Friendship Rivalry between Beijing and Moscow in Russia’s Backyard

When Vladimir Putin visited Tashkent, the arid capital of Uzbekistan, as part of his recent trips to Asia designed to preserve relations between countries, local officials decorated boulevards with posters of the Russian leader – an expected gesture in the former Soviet republic, over which Moscow still casts a large shadow. But beneath the posters is a change with grim consequences in terms of Moscow’s international influence: more and more cars from Chinese brands such as BYD and Geely are driving on the streets of Uzbekistan, while the number of Russian Ladas is dwindling.

Relations between China and Russia are at an historic high, and the authoritarian powers are cooperating to counter what they see as a Western campaign designed to tie both of their hands. Xi Jinping has declared that the friendship between him and Putin has “no boundaries,” but in Central Asia, a region that Moscow considers its backyard, that friendship collides with Beijing’s global ambitions. This tension hangs over Xi and Putin’s meeting in Kazakhstan this week, for the summit of the “Shanghai Cooperation Organization”, a regional political-security bloc.

China used the invasion of Ukraine to erode traditional Russian spheres of influence. In Central Asia, as well as in the Arctic, Moscow’s reliance on Beijing to sustain its war machine forces it to acquiesce to these transgressions. Beijing is attracting local economies throughout the region with its strategic location. Chinese investments keep the region’s young workers away from Russia. A Chinese-funded railway promises to connect the region to Europe, bypassing Russian territory. Chinese renewable energy projects are helping to reduce the region’s dependence on Russian gas.

Sangerbek Kolmatov, a 29-year-old worker at a Chinese factory in central Uzbekistan, said the Chinese money has dramatically changed his and his compatriots’ job prospects. About 1.3 million Uzbeks worked in Russia in 2023, according to the United Nations Organization for Migration, down from 1.45 million the previous year. The reasons for the decline are complex, but Kolmatov attributes part of it to the rise of Chinese-financed alternatives. “Anyone who is unemployed can find a job here instead of going to Russia,” he said.

To Tsarist Russia, Central Asia was what the West was to the American pioneers: a supposedly wild territory that could be expanded into, modernized, and resourced from. Exploitation and modernization continued under the Soviet regime, which jealously guarded the empire’s borders against Chinese invasion. The power changes in the region have been in the making for years, but accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was seen by many in the region as an aggressive and threatening violation of the territorial integrity of a former Soviet republic. Instead of supporting Moscow, all five Central Asian countries chose to remain neutral regarding the invasion.

China cannot completely take the place of Russia. The careers and social networks of the elites in the region are deeply intertwined in Moscow, and the Russian language remains the lingua franca, the common language. People across the region still tend to view Russia more favorably than China, according to a 2022 survey by the non-profit think tank Central Asia Barometer. China’s reputation has been damaged by its treatment of the Muslim Turkic Uyghurs, with whom many in Central Asia share a similar culture and language. But there are already signs that China is finding its way to a new generation of elites in Central Asia. Nudirkson Mahmudov, a 19-year-old business student who graduated from an elite high school in Uzbekistan, said three of his 26 classmates went to China to study, and none went to Russia. In the past, he said, many used to enroll in universities in Russia.