Central Asia balances between East and West, but the former looks more promising

A grand event has started today in the ancient Chinese city of Xi’an. That’s China-Central Asia Summit, where the top leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will talk to China’s Xi Jinping. The Chinese surely know how to make summits grandiose and memorable. They do it with leaders of Africa or other regions, laying stress on the economy. After all, China is the top trading partner of 140 among almost 200 nations of the world. But this time, you may expect an extremely tense atmosphere in Xi’an, since these people will be discussing their role in a violent reset of the global economy and politics. Before I forget it: I would not advise anyone to resurrect a stale and fake idea about “China squeezing Moscow out of Central Asia”. We are talking about a well-coordinated Russo-Chinese effort to make the center of Eurasia a vibrant heart of the continent. Enough is to say, the same five Central Asian leaders have attended a similar summit in Moscow on May 9, the Victory Day, where they attended the traditional parade, and then moved to the halls of Kremlin to talk with Vladimir Putin. But before that, they had a similar meeting with the US Secretary of State. Which means that, for Central Asia, the problem is in achieving the proper balance between the warring East and West, preferably the way India is doing, if they can afford it. What’s important, we are talking about the area going through an unprecedented trading boom. China’s total foreign trade has grown by 5.8 per cent in the first four months of the year, but it is up by 34.7 per cent with Central Asia. While Russo-Chinese trade has grown by 41.3 per cent in the same period. Finally, the same happens with Russia’s trade with Central Asia, with Uzbekistan it’s over 40 per cent last year, and so on. You may easily see that we are talking about the same trade flows across Eurasia, caused by the attempts of the West to strangle the Russian economy and, maybe, do the same with the economy of China a bit later. Central Asia is profiting from re-orientation of Russia’s trade from West to East. In fact, what we see is a return to the Golden Age of the Great Silk Route, when Central Asia was right in the middle of all caravan routes across the huge continent, buying and selling and forwarding everything thinkable. Chinese media these days, on the eve of the summit, unleashed a veritable avalanche of data on things like the China-Kazakhstan crude oil pipeline, the China-Central Asia gas pipeline, a China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan highway, the Pengsheng Industrial Park and a China-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan highway, and the rest. Similar information is coming from the Russian side. There was a special conference on Central Asia, convened by the prestigious Valdai discussion club in the city of Tomsk this week. We have learned, from the reports, that Russia is the biggest investor in Uzbekistan now, and other things like that. Now, when that part of Asia has retrieved its role of the center of the continent, it would hate losing that role, especially when it has essentially become the fastest-growing trade area in the world. But why should it lose anything? It’s because, in the coming days and weeks, there’ll be a new surge of battle between West and East, with the nations of global South in the squeeze between the main adversaries. There is no need to talk too much about the West losing the first round of sanctions against Russia and China. As far as Russia is concerned, we live better than before, while we were supposed to suffer from a ruined consumer market and stalled supplies for machinery. It did not happen, because dozens of the global South nations were only too glad to replace the West as customers, and also to re-export the needed Western goods to Russia. Central Asian nations may be the biggest winners from that, but then the Middle East is not far behind, with Africa or Latin America eager to follow. So now the #1 theme of all the global policy is the absolute need for the West to drag the whole world into that hybrid Third World War, or end it somehow. There is yet another package of sanctions prepared by the European Union. And then there will be a G7 meeting in Tokyo at the end of this month. The discussion in all these cases is about the need to punish anyone who is making mockery of sanctions. That attempt to establish the Western long-arm jurisdiction on the whole world reportedly is to target the Arab nations of the Gulf, Central Asia, Brazil and Argentina… you name it. So, it goes without saying that the five leaders of Central Asian nations have arrived in Xi’an to estimate which course of action will bring them less problems. They did the same in Moscow earlier, and they in fact do it every day ever since, maybe, 2017, when the world began to slide into a battle for shaping some new global economy. Here we have to refer again to the scraps of information from the Valdai conference. The people there seem to agree that nations like Kazakhstan, with its extensive ties with the West, may go on oscillating between the two sides, while others do not care much about the West. How about the rest of the world? Here it’s appropriate to quote Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, from his yesterday’s interview. He refers to recent conversations with some of his colleagues from Africa and Latin America. They often complain that the West is driving them nuts by its demands to join sanctions against Russia. So how is the West promising to compensate you for your losses, if you do join sanctions? And they, Lavrov concludes, lower their gaze and say: They are promising not to punish us in that case. That seems to be a poor way to win friends and shape the world to your liking. The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views expressed after personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.