In the very center of Almaty, a short walk from two epicenters of Kazakhstan’s theatrical scene, the Abay Kazakh State Opera and Ballet Theater and the Mikhail Lermontov State Russian Academic Theater, stands the State Academic Uyghur Theater of Musical Comedy, the first and only professional Uyghur theater in the world.

Inside the theater, a modest café named Ghérip-Senem serves tea and snacks to audiences between performances. Its name recalls one of the institution’s most iconic productions: the Uyghur opera adaptation of Ghérip-Senem, which has been part of the theater’s repertoire since the Stalinist period and is still performed regularly today.

Ghérip-Senem is not only a theatrical classic and a musical romance but also a transregional poetic reference shared across Central Eurasia. The heart-wrenching love story at its center belongs to a widespread Persianate, Islamicate, and Turkic dastan (tale) tradition whose vernacular variants had circulated across the Caucasus and Central Asia long before its modern Uyghur adaptations first appeared on stage.

The epic cycle to which Ghérip-Senem belongs developed through the interaction of oral performance, manuscript transmission, printed editions, and later theatrical, operatic, and cinematic adaptations. Across its various vernacular forms, the story follows the structure of a Persianate romance: two lovers are bound by destiny or promise, separated by social rank, parental or aristocratic opposition, rival suitors, exile, false accusations, and extended periods of separation (hijran/juda), before fidelity is vindicated through return and reunion. Its persistence across various linguistic and literary traditions points to a shared poetic repository in which oral narrations, lyrical verses, moral testing, and the symbolism of Persianate love poetry could be repeatedly vernacularized without compromising the recognizable narrative structure or figurative repertoire.

Notable variants and their Soviet revivals

Some of the best-known variants of this epic cycle developed across the Caucasus – Central Asia divide, especially among Turkmen and Azerbaijani communities.

The Turkmen variant, Şasenem-Garyp, represents one of the most prominent vernacular forms of the story. Centered on the same cast of lovers, rulers, viziers, and rivals, the tale preserves the familiar structure of prenatal promise, broken covenant, separation, exile, imposed marriage, and eventual reunion. Its continued prominence in Turkmen literary and theatrical life also prepared the ground for later operatic and cinematic adaptations.

The Turkmen branch received one of its major Soviet rebirths in the 1963 film Şasenem-Garyp (Shakhsenem i Garib), based on literary adaptations of the dastan published in the 1940s. The film drew on the dastan’s natural affinity with musical melodrama: prose narration supplies the sequence of events, while singing, accompanied by the dutar (a traditional two-stringed instrument), gives voice to longing, suffering, and reunion. The film adaptation also translated the tale’s lyrical inheritance into visual form through costume, bazaar scenes, decorative settings, and the rose-and-nightingale (gül we bilbil) imagery, a recurrent trope in the poetry of the early modern Turkmen poet Magtymguly Pyragy.

The Azeri variant, Ashyg-Garib (Aşıq-Qərib), developed around the figure of the wandering ashyg (minstrel), whose love, exile, and return are inseparable from singing. In this version, the protagonist’s identity is shaped by the saz: lyrical poetry becomes the medium through which he declares longing, gains recognition, and demonstrates his fidelity. The tale retains the familiar narrative pattern but endows it with a distinctly Azeri musicality through the figure of Garib as a troubadour-lover. Its recurrent geographic references also place the story in a South Caucasian setting, with Tabriz and Tiflis forming the principal loci of origin, dream, encounter, and desire.

The same Azeri branch entered Russian and Soviet artistic circulation through Mikhail Lermontov’s literary retelling, Ashik Kerib, and later through Sergey Parajanov’s 1988 film under the same title. Lermontov compressed the dastan into a novella, while Parajanov’s film, based on Lermontov’s retelling, presented the story in a richly stylized Caucasian setting, combining ashyg/ashugh music, Azeri lyrics, elaborate ornament, pomegranate imagery, and ritualized gestures.

Ghérip-Senem in Uyghur adaptations

By the early twentieth century, the same epic cycle had become widespread among Uyghurs, particularly in the Ili Valley, where the Taranchis, a subgroup of Uyghurs, had sustained intensive cultural contact with Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Tatars for centuries. The love story entered modern Uyghur literary and theatrical form in the 1930s. The renowned Uyghur writer Ziya Semed (Samadi), himself a native of the Ili Valley, produced an operatic adaptation of Ghérip-Senem in 1937. Another adaptation by Zunun Qadiri, also completed in 1937, later formed the basis for the 1981 film Ghérip-Senem, produced by the Ürümchi-based Tien-Shan Film Studio (Tengritagh kino studiisi), which would become a modern Uyghur cultural icon.

The 1981 film opens with recollections of two parallel hunting expeditions by Shah Abbas and his vizier Hesen, during which they each encounter a pregnant gazelle and spare it after recalling that their wives are also expecting children concurrently. Abbas then pledges that, if one household has a son and the other a daughter, the two children will be joined in marriage. Abbas’s wife gives birth to Senem, while Hesen’s wife gives birth to Ghérip. Years later, the two study together in a madrasa, where companionship eventually transforms into love. Their promised union is disrupted by Shawaz, who plots the assassination of Hesen, subsequently succeeds him as vizier, and seeks to make his son, Abdulla, heir to the throne by marrying him to Senem. Through conspiracy and false accusations, Shawaz turns Abbas against Ghérip, who is condemned as a rebel and expelled alongside his family. In exile, Ghérip’s fidelity moves Dilarem, a female serder (ruler), whose mountain community helps him return. Shawaz and Abdulla’s conspiracy is eventually exposed, Abbas recognizes the injustice committed against Hesen’s family, and the lovers are reunited in matrimony after lengthy separation.

Persianate poetic tropes on the silver screen

The 1981 film draws extensively upon the repertoire of Persianate poetic symbolism and reproduces those literary tropes through visual imagery, songs, and dialogue.

The names of the main characters represent some of the clearest uses of poetic symbolism. The name Ghérip recalls the Perso-Arabic word gharib, meaning a stranger, exile, or wanderer. Senem derives from Persian sanam, meaning an idealized image or beloved, a word whose secular poetic use often intersects with Sufi-inflected language of beauty, devotion, and forbidden adoration. The ruler’s designation as Shah Abbas likewise places the court within Persianate political traditions. These names give the story an implied register of estrangement and devotion from the outset.

The film’s most explicit literary frame is Perhat-Shérin (Farhad and Shirin), a love story popularized by Nizami Ganjavi in Persian and later elaborated by Alisher Navoiy in Chaghatay. Senem’s reading of the story in Charbagh (“quadripartite garden”) leads to a scene she fantasizes, where Perhat and Shérin appear in the likeness of Ghérip and Senem. In Senem’s vision, Perhat splits the mountain with his pickaxe, which turns the classic metaphor of impossible labor into a visual prefiguration of Ghérip’s own ordeal. When the lovers later invoke Perhat-Shérin and Leyli-Mejnun in their vows, they place their bond within a poetic lineage of trials and tribulations, separation, longing, and self-consuming devotion, motifs that also acquired strong Sufi resonance in other Persianate texts.

The triangular structure of the romance recalls the rivalry embedded in the literary trope of Khosrow, Shirin, and Farhad, where the beloved becomes the object of competing claims between devoted labor and the desire of the powerful. In the film, Abdulla’s desire for Senem is coercive and jealous rather than devotional or genuine, reinforced by his father Shawaz’s political ambitions and by Abdulla’s own penchant for weapons and violence. Against Ghérip’s patience, exile, and fidelity, Abdulla represents a rival love emptied of adab (etiquette, decency, and refinement) and transformed into an instrument of power struggles.

