Afghanistan backdrop to Xi’s Central Asia visit

Xi Jinping visits Central Asia this week amid concerns that a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan could mean a destabilising exodus of foreign radical fighters from the war zone to homelands closer to China’s borders.

With the pullout deadline just 16 months away, China’s leaders share widespread concerns that Kabul’s own forces won’t be able to maintain security or that foreign fighters who were focused on fighting US troops will now head elsewhere, including other fragile Central Asian nations or even northwestern China.

Xi Jinping’s trip, starting on Tuesday, also is seen as an attempt to shore up China’s trade and relationships with governments in the region, extending Beijing’s influence in an area traditionally dominated by Russia.

“It’s vitally important for China’s development to have prosperity, peace and stability in Central Asia,” said Li Xin, a Russia and Central Asia specialist at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies. “The worry is the withdrawal of US troops will have a spillover effect.”

Xi’s visits to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are his first to the region since taking office as president in March. He’ll end the trip in Kyrgyzstan where he will attend the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a Russian- and Chinese-dominated grouping that Beijing hopes will boost its diplomatic influence in the region to better match its already considerable economic clout.

China surged past the EU as Central Asia’s biggest trading partner in 2010, and did US$40 billion in commerce with the five-nation bloc in 2011. Much of that comes in the form of oil and gas, with two pipelines carrying supplies to China from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

China, for its part, provides economic assistance and much-needed investment to meet the desperate infrastructure needs of the region and its 66 million people, helming projects such as the 2.3-kilometre Shar-Shar Tunnel linking Tajikistan to China.