with Central Asia increasingly includes security cooperation on top of its well-documented economic supremacy.   

Beijing’s ambivalence is tied to the institutional and collective lessons the Chinese Communist Party has not absorbed over the decades. From the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen, from President Xi Jinping’s purge of critics to this year’s clampdown in Hong Kong, the Party has yet to learn how to navigate messy politics, even when ignoring them hurts its image and interests.   

 

Srdjan Uljevic is an assistant professor at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek.

Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.

Related

Afghanistan: Grappling with fall-out of dwindling foreign aid
Memoir: Recollecting the benefits of shoe leather diplomacy in Turkmenistan
Turkmen leader touts trade and investment during French trip

Popular

Afghanistan: Grappling with fall-out of dwindling foreign aid
Kremlin brings Abkhazia back into fold
Irakli Machaidze
Azerbaijan-Russia feud: back on front-burner

Eurasianet

  • About
  • Team
  • Contribute
  • Republishing
  • Privacy Policy
  • Corrections
  • Contact
Eurasianet © 2025