The pregnant gazelle at the beginning of the film symbolizes vulnerability, maternity, and compassion. As Shah Abbas and Hesen spare the animal while recalling their own pregnant wives, the scene transforms a hunting expedition into a moral test of compassion. In Persianate love stories, especially in Nizami’s Sufi-inflected narrative arc of Leyla and Majnun, wild animals often congregate near the suffering lover as creatures, protected by his mercy, as his love and compassion extend even to animals.

The symbolism of violence takes a darker turn in the film. The arrow – the weapon initially restrained before the pregnant gazelle – returns in corrupted form when Hesen is murdered by a poisoned arrow. Meanwhile, explicit accusations of slander and calumny throughout the film are expressed through the word zeher (“poison”). Persianate ethical literature, from Sa‘di’s Gulistan to later Turkic didactic verses in The Book of Dede Korkut, often treats slander as a moral injury. The film connects emotional damage to literal poison.

The royal garden, Charbagh, functions as the film’s central site of love and confinement. The term itself evokes the quadripartite garden associated with Persianate ideas of nourishment and paradise, while the scene of Senem reading Perhat-Shérin by an aywan (veranda) situates poetry and imagination in a setting for genuine love. As Abbas later turns the same space into a place of confinement for Senem, the garden’s meaning changes from emotional awakening to the enclosure of the beloved under patriarchal and autocratic authority.

The recurrent pair-of-roses imagery functions as the film’s most intimate visual emblem. Senem sews Ghérip a handkerchief bearing her name and two roses. Later, at the wedding festivities arranged for her and Abdulla, she recognizes Ghérip’s nearby presence through a bouquet with two roses at its center, sent to her by an intermediary. The rose, already central to Persianate poetry, becomes both an image of beauty and a code of recognition in the film. Furthermore, the handkerchief further condenses innocence and sorrow. Its white color and silky fabric evoke purity and tenderness, while its very function as an object for wiping tears turns it into a keepsake of separation.

The madrasa scenes place Ghérip and Senem’s love within the discipline of adab. The mullah, Jamalidin, whose name means “beauty of faith,” is the source of knowledge and etiquette. The subject taught by Jamalidin, whom his pupils address reverently as ustaz (“master”), appears to be edebiyet (“literature” – the word itself a derivative of adab). Abbas’s removal of Senem from the madrasa, followed by Jamalidin’s imprisonment, therefore marks the rupture of the ethical and literary order that first allowed their love to flourish. Even Shah Abbas, despite his despotic tendencies, defers to Jamalidin’s moral authority. Jamalidin’s eventual release from imprisonment also marks the return of reason and justice.

Some of the songs in the film also draw upon the Persianate vocabulary of longing. As Ghérip waits for Senem in Charbagh, his drawn-out cry of “yarim kelmidi” (“my beloved has not come”) turns the Persianate term yar (“beloved”) into an expression of anxiety and separation. Senem’s later declaration that her heart burns for Ghérip echoes a classical lyrical motif found in Rumi’s ghazals and Nadira’s love poems, where the burning heart, often expressed through the imagery of a kebab, highlights suffering, fidelity, and spiritual cleansing. In Sufi-inflected poetry, burning may also suggest purification through longing.

The repeated appearance of a zulfiqar (a bifurcated sword) in the film marks the continuity between Hesen’s moral authority and Ghérip’s eventual vindication. In Islamic traditions, the zulfiqar is associated with the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and evokes valor, justice, and martial authority. Because the sword has once belonged to Hesen and is later passed reverently to Ghérip before his return, it functions as a restored inheritance: Ghérip receives the symbol of justice that has been interrupted by Hesen’s murder and Shawaz’s usurpation.

Shah Abbas’s authority over marriage, confinement, exile, and execution gives the story a coercive dimension. His order to execute Ghérip is interrupted by Eid al-Adha (Qurban Héyit), whose associations with sacrifice, mercy, and communal renewal place sacred traditions above despotic wrath.

The forty-day wedding festivities arranged for Senem and Abdulla draw on a symbolic duration widely used in Persianate literary traditions to mark trial and transformation. In the film, the number forty gives the false marriage the appearance of ritualistic completeness. The imposed forty-day celebration ends not with Senem’s surrender but with Ghérip’s return and the restoration of the original covenant.

Direct and indirect allusions to paradise appear throughout the film and beyond. Senem’s reading of Perhat-Shérin leads to a fantasy of paradise, while Charbagh and the paired roses echo Persianate associations between gardens and paradisic beauty. In a 1980 painting based on the same story by the prominent Uyghur painter Ghazi Emet, the inclusion of two peacocks, a familiar emblem of splendor and paradise in Persianate visual culture, extends this imagery into courtly aesthetics, while its folded tail suggests the still-unrealized potential of earthly love.

The film’s Persianate poetic symbolism is presented through distinctly Uyghur cultural elements. Its dialogue and songs are based on highly poeticized Uyghur diction and syntax, while the film’s visual texture includes etles köynek (traditional silk dress), doppa (traditional skullcap), qapaq (a gourd turned into a water bottle), kerney (a long horn typically used in festivities), and chin ussuli (a traditional dance involving the balancing of numerous bowls on the dancer’s head). These elements give the love story a specifically Uyghur form and allow the broader Persianate poetic symbolism to be conveyed through Uyghur music, costume, and material culture.

Shérinjan: A Soviet musical afterlife

A revealing parallel appears in the 1986 Soviet Uyghur musical Séhirlik Alma (The Magical Apple), filmed in Bukhara and Khiva with songs performed by the Uyghur pop band Yashliq (“youth”) in honor of the band’s home city, Almaty, whose name means “where apples are from.” Although the sequence of love stories unfolds in a stylized pre-modern setting, one line of dialogue explicitly refers to the State Uyghur Dance Ensemble of the Kazakh SSR, an anachronism that marks the film as a playful Soviet Uyghur reworking of Persianate fairy-tale romance rather than a rigorous historical reenactment. Like the literary symbolism in Ghérip-Senem, the musical stages love through pop songs, lavish costumes, traditional and techno dances, garden imagery, and the symbolism of apples and roses.

A song in the musical, “Shérinjan,” offers the clearest example of this parallel poetic vocabulary. The song is a confession of love from a young man to his beloved. The beloved’s name evokes the poetic heroine, Shérin, while the affectionate suffix jan (a Persian-derived endearment that also means “soul” and “life”) draws on a Persianate language of intimacy in which the beloved is also the soul and life. Its lyrical images unfold through a familiar poetic sequence: apples thrown into the river drift without sinking, with the word for drifting, leylimeq, also evoking the poetic heroine, Leyli; the fire of love blazes without going out; gardens stir in the breeze; flowers summon the nightingale; and thirsty hearts cry yar-yar day and night. The singer’s refusal to enter the beloved’s garden or to pluck her pomegranate adds a note of restraint, turning desire into an ethical posture governed by adab. The song thereby reproduces many of the same symbolic associations that structure Ghérip-Senem: love moves through flowers, water, fire, garden, confession, and the disciplined longing of the faithful lover.

The only non-Uyghur song in the musical is the chorus of “Million alykh roz” (“A Million Scarlet Roses”), a classic by the late Soviet pop diva Alla Pugachëva, reinterpreted by a child before a young couple. Performed with a mixture of traditional Uyghur instrumentation and 1980s electronica arrangement, the song extends the Persianate symbolism of roses in a form familiar to a broader Soviet audience and inserts a recognizable Soviet pop refrain into a pre-modern romance setting without disrupting the musical’s fairy-tale fabric. The image of a million scarlet roses transforms the traditional pair-of-roses motif, as seen in Ghérip-Senem, into an extravagant public display of devotion.

