Jacob Mardell is a researcher at the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies (MERICS).
ZHARKENT, Kazakhstan — China may be winning diplomatic contests and wielding more global influence, but closer to home, an overlooked weakness could threaten its great ambitions.
In China’s immediate neighborhood, Beijing’s economic clout and diplomatic gravity has not necessarily translated into genuine sympathy for the country or its people. In fact, below the surface of amiable official relations, anti-Chinese feeling is rampant.
As fears of contagion of the new coronavirus spread across the globe, nowhere was anti-Chinese sentiment as strong — and as deep-rooted — as among China’s Central Asian neighbors. In Kazakhstan, authorities severed transport links with China, suspended the issuance of visas to Chinese citizens and halted work on the Kazakh side of the visa-free trade zone that straddles the border. Kyrgyzstan introduced a temporary ban on agricultural imports from China; it also suspended air traffic and closed borders.
While other countries have also cut links to China over fear of contagion, reactions in Central Asia stem from an ingrained sense of a threat looming across the border. Localized unrest and anti-Chinese protests in big cities in the region are common. Last year saw protests in western Kazakhstan and across the country against Chinese investment projects; anti-migration rallies in the Kyrgyz capital; and clashes at a Chinese-owned gold mine in eastern Kyrgyzstan.
In the Kazakh town of Zharkent, only 30 kilometers from the border, the gulf between the two countries is huge. “They eat dogs, insects — even babies,” my taxi driver says in disgust, echoing a widespread sense among the population that the Chinese are unforgivably alien.
Many in China’s immediate neighborhood have a sincere fear of Chinese immigration and the toll it might take on their livelihood.
But distrust of Beijing is not purely rooted in far-flung history, or in ignorant assumptions about Chinese people.
Many in China’s immediate neighborhood have a sincere fear of Chinese immigration and the toll it might take on their livelihood. People worry about losing jobs, and their women, to Chinese expats. Worries that Beijing harbors expansionist desires have been fueled by post-Soviet territorial disputes and an opaque 2011 land swap between Tajikistan and China. The ambitious drive behind China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as the popular narrative that China is ensnaring countries in debt traps, have also played into such suspicions.
More recently, concern is also growing about Beijing’s political influence and its mass surveillance and detention program for non-Han ethnic groups and Muslim populations in China’s far west. Especially in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, both Muslim-majority countries, citizens are taking note. “They hate Muslims,” I’m told in a shared cab in Zharkent. The other passengers murmur their assent.
Local populations’ perceptions of the Chinese are also colored by the behavior of Chinese companies and business people, which doesn’t do much to improve Beijing’s image. Local workers I spoke to on construction sites in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan said they are aware that Chinese expats look down on their host countries as “undeveloped” and said they felt resentment toward them.
The language barrier doesn’t help. It’s rare to find a Chinese person in Central Asia who speaks Russian or the local language. The same difficulties also plague Chinese companies, which seem to shy away from working with local communities and struggle to keep them informed about projects. These projects also tend to flout poorly enforced labor laws that stipulate a percentage of employment go to local labor — something that plays into the rhetoric that China is stealing, rather than creating, jobs.
Kyrgyzstan has closed borders with China | Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP via Getty Images
Beijing’s significant investments in local Chinese-language programs may yet pay off, but for now China is perceived as insurmountably different, and Beijing has had little success in bridging this cultural gulf.
This could have long-term implications. In democracies, winning the friendship of the regime, but not the people, exposes Beijing to the possibility of unsatisfactory election results — as the fall from power of Beijing’s man in Sri Lanka rudely demonstrated. Even in Kazakhstan, where election results aren’t an immediate concern, a pro-China government is not guaranteed in perpetuity.
Despite its extensive activities and support for infrastructure projects in Central Asia, Beijing seems incapable of winning hearts and minds in the region, which still very much exists within Moscow’s cultural orbit.
If China’s leaders want to change that, they will have to do a much better job of convincing local populations that they mean well.