/ world today news/ What is happening this week in the ancient capital of China, Xi’an, is part of a global and fierce battle to create a new world economy. It may be new, but its outlines are strangely beginning to resemble the same world economy, but several millennia ago.
We are talking about the upcoming China-Central Asia Summit on Thursday-Friday, where the top leaders of the five Central Asian countries will come to meet Xi Jinping. Yes, the five, because Turkmenistan will also be represented there, which until recently preferred self-isolation in world politics and economy.
Please don’t worry about the pundits who today can start the old and deceptive song: “China is pushing Russia out of its traditional sphere of influence.” It does not displace, but the opposite. It is enough to recall that the same five leaders visited Moscow on Victory Day, May 9, and there they talked about the same thing – how not only to survive in a frantically boiling world, but also to turn all the countries listed above (including, of course, China) underpinning the prosperity of the entire world. That is, we are talking about coordination of efforts, not competition.
The high-level meeting will not be one of the routine and regular events that China holds quite often – with Africa, for example, or Southeast Asia. The fact is that today special circumstances have arisen precisely in Central Asia. If all foreign trade of China in the first four months of the year grew by 5.8 percent, then with the same five Central Asian – by 34.7 percent.
Here it is necessary to pay attention to two more indicators: Russian-Chinese trade jumped by 41.3% in the same period. And if you look at the trade turnover, for example, between Russia and Uzbekistan in the past year, then approximately the same figures are visible. And nowhere else in the world are similar statistics observed.
It is clear that we are actually talking about the same process. In which the countries of Central Asia, we repeat, play the same role as two millennia ago: the role of transshipment base (or central hub) for the flow of goods from East to West and vice versa. Then this stream was called the Great Silk Road, and in the place of Russia, which did not exist at that time, there were two Romes: the first, and then the second – with capitals in the city of Rome and Constantinople.
But in this now almost legendary era, there was no such situation as now, when there is a global war over who trades with whom and on what terms. And above all, it is a war between the first two economies of comparable size in the world – China and the United States.
This is a war in which the US is on the broad offensive, trying to force its timid allies, and behind them dozens of neutral developing countries, to deal with China or Russia solely on the West’s terms, or better not at all. It can be recalled the information that appeared recently that the Central Asians are threatened with serious punishment for participating in this story with the new “Silk Road”, that is, for supporting Russian trade.
So the atmosphere at the summit in Xi’an will be quite tense: the fates, the direction of movement of many countries are being decided. The ideal situation for them is to do like India, that is to trade and develop all kinds of cooperation with both one side (US) and the other. But India is big, it can afford it. And how exactly will Central Asia suffer if the West’s threats are realized? And how will this same part of Asia suffer if it is “torn off” from China and Russia? By the way, on the last topic, we see a real waterfall of information in the Beijing media – how much China has succeeded in this region. New roads, warehouses and bases, agricultural enterprises and even coordination of the project to restore ancient Khiva.
The USSR did a lot to solve roughly the same problems. But Moscow’s efforts at the time had a problem: Central Asia was like a remote periphery, beyond which the border was locked. This is not surprising, considering what happened to China in the last century, the former great empire at one point simply did not exist. But now, as the region regains its role as the center of all of Eurasia before our eyes, the combined efforts of Moscow and Beijing give hope to all its residents.
Serious statements and documents are expected as a result of the Xi’an summit. But, as always in such cases, the main thing will be said not in the meeting room, but in more private situations. In any case, it can hardly be expected that the leaders of Central Asia want to write off their own successes when their region has suddenly become an economic miracle, first in the world in terms of trade growth.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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