The ubiquity of Persianate poetic symbolism in Ghérip-Senem reveals the depth of Uyghur cultural heritage and its rootedness in a cultural spectrum far broader than any single local or national tradition. Through its distinct Uyghur cultural forms, the film participates in a shared Persianate repertoire of romance, refinement, longing, and moral codes that has linked communities across Central Eurasia and beyond for centuries. The film’s significance, therefore, lies not only in its iconic status within modern Uyghur culture but also in the clarity with which it affirms Uyghur inheritance of a magnificent literary patrimony.

By Diego Benning Wang.

Diego Benning Wang is a historian of Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Having received a PhD in history from Princeton University, an MA in Russian studies from Columbia University, and a BA in Russian studies from New York University, he is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

The post “Ghérip-Senem”: The visualization of Persianate poetic symbolism in Uyghur cinema appeared first on Novastan English.

For more than two decades, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway existed mainly on planning maps and in diplomatic communiqués. First discussed in the late 1990s, the project was repeatedly delayed by disagreements over financing, track gauge and route.

That changed when construction was formally launched in Kyrgyzstan’s Jalal-Abad region in December 2024. A year later, a syndicate of Chinese banks signed a loan agreement securing the project’s main external financing.

For the first time, the railway is taking physical shape rather than remaining a proposal. But its long-term significance will depend on more than steel, concrete and tunnels. The three governments will also have to manage debt, land disputes and environmental risks, while determining where the railway fits within an increasingly complex network of Eurasian trade corridors.

The planned route runs for approximately 523 kilometres. It begins in Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang region, crosses into Kyrgyzstan through the Torugart Pass, continues through Arpa and Makmal to Jalal-Abad, and then reaches Andijan in Uzbekistan, where it connects with the existing Uzbek and wider Central Asian rail network.

China’s railway network uses the 1,435 mm standard gauge, while the existing networks of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan use the Soviet-derived 1,520 mm gauge. Under the CKU design, the standard-gauge line will extend from China into Kyrgyzstan as far as Makmal. There, a transshipment hub will transfer cargo to trains running on the broader 1,520 mm gauge for the western section of the route.

The Kyrgyz section carries most of the project’s engineering difficulty. Roughly 90 percent of the route through Kyrgyzstan passes through mountainous terrain. It will include 29 tunnels and 50 bridges with a combined length of around 120 kilometres – roughly 40 percent of the 304-kilometre Kyrgyz section.

A $4.7 billion bet

The total cost of the railway is estimated at around $4.7 billion.

Under the financing agreement signed in Bishkek in December 2025, approximately half of that amount – around $2.3 billion – is being provided through a 35-year loan from a consortium of Chinese banks led by the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China. The loan is to be repaid by the joint venture established to build and operate the railway.

The remainder is being provided as equity. The joint venture, registered under Kyrgyz law, is 51 percent Chinese-owned, while Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan each hold 24.5 percent.

Kyrgyzstan’s equity contribution amounts to approximately $609 million. Around half is to come from the state budget, while the other half is being financed through a $304.5 million preferential loan from China’s Export-Import Bank. The loan has a 25-year maturity, a five-year grace period and an annual interest rate of 1.5 percent.

Authorities hope to open the line by 2030, although the scale of the engineering works and the mountainous terrain leave significant room for delays.

Kyrgyzstan: transit opportunity, financial exposure

For Kyrgyzstan, the railway offers something the country has long lacked: a direct rail connection with China and the possibility of turning its geography from a constraint into an economic asset.

President Sadyr Japarov has said that the completed railway will transform Kyrgyzstan “into a transit power”. The government expects transit revenues, new jobs and a stronger role for the country in regional trade.

Around 5,000 people are currently employed on the Kyrgyz section, including some 2,000 Kyrgyz citizens. Supporting infrastructure, including substations and transmission lines, is also being built.

But the opportunity comes with financial exposure.

Kyrgyzstan already owed China’s Export-Import Bank around $1.5 billion in early 2026, making China the country’s largest single external creditor. The new railway adds further liabilities, even if the borrowing terms are relatively favourable.

This has prompted debate over whether the project could deepen Kyrgyzstan’s dependence on Chinese financing. The more useful question, however, is not whether the railway fits the contested label of a Chinese “debt trap”, but whether the revenues it generates will ultimately justify Kyrgyzstan’s additional exposure.

The loans have long maturities, low interest rates and grace periods intended to keep repayments manageable. Yet future debt servicing will depend in part on transit and logistics revenues that remain projections rather than receipts.

There is also a separate question over how much of the economic value generated by the railway will remain inside Kyrgyzstan. If warehousing, customs services, freight consolidation and other higher-value logistics activities are concentrated elsewhere, Kyrgyzstan could gain transit revenue while capturing a smaller share of the wider commercial benefits.

Uzbekistan: the logistics-hub strategy

Uzbekistan enters the project from a different position.

Andijan is already connected to the country’s national rail network, meaning Uzbekistan does not face the immense engineering challenge of building a new railway across the Tien Shan. Instead, the CKU line would extend Uzbekistan’s transport network eastward and give the country a more direct rail connection with China.

That fits a broader Uzbek strategy of turning the country into a logistics hub connecting East Asia, Central Asia and routes leading west and south.

Domestic infrastructure has already strengthened this position. The Pop-Angren railway links the Fergana Valley directly with the rest of Uzbekistan without requiring trains to cross neighbouring territory. Tashkent is simultaneously promoting other international routes, including the proposed Trans-Afghan corridor towards Pakistan and transport links across the Caspian towards the South Caucasus, Türkiye and Europe.

For Uzbekistan, the CKU railway is therefore not a stand-alone project. Its value lies in how it can connect with a wider network of existing and proposed corridors.

If those connections prove commercially viable, Uzbekistan could strengthen its position as one of the principal junctions between China and markets to the west and south.

Land, compensation and environmental costs

The railway’s benefits are national and regional, but many of its immediate costs are local.

Under the intergovernmental arrangements, Kyrgyzstan is responsible for a range of obligations on its territory, including social and environmental impact assessments, protection of cultural heritage, land acquisition, demolition and resettlement.

According to the Kyrgyz government, 214 homes are to be demolished to make way for the railway – 191 of them in Suzak district in Jalal-Abad region and the remainder in Naryn.

The government says that most affected owners have accepted compensation and that only a small number continue to dispute the amounts offered. However, some residents have publicly challenged the compensation process, while the use of compulsory acquisition has generated public resistance in affected communities.

Authorities have hired an independent company to assess the value of affected properties, but questions about transparency, participation and compensation remain sensitive as construction advances.

Environmental concerns are also becoming more visible.

Kyrgyz regulators have already fined contractors for environmental violations. Specialists have warned that large-scale tunnelling, blasting and earthworks in mountainous terrain can affect watercourses, habitats and local ecosystems.

Kyrgyz economist Kubat Rahimov has noted that mountain railway construction can require rivers to be redirected and concrete supports to be placed in watercourses, with potential consequences for surrounding flora and fauna.

Chinese and Kyrgyz officials have stressed environmental requirements in contractor selection and construction. But the scale of the engineering works means environmental management will remain an important test throughout the project.

A new route – but not a replacement for Kazakhstan

The strategic importance of the CKU railway comes less from the line itself than from the networks it can connect.

