India takes on China and Russia in a Great Game for Central Asia

Name: ‘The Chinese will always stand by the people of Kazakhstan’, China says
Uploaded: 2022-01-26T14:00:24.000Z
Duration: 49 s
Description: ‘The Chinese will always stand by the people of Kazakhstan’, China says

PM Narendra Modi to hold summit with leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on Thursday – days after they met China’s Xi Jinping

India sees a chance to burnish its great power credentials, experts say, but it has far to go to catch imperial past master Moscow and big-spending Beijing

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to meet leaders from Central Asia on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Maria SiowandPranay Sharma

Published: 10:00pm, 26 Jan 2022Updated: 11:02pm, 26 Jan 2022

Until this week the Indian press had been keen to hype up Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s summit with the five Central Asian republics.

So much so that some reports went as far as to claim that the meeting, to be held on Thursday, was a feat that neither China nor Russia – despite their close strategic and economic links with the region – had been able to achieve.

The crowing stopped on Monday, when China’s foreign ministry announced that President Xi Jinping would chair a virtual summit the following day to mark 30 years of diplomatic relations with the five Central Asian nations.

During Xi’s meeting with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, China pledged to provide 50 million Covid-19 vaccine doses and US$500 million for livelihood projects.

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‘The Chinese will always stand by the people of Kazakhstan’, China says

If the Indian press had been trying to burnish New Delhi’s credentials as a power in Central Asia – showcasing Modi’s “political intentions”, as one analyst in the Chinese tabloid Global Times put it – Xi’s pledges were a reminder of how far it has to go.

Still, despite the appearance of having been upstaged by the Xi meeting, Modi’s summit had the potential to be a “game changer”, said Ashok Sajjanhar, India’s former ambassador to Kazakhstan, Sweden and Latvia.