Once operational, it will create another overland rail route between China and Central Asia that bypasses Kazakhstan. From Uzbekistan, freight could continue west through existing networks towards Turkmenistan and the Caspian Sea, or connect with other routes feeding into the broader Trans-Caspian system towards Azerbaijan, Georgia, Türkiye and Europe.

Longer-term plans also envisage stronger connections south towards Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

But CKU should not be understood as a replacement for the established China-Kazakhstan rail corridors.

The new line will cross difficult mountainous terrain and will operate largely as a single-track railway. Kazakh analyst Marat Shibutov has argued that these physical constraints will limit the number and length of trains that can use the route.

The difference in scale is considerable. Rail freight between China and Kazakhstan exceeded 32 million tonnes in 2024, while the CKU railway’s eventual annual capacity is commonly estimated at around 15 million tonnes.

Its importance therefore lies less in displacing Kazakhstan than in adding another option to the Eurasian transport network.

For China, this means greater route diversification. For Central Asian states, it creates additional bargaining power and greater resilience if disruption affects one of the region’s existing corridors.

Who captures the gains?

The strategic gains are easiest to identify at state level.

China acquires another westbound route that reduces its reliance on Kazakhstan and gives Xinjiang an additional connection to Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan gains a direct railway link with China and the possibility of substantial transit revenues. Uzbekistan advances its ambition to become a major logistics junction linking China with Central Asian, Trans-Caspian and southern transport corridors.

Construction companies, banks and logistics operators are also among the project’s most immediate economic beneficiaries.

Whether those gains will spread more widely is harder to predict.

Construction jobs are temporary. Families along the route are already dealing with displacement and compensation. And Kyrgyzstan will benefit most if it can develop logistics, warehousing, customs and other services around the railway rather than serving primarily as territory through which trains pass.

The same question applies regionally. The CKU railway could redistribute trade flows and create new economic opportunities, but the value generated by the corridor will depend on border procedures, customs governance, freight costs and connections with other transport networks.

None of this diminishes the railway’s historic significance. After decades of delay, the project is finally moving from diplomatic ambition to physical infrastructure.

But the CKU railway is also the beginning of a longer contest over financing, environmental protection, compensation, logistics and regional competition. The outcome of that contest – more than the rails themselves – will determine who ultimately benefits from Central Asia’s newest trade route.

Kodirjon Eshonkulov

Kodirjon Eshonkulov is an independent researcher specialising in Central Asian geopolitics, transboundary infrastructure and relations with the European Union. He is a recent graduate of the Graduate School of International Studies at Ajou University in South Korea. Since 2017, he has worked as a correspondent and television journalist covering social and political reforms in Uzbekistan. His writing on Uzbekistan’s water scarcity and Middle Corridor policy has appeared in The Times of Central Asia and the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst.

The post China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway: Who wins from Central Asia’s new trade route? appeared first on Novastan English.

Relations between Kazakhstan and China are deepening fast. As a linchpin in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, Astana hopes to pluck the fruits of this global infrastructure development strategy, which aims to boost overland trade connections between East and West. However, China’s treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in the Xinjiang province, the region’s second-largest Turkic community after the Uyghurs, remains a sensitive subject that is complicating further rapprochement between the two countries.

This text was originally published on 20 October 2025 by our partner media outlet Lossi 36.

On a cold winter’s day in February 1997, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the city of Yining, known to locals as Ghulja, in China’s Xinjiang province to protest against growing ethnic discrimination and religious repression. As the demonstration grew in strength, people started chanting “God is great!” and “Independence for Xinjiang!”. Chinese security forces soon mobilised and cracked down on the crowd, killing dozens and arresting hundreds. The exact casualty figures of the massacre remain unknown. The 1997 Ghulja incident is now looked upon as a precursor to the brutality against the predominantly Muslim population in China’s westernmost region.

Nearly three decades later, tensions are still palpable in Yining. Travelling through the city, there is a distinct presence of CCTV cameras and police patrols on the streets. Important intersections in the downtown area are overseen by well-equipped Chinese soldiers next to armoured vehicles with mounted machine guns. They appear suspicious of people taking pictures of the local street life and seem uncomfortable with foreigners freely roaming about a region where, according to most observers, China is perpetrating grave crimes against humanity. Several countries have also accused Beijing of committing genocide, though some human rights groups contend that there is insufficient evidence to support this qualification.

One of the targeted communities are the Xinjiang Kazakhs, the region’s second-largest ethnic minority after the Uyghurs. Because of their mostly Turkic-Muslim background, the Chinese authorities see them as a threat to the state ideal of creating a homogeneous nation, united under the red banner of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In accordance with a policy of “preventative repression”, Beijing has sought to dilute the province’s demographic makeup through the state-sponsored in-migration of Han Chinese and has invested heavily in surveillance technology and infrastructure while building an enormous network of so-called re-education camps. 

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A short history of repression

After the takeover of Xinjiang by the CCP in the waning days of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the position of the Kazakhs in the region steadily grew worse. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao Zedong implemented his Great Leap Forward, which caused tens of thousands of local Uyghurs and Kazakhs to defect to Soviet Central Asia. 

The exodus coincided with a gradual deterioration of relations between Moscow and Beijing. The Soviets launched a propaganda offensive against China, promoting the migration of minority groups while trying to destabilise Chinese authority over Xinjiang by appealing to separatist movements. The local Soviet consulate enabled the emigration of ethnic minorities by issuing passports. 

When Beijing found out, they stopped distributing exit visas, which sparked fears among local Kazakhs and other minorities of being cut off from their kin in the USSR. A resulting demonstration was brutally put down, encouraging thousands of others to flee as well. Eventually, in 1962, the Sino-Soviet border was closed after between 60 and 100 thousand had left, and remained so for most of the Cold War.

Read more on Novastan: 70 years of Xinjiang: Beijing celebrates and enacts new political doctrine

Isolated from the outside world, the economic situation in Xinjiang worsened, while elsewhere the “Chinese economic miracle” was just gaining steam. Uneven regional development, combined with interethnic tensions due to the continued inflow of Han Chinese settlers, eventually resulted in a wave of separatist terrorism in the 1990s and 2000s, followed by a ruthless clampdown on the region by Chinese authorities. This eventually culminated in the ongoing Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism, which started in 2014.

Atajurt Eriktileri (Homeland Volunteers), a Kazakhstan-based human rights organisation in the forefront of advocating for the release of ethnic kin in Xinjiang, has documented thousands of cases of ethnic Kazakhs who have been incarcerated in China without a trial. Although the number of imprisoned Kazakhs is much smaller than the several hundred thousand Uyghurs currently detained in prison camps, Atajurt has done most to highlight the plight of all ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Yet, as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) brings a surge of investment into Kazakhstan, deepening ties between the two countries place Astana in a delicate position amid domestic concerns over the repression of the Xinjiang Kazakhs.

Crossroads Khorgos

About a hundred kilometres by road to the northwest of Yining, on the Chinese side of the Sino-Kazakh border, lies Khorgos. This newly planned town with a skyline that, from a distance, rivals that of any major European city, is part of a recently created special economic zone. It includes a massive area full of highways, warehouses, manufacturing sites, residential areas for workers and their families, and a duty-free shopping zone.

Khorgos is key to Beijing’s BRI. This multi-billion infrastructure development strategy, colloquially known as the New Silk Road, aims to expand China’s economic and political influence around the globe by boosting trade connections between East and West. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as heightened instability in the wider Middle East, the route passing through Khorgos – the shortest overland transport route to Europe – has rapidly grown in importance. 

That strategic relevance is also visible on the Kazakh side of the border. Here, Khorgos transforms from a geopolitical pivot into a logistical hub. The importance of Khorgos lies in the fact that the Chinese operate with a different track gauge, so any rail transport making its way to Europe has to change trains here. This happens just inside Kazakhstan, on a vast asphalted harbour-like complex, surrounded by barbed wire fence and dense with brightly-coloured shipping containers, towering cranes, and a warren of railway tracks. 

This infrastructure, together with additional roads and railways for onward transport, has been financed with Chinese loans. Critics of the BRI have voiced concerns about what they call “debt-trap diplomacy”. This alleged strategy, however, has been repeatedly disproven by experts. In the case of Kazakhstan, Nargiza Muratalieva, associate professor at the American University of Central Asia, states that “[s]trong institutions, public understanding, a diversified loan portfolio, and sustainable projects” allow Kazakhstan to effectively manage its debt.

That is not to say there are no risks to deepening economic ties with China. China is facing considerable economic challenges, as it struggles with deflation and an ageing population. These internal problems could easily spillover into BRI countries. Should Kazakhstan continue to take on BRI-related investments in the long term, infrastructure projects like Khorgos might become a liability. 

Views on China

China has come to recognise growing unease over its expanding economic footprint in Kazakhstan. Beijing has responded by promoting soft power initiatives, especially through boosting educational and cultural exchanges and increasing the production of Kazakh language content through Chinese media outlets. These efforts are aimed at moving beyond the elite-level political and economic ties China previously depended upon.

So far, this strategy has not been very successful. Apart from economic concerns, the (mis)treatment of ethnic kin in Xinjiang continues to influence public opinion on China in Kazakhstan. Over the past few years, several demonstrations have been organised to protest against China’s Xinjiang policy.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s government under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has been mostly silent on this issue. Although the resettlement of several thousand ethnic kin from China has given the impression that Astana is trying to address the situation with Beijing, the country’s political leadership carefully avoids direct criticism. Tragic but true, the pursuit of economic interests undercuts any meaningful response to human rights abuses on the other side of the border. 

Read more on Novastan: China in Central Asia: Fact-checking and myth-busting

The awarded reportage Kazakhstan-Xinjiang, the Border of Tears describes how many Kazakh survivors, upon their return to Kazakhstan, face indifference with regard to their experiences in China: “All the violence they have endured is not recognised, and seems to exist only in their private lives: denied by the Kazakh authorities, generally ignored by civil society, invisible to the medical community.”

In recent years, Astana has tried to actively thwart activists and grassroots organisations concerned with the suffering of Xinjiang Kazakhs. Most notably, in 2019, Atajurt Eriktileri’s founder and frontman Serikzhan Bilash was charged for inciting inter-ethnic hatred and arrested. When he was released after seven months of detention, he was forced to leave Kazakhstan. Attempts by his organisation to enter national politics were obstructed by the authorities, and little has been heard about these efforts. 

The BRI paradox

To pre-empt domestic unrest linked to China’s Xinjiang policy, Kazakhstan’s government is committed to making the BRI work. The latest Central Asia Barometer shows a correlation between the current boom in trade between China and Kazakhstan and more favourable views on China, especially among the youth. This finding reveals a striking paradox. Kazakhstan’s growing economic dependence on China could be softening Sinophobic sentiment – even as the BRI facilitates the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, a cause that has provoked outrage among Kazakhs. 

In China, BRI projects have gone hand-in-hand with a sharpening of security measures. The new highway connecting Khorgos with Yining, for example, is strewn with police checkpoints, and at airports and train stations throughout Xinjiang security controls are strict and time-consuming. The Chinese government has long perceived the expression of minority identity as an obstacle to regional development and worked to pacify separatist resistance.

Scholars have argued that the economic benefits of BRI-related infrastructure development befall disproportionately upon the non-local Han Chinese population, while the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang have played a significant role in the workforce behind BRI projects — possibly under conditions that amount to forced labour. If true, these findings would suggest that the promise of the BRI would sooner increase than diminish regional inequalities. 

Ultimately, managing the fine line between fostering economic development and addressing human rights issues leaves Kazakhstan in a tricky situation. The ongoing struggles of ethnic Kazakhs in China highlight the significant tensions that form a major obstacle for further rapprochement between Kazakhstan and China.

Julian Postulart for Lossi 36

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The post The story of the Xinjiang Kazakhs: silent suffering along the Belt and Road appeared first on Novastan English.

The 70th anniversary of Xinjiang, China’s Uyghur region, was celebrated with great fanfare in Ürümqi. The ceremony was marked by the presence of Xi Jinping, the first Chinese president to attend this event.

From September 23 to 25, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region celebrated its 70th anniversary with a gala. Among those present were Chinese President Xi Jinping and members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, Wang Huning and Cai Qi. Officially established in 1955, this region, which is central to the development of China’s “New Silk Road,” has been the focus of tensions between Beijing and the Uyghur minority for decades.

The gala, titled “Beautiful Xinjiang,” served as a tool for internal and external communication, conveying political themes and thus going beyond the purely artistic. Xi Jinping gave a short speech in which he repeatedly addressed the issues of security and stability in Xinjiang.

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“Ensuring social stability and lasting peace”

Xi’s speech to local authorities focused on social control as well as security. The president emphasized the comprehensive efforts to maintain social stability in Xinjiang and to raise public awareness of the fight against terrorism. According to the official Xinhua news agency, Xi said it was imperative to promote a strong awareness of the Chinese nation as a community in Xinjiang and to advance the development of this community.

The emphasis on security serves to justify the continued existence of an extensive security apparatus. It accompanies the publication of the “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Guidelines for Governing Xinjiang in the New Era: Practices and Achievements” by the State Council Information Office, the CCP’s new doctrine for the future of the region.

In the 42-page document, Beijing proclaims a “historic success” in the fight against terrorism and points out that there have been no violent attacks for several years; the last one dates back to May 22, 2014. To justify maintaining the reinforced security apparatus, Beijing denounces “Panturkism” and “Pan-Islamism” as existential threats and implicitly cites the Al Qaeda-affiliated “Islamic Party of Turkestan” (IPT), which now cooperates with the Syrian Ministry of Defense.

Read also on Novastan: Total surveillance, segregation, and internment in Xinjiang: a discreet report on the daily life of the Uyghurs

The text also justifies surveillance, re-education, and religious control policies as legal and preventive measures, while rejecting Western accusations of “genocide” and “forced labor.”

The CCP also welcomes the region’s economic development: regional GDP is expected to grow from 750 billion yuan (€90.8 billion) in 2012 to more than 2 trillion yuan (€242.1 billion) in 2024. Beijing highlights poverty reduction, rapid urbanization, and the creation of the Xinjiang pilot free trade zone in 2023, which is part of the Eurasian “New Silk Roads” corridor, an international logistics and transport infrastructure network announced in 2013.

Erasure and appropriation of Uyghur culture

No explicit mention was made of the repression and internment camps imposed on the Uyghur population since 2014, which have been regularly denounced by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP). A UHRP report dated April 25, 2024, states that one in 26 individuals in Xinjiang, mainly Uyghurs or non-Han Chinese, were imprisoned in 2024, representing nearly one-third of China’s total prison population. Yet these same populations represent only 1% of the national population.

Although there are no comprehensive official data on the exact number of internment camps in the Xinjiang region, NGOs such as the UHRP estimate that at least 578,500 people were incarcerated between 2017 and 2022, not counting those still detained in the camps. The Uyghur region has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 2,234 prisoners per 100,000 individuals. A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank has identified approximately 380 detention centers in operation since 2017 using satellite imagery.

Read also on Novastan: Escape from Xinjiang – Stories of those who escaped the camps

But current Chinese doctrine now emphasizes the concept of the “Chinese nation community.” This involves actively promoting standard Mandarin in education, encouraging cultural and urban fusion, and strengthening control over religious institutions so that Islam and other religions are “compatible with socialism.”

In addition, the CCP promotes selective preservation of local heritage (sites in Kucha, Turfan, Kashi, and Kashgar), integrated into a Chinese historical narrative, as well as the predominance of Han culture in education and public life.

Rewriting history

The document presents Xinjiang’s policy as a model of national governance, combining security, cultural assimilation, economic development, and ideological control. It seeks to legitimize the CCP’s actions in the face of international criticism by framing the region’s governance within the logic of “Chinese-style modernization,” similar to the situation in Tibet, where Beijing has exercised military domination and implemented policies of assimilation of the population for 75 years.

Between the CCP’s centralizing tendencies and persistent jihadist threats, Xinjiang remains a flashpoint for tensions, caught between security and repression.

Lenny Cabrol Noto for Novastan

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Films about re-education camps for Kazakhs and Uyghurs in Xinjiang were planned to be shown to viewers in Almaty

Kazakhstan’s law enforcement agencies have started to put pressure on the “Jaña Cekara” Film Festival, said Ravkat Mukhtarov, one of the event’s organizers.

Our team is outraged by the direct censorship prohibited in Article 20 of the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan. We are convinced that the festival must take place, so we are forced to move it to an online format. Violation of human rights is the key theme of “Jaña Cekara”, and the pressure on our festival is an exceptional indicator of the violation of our rights to freedom of creativity and self-expression. We need wide publicity, as we still hope to show viewers a movie about real life and the struggle for rights in East Turkestan,” Mukhtarov said in his Telegram channel.

According to the organizer, the special services forced the representatives of the venue to refuse to hold the festival. Mukhtarov explained to the editorial office of “Radio Azattyk” that the festival will now be held in an online format, since no venue can refuse the informal demands of the NSC.

The festival was to be held at the “NeSanatorii” art space in Almaty from September 8-9. Within the framework of “Jaña Cekara” a number of films were to be shown that addressed human rights violations, as well as the identity, language, culture and history of East Turkestan. One of the films was about labor camps in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC.

In addition, the event was to provide a space for discussion of the above topics. Among the speakers at “Jaña Cekara” are Uyghur activist Rushan Abbas, filmmaker David Novak, British human rights activist Aziz Aisa Alkun and Uyghur filmmaker Mukaddas Midjit.

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A dancing mountain goat, a flowering garden of embroidery, a trickster’s tales, a silken thread spun from a worm’s cocoon – these are the diverse array of Central Asian cultural practices recently recognised by UNESCO as part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage. Novastan takes a look at these four vibrant traditions, as well as considering where the List has its limits in truly celebrating the cultural diversity of Central Asia. Every year, a UNESCO committee inscribes cultural practices from around the globe into a List designed to showcase and safeguard traditions seen as universally significant. Intangible cultural heritage, according to UNESCO’s 2003 Convention, encompasses the practices, expressions, knowledge, and spaces which play an important part in a community’s cultural identity.

UNESCO’s List has long featured a rich variety of cultural practices from across the Central Asian countries, including Nowruz (New Year) celebrations, Tajik Chakan embroidery, and Turkmen carpet making. Among the eclectic group of traditions newly featured on the List this year – from Cuban rum mastery to the French baguette – are four cultural practices from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Orteke

A new entry on the list for Kazakhstan, Orteke is an indigenous performing art which brings a wooden puppet of a tauteke, or mountain goat, to life as it dances along to music. The tauteke puppet is attached to the surface of a drum by a metal rod, extending to a cord connected to the fingers of a musician playing a traditional two-stringed instrument, the dombyra.

As the player strums the strings, the tauteke puppet becomes animated, appearing to gallop along to the lively rhythms of the dombyra. However, true mastery of Orteke involves not only dictating the energetic pace of the tauteke’s dance, but also making the puppet move with grace – a feat some experts can achieve with as many as four puppets at a time. As playful as it is fascinating, Orteke appeals to adults and children alike and remains a core element of Kazakh folk heritage and intergenerational communication, maintained by the traditional Ustaz-Shakird (master-apprentice) teaching system and supported by educational institutions and competitions.

Turkmen-style needlework art

Described in Turkmen state news as capable of transforming anything into “flowering gardens and meadows” with merely a needle and thread, Turkmen-style needlework art is an elaborate type of embroidery popular across Turkmenistan and some regions of Iran. It is a defining feature of national dress for people of all genders and ages, used for occasions including weddings and Nowruz celebrations, as well as everyday items.

To begin the needlework, three thin silk threads are twisted together to form one shinier, sturdier thread. The needleworker then pierces the fabric with a thin needle and creates a series of loops with the silk, forming a distinctive pattern by holding the last loop with the thumb of the other hand before sewing the next. With colourful designs often showcasing needleworkers’ regional identities, the art form continues to be passed down within families and communities through generations of women needleworkers, while also remaining important in cultural and educational institutions.

Telling Tradition of Nasreddin Hodja/Molla Nesreddin/Molla Ependi/Apendi/Afendi Kozhanasyr

Centred around the telling of witty anecdotes associated with the wiseman and trickster Nasreddin, this variously named oral folklore tradition spans a vast region encompassing all Central Asian countries, as well as Turkey and Azerbaijan. The anecdotes are known for their shrewd commentaries on social norms and daily life, characterised by their punchy combination of wisdom, witticism, and surprise. In one anecdote, a shopkeeper angrily confronts Nasreddin for failing to pay his debt of 75 piastres. Nasreddin incredulously replies: “Now, now, you must know that I intend to pay you 35 piastres tomorrow, and next month another 35. That means I owe you only five piastres. Are you not ashamed of yourself for accosting me so loudly in public for a debt of only five piastres?” Read more on Novastan: “I want our theatre to be the new face of Tajik theatre”: Khurshed Mustafoev on the future of Dushanbe’s Russian theatre The anecdotes are drawn upon in daily conversation in communities across Central Asia, used for their instructive and entertaining qualities to strengthen arguments or enliven explanations.

Sericulture and traditional production of silk for weaving

Silk culture – encompassing an entire process from sericulture to the end silk products – is a major tradition of Central Asia, spanning centuries and giving the Silk Road its name. Inscribed in the UNESCO List as a practice of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (alongside Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey), sericulture and traditional production of silk for weaving comprises multiple stages of the process for creating colourful fabrics and carpets. Farmers grow mulberry trees and feed the leaves to silkworms, from which the worms form cocoons of silken fibres. The fibres are reeled from the cocoons and spun into silk thread, before being cleaned, dyed, and woven into bright fabrics commonly seen at weddings and family occasions. Read more on Novastan: Tajikistan: Nine new sites on tentative World Heritage list Sericulture and silk production is still largely carried out by villagers and small private farms, also benefitting from government support in Turkmenistan and specialist teaching and research at higher education institutions in Uzbekistan.

Where UNESCO falls short: Uyghur culture

As is clear from this diverse group of Central Asian traditions, the UNESCO List raises awareness and mobilises much-needed support for diverse, often endangered, cultural practices. However, the List has faced criticism as a tool for obscuring the very cultural diversity that UNESCO purportedly seeks to celebrate. The inscription of Uyghur traditions in the List as practises of China is a case in point. Among the repressive actions by the Chinese government against Uyghurs is the destruction of the community’s culture – from banning the Uyghur language in schools to destroying religious sites. Attempts to erase Uyghur heritage have been reinforced by the UNESCO List’s inclusion of two Uyghur traditions – Meshrep, a rich event combining song, dance, and entertainment, and the Muqam song and dance tradition – via nominations by China. What has followed is the co-opting of the traditions by the Chinese government. As ethnomusicologist Rachel Harris explains, grassroots gatherings are banned in favour of “sanitised, commodified and secularised” renditions of the practises devoid of key religious and community aspects.

The UNESCO List showcases many Central Asian traditions in all their splendour. However, the manner of involvement allowed from China currently means that support for Uyghur cultural heritage is overshadowed by silence on its erasure.

Written by Emma Bain

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Since the official launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, much has been said and speculated about China’s growing presence on the global stage – some offering nuanced insights, others fearmongering. Novastan sat down with leading researchers Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi and Alessandro Rippa to unpack some of these fears and frictions surrounding China’s mode of engagement abroad, and in Central Asia more specifically. Unveiled at the Nazarbayev University Campus in Astana, Kazakhstan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an unprecedented mega-infrastructural undertaking by China that aims to connect places and people in Asia with Europe and Africa. In recent years, China’s ever-palpable presence, within and beyond the BRI label – along roads and corridors, at mine sites, at logistics hubs and in free economic zones – has triggered fears of China grabbing sovereign territories and locking cooperating countries into debt spirals. This is also the case in Central Asia where “anti-Chinese protests” have even become a standalone category in protest trackers over time.

Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi: I could add two more aspects. The first one relates to maintenance. What we see in many BRI projects is that maintenance is completely neglected. This is an oft-forgotten aspect; it is not enough to build something, you also need to be able to maintain it, which costs more than the construction itself over the years. Thus, when we assess the power of the BRI, we should remember that infrastructure decays and needs maintenance to function. What will be the developmental outcomes of the infrastructure currently being built? This is difficult to say because we do not know whether they will be maintained and whether funds for them will be available. The second myth or assumption which circulates among policymakers is that infrastructure automatically creates development, progress, wealth, or an increase in gender equality. Our research shows that infrastructure, especially large-scale infrastructure and mega-projects, can also increase inequality; it can discriminate and exclude if not supported by other measures. Infrastructure is not a magical object and has to be planned and implemented in specific ways to generate positive change for those beyond the already privileged. There is so much attention to the BRI from both policymakers and scholars. Why do these myths still prevail? AJL: I guess many myths come from the fact that there is still very little research on the ground. A lot of the analyses, especially in the first 5-7 years of the BRI, were conducted by policy and geopolitical analysts, who looked at things from a large-scale perspective without doing ethnographic or detailed, long-term research. Many myths were born during that period, and it is very difficult to fight them now because they are already very well established. Both of our projects were born out of this idea that there was so little ethnographic research on the BRI. Our factsheets, we hope, will contribute to dismantling some of these myths. I guess these myths also live on because they are catchy. It is easier to think of the world in polarised, black-and-white terms than to get into the nitty-gritty complexities of the everyday.

AR: Nuance is very difficult to get across and there is still a lack of generalised understanding among Western publics about how China “works.” In China, as in every other country, there is a very striking difference between how the government says it works and how the country actually works. This is true for domestic policy, and this is true for foreign policy and global investments. Be it for lack of knowledge, be it because a lot of the analyses at the level of discourse do not really engage with how this is turned into practice, we still have this notion that Chinese leaders think in decades. Whereas when you look at how policy is designed and put into practice, you realise that it is contingent on very specific political quotidian matters. In Western press and publics, there is this sense that there must be a grand strategy behind the BRI that we do not see and that we don’t know about, which we need to somehow both fear and be inspired by. Obviously, there is strong Orientalism at the core of these ideas, where China is both mystical and to be feared. Do you see development following infrastructure? Where and how does China and the BRI come in? How Chinese are “Chinese” infrastructure projects?AJL: It all depends how we define development. What I see in my research site, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is that when a road is built or upgraded, a lot of things change. Whether we can call it development, and thus value it positively, is a complex question. The new road does bring benefits to, for example, restaurant owners who have their restaurants at the roadside. Truck drivers are very happy to have an asphalt road they can drive on. This shortens travel time, so they can spend more time with their families; their journeys are less arduous. There will always be actors who benefit from a road, be it individuals or groups, more powerful actors such as investors, or the people who live along and with the new infrastructure. But there is always another side to the coin. A new highway will exclude those who can’t afford a car to drive on it. Others will be excluded because of their ethnicity, like in Xinjiang. Being Uyghur in Xinjiang makes travelling very difficult, as all the police checkpoints along the new, beautifully asphalted expressways, provincial roads, and even village roads make travelling for them nearly impossible. Your ethnicity, your gender, and your economic status all influence whether you can benefit from a road or other infrastructure, or whether you will instead be living with its negative consequences such as pollution, habitat fragmentation, noise, animal death or even limited access to your fields across the road.

AR: The second factsheet on China’s global development goes into detail about what is uniquely Chinese about Chinese development projects. Usually, they are completed faster, they are cheaper, and they come with a different set of strings attached. Chinese policymakers like to say that their projects come with no strings attached as compared to North American and European donors, who may ask for particular changes in economic management or democratic reforms. The recognition of China’s policy on Taiwan and territorial claims in other parts of the South China Sea are some of these Chinese strings. Yet ultimately, Chinese infrastructure remains trapped within very similar financial mechanisms and developmental challenges as infrastructure projects financed by the West. The ramifications and effects on development are also contingent on the political-economic circumstances of the host countries. Read more on Novastan: Russia commits to railroad corridor China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan If infrastructure is built in a country where most resources are concentrated in fewer hands, such as in authoritarian countries like Tajikistan or Myanmar, then most of the revenue produced from that project will reinforce a particular system and will not challenge it – regardless of whether it is a Chinese project or a World Bank-funded project. I am obviously oversimplifying here. To give an example, if you look at the Karakoram highway or at the roads connecting Western China with Kyrgyzstan, built in the early 2000s, these were instrumental in thriving cross-border economies. Uyghur traders, mostly in the Kashgar region, benefited from better road conditions. Everybody was very keen on having new and better roads. But they only benefited from new roads as long as the political situation allowed for it. Once it became more complicated, and then impossible, for many Uyghurs to get passports and travel abroad, the good roads and asphalt were not conducive to commercial exchange anymore. We cannot think of infrastructure outside of the broader political setting in which they are embedded. How do other infrastructure initiatives perform in your opinion – are they more equitable and just? I am thinking about the existing projects funded by the EU but also the new global initiatives such as the EU Global Gateway or G7 infrastructural initiative.AJL: It is good that we have a few large infrastructural initiatives now. I am quite surprised that Europe and North America waited so long to launch their own initiatives. Variety and diversity are always better than having just one initiative, especially one which has such extreme media coverage – in fact, the BRI might not be as huge as the media would like to think. It was high time for Europe and North America to react with their own initiatives concerning what infrastructural development might look like, which is also key for public relations. But these plans are not very concrete yet. They are still just initiatives. It is good to have alternatives, but let’s see what the details are going to be. I hope they will offer a good alternative to the funding coming from China and that they will not become bogged down in bureaucratic procedures. The speed of project funding and realisation will be the key. Read more on Novastan:In Central Asia, China is taking advantage of Russia’s isolation at warAR: It is too early to say but I do hope, particularly with the G7 initiative, two things. One is that it is not just an anti-China, anti-BRI initiative to counter Chinese influence and power. We really need to rethink global development, and this could be an occasion to do so rather than an occasion to restate a particular anti-China global alliance. Secondly, I hope that, unlike the BRI, the focus will be less on large-scale flagship projects. If history tells us one thing, it is that large-scale infrastructure projects tend to be mired in corruption and environmental issues. Rather, I hope that the resources will be used for smaller-scale projects, driven by local initiatives that respond to actual needs of the population. Because I hardly see the point in having a train that runs from Kazakhstan to Spain or Portugal if it traverses countries which lack basic infrastructure like electricity, heating, and water. I hope that we can move past these types of flagship projects around connectivity and focus on what matters most at the local level. What else should Novastan readers know and watch regarding China’s presence in Central Asia within and beyond the BRI label?AJL: I would encourage civil society in Central Asia not to give up on training Chinese companies to include more local people in the decision-making around infrastructure projects. We have successful examples of such processes in Mongolia in its mining industry. Even if the scale of China and Chinese activities is huge and intimidating, it is important to push for civil involvement in all those infrastructure projects. Though China is this giant right across the border, it is still individual companies realising these projects. These companies do not have the opportunity to learn to dialogue with civil society when operating within China. It is a new skill they must acquire when operating abroad. The role of the countries where the BRI is active is to train Chinese companies to have more dialogue with the public, and to have more engagement with the local needs and the opposition. Thus, I hope that civil society in Central Asia will remain strong and try to put leverage on Chinese companies, or on any company for that matter. AR: We should understand China as very diverse. There is not one single actor, there are multiple actors involved, often with different agendas and goals, from local governments to the central government with different foreign policies, and from private companies to state-owned enterprises. These can have conflicting agendas and there is room for civil societies in Central Asia to leverage these differences to their advantage. Also, readers of Novastan, always keep in mind: what are we thinking about when we think about China? Are we thinking about central government or local government policy? Certainly, one of the singularities of the Chinese model of development is that private and state-owned enterprises align closer to government aims than their European or North American counterparts. But that does not mean that they are always fully aligned. There is often a difference between what is being said and what is being done. In China as everywhere else, we should always keep that in mind.

Interview by Dr. Beril Ocakli, Researcher at ZOiS Berlin, where she leads the project China, the EU, and Economic Development in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Edited by Mari Paine

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Being far ahead of the other regional gas suppliers, Turkmenistan became the first energy partner of China in late January 2021, ahead of Russia. In the context of generally rising gas prices at the beginning of 2021, the roles seem to be redistributed in the world of gas producers.

This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on the 29th of March 2021.

Turkmenistan, a country with gas wealth in no need to prove, is the leader in gas supply on the Chinese energy market since the beginning of 2021, according to the Turkmen media Orient. In January 2021, a total of 2,786 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas were delivered to China, out of the 4,685 billion cubic meters imported by the Chinese authorities. For the first months of the year, almost 60% of the Chinese gas is supplied by Turkmenistan, according to the Russian agency Interfax.

Turkmenistan is thus ahead of Russia, which supplied only 916 million cubic meters of gas to China through the “Power of Siberia” pipeline. Apart from Russia and Turkmenistan, China gets its resources from other Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which export 319 million cubic meters and 307 million cubic meters accordingly.

Turkmen gas prices at their highest

The official figures of Turkmenistan’s exportations are difficult to find: president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is usually very discreet about the country’s economic performance, so it is hard to obtain them.

Yet the data of the General Administration of Customs (GAC) of China reveals the price of Turkmen gas which appears to be one of the most expensive on the Chinese energy market. Indeed, the price of a thousand cubic meters comes to 187 dollars (£138), whereas Kazakh price is up to 162 dollars (£119.5), and Uzbek price is up to 151 dollars (£111).

Blue gold prices on the rise

The high price of Turkmen gas can be explained by the rise of gas prices on international markets. Indeed, in North-East Asia, a cold wave led to the high demand for liquefied gas. The cooling in the region had for consequences a rapid increase of gas prices on the international market: the maximum value of JKM Platts, which measures the price of liquefied gas in Asia, jumped to 1 160 dollars (£856) for a thousand cubic meters at the beginning of January 2021, according to Interfax.

The rise of energy’s value is also to be seen in Europe where the average price of gas is up to 257 dollars (£190) for a thousand cubic meters in late January, according to the Interfax agency.

Turkmenistan’s dependence on gas exportations

The fourth exporter of gas in the world strengthens its commercial relationship with China, which remains the first trade partner for Turkmenistan. In 2019, according to data furnished by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, China accounted for 82% of Turkmen exports, far ahead of Uzbekistan (4%). Regarding importations, China is second with 14,3% behind Turkey (24,7%).

This new position also strengthens Turkmenistan’s dependence on exportation. Close to being a windfall economy, the state’s incomes are based on hydrocarbon sales. According to the specialized website Oilcapital.ru, 15% of consumed gas in China was Turkmen in 2020. Although economic repercussions are satisfactory nowadays, as soon as the price and foreign demand will decrease, the Turkmen economy will drop as was the case at the beginning of the pandemic. Indeed, while China’s gas suppliers are diversified, Turkmenistan’s customers are not: the country mainly exports to China and Russia.

Read more on Novastan: Agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan paves the way for Trans-Caspian Pipeline

Nevertheless, some projects are underway to diversify exportations: the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (TAPI), which has been stalled since 2015, should be relaunched soon. Besides, with the rapprochement of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, the project of the Trans-Caspian pipeline is about to become reality, which means Turkmen gas will reach the European market.

Emma Collet Writer for Novastan

Translated from French by Flavie Deschamps

Edited by Anna Wilhelmi

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In an announcement made on September 4, the founder of Xinjiang Victims Database, which gathers information on the Uyghur victims of Chinese repression, stated that he has been banned from entering the territory of Kazakhstan. The reasons for this have yet to be given by the Kazakh government.

This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 16 September 2021.

“I’ve been banned from entering Kazakhstan for 5 years. Found out about this just now.” Those are the words Evgeny Bunin used to share the news on his Facebook account from Almaty International Airport, one of the biggest cities in South-East Kazakhstan.

A Russian-American researcher, Evgeny Bunin is famous for creating the database Shahit.biz in September 2018 which has registered next to 24 thousands victims of Chinese repression, notably Uyghurs – largely Muslim, Turkish-speaking people suffering persecution based on ethnic and religious belonging. The NGO Human Rights Watch believes that nearly one million people are being held captive in Chinese re-education camps.

A familiar-looking entry ban

Evgeny Bunin has already been banned from entering a country in the past. In 2019 and 2020, he was denied entry into Uzbekistan. The border guards who gave him official notice that he was not permitted to enter also told him about a “personal ban.” “It all probably started when I met political scientist Anwar Nazir and his journalist and activist friends,” he said in an interview with Fergana News, a Russian media specialized on Central Asia.

He also told Fergana News that he had to leave China for political reasons in 2018. “The Chinese authorities made me leave Kashgar, where I lived at the time. That was done indirectly rather than directly: they closed down the inn that I was staying at. They had everyone go away, but all the others managed to find a place to live, which, for some reason, I couldn’t. Everywhere I went, there were always “good” reasons why I couldn’t stay. Eventually I had to leave Xinjiang; there was no other choice.”

Reached out by Novastan, Evgeny Bunin declined to comment. He stated that he “took a step back from society in May and no longer performs public activities, including interviews.” As of now, it is unclear whether or not such a ban will have an impact on the database, which remains a major tool for accessing information on the Chinese state’s activities.

Joanna Blain Writer for Novastan.org

Translated from French by Andreï Fedorovsky

Edited by Fiona Katherine Smith

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The post American researcher banned from entry into Kazakhstan for five years appeared first on Novastan English.