The Political Economy of China's involvements in Kazakhstan: State Interests, Social Conflicts, and Economic Cooperation

This project seeks to give the first comprehensive picture of the political economy of China’s involvements in Kazakhstan over the past three decades, particularly since the introduction of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. The research is justified by Kazakhstan’s geo-strategic location for China to connect to Eursia and the increasing coexistence of conflicts and cooperation between China and Kazakhstan.The analysis draws on two strands of the International Political Economy theories. First, the growing body of research on asymmetric state-to-state relations explains that a strong country such as China has limited attention to devote to a weaker one such as Kazakhstan, meaning that even though there is a massive power imbalance, China is likely to recognize Kazakhstan’s autonomy, and Kazakhstan is expected to show deference. But China’s BRI has given Kazakhstan more leverage to punch above its weight, and more risks to engage in a wider range of activities with China. Second, social conflict theory argues that states are increasinglyfragmented, and the co-existence of conflicts and cooperation can only be explained by investigating the sub-national dynamics and how they shape national policy on the ground. The research puzzles include why increasing conflicts between China and Kazakhstan over issues such as the unsettled water rights to trans-boundary rivers, the controversial renting of farmland in Kazakhstan to Chinese farmers, the refusal of Kazakhstan to extradite alleged separatists to China, the wide-spread protests against Chinese factories in Kazakhstan, and the new Kazakh president’s formal investigation on the abandoned light rail project funded by China, have been accompanied by an extraordinary level of new economic cooperation between the two countries in various areas. Particularly intriguing is the question of why China has expanded its involvements in Kazakhstan beyond the connectivity and transportation infrastructure that is the supposed focus of the BRI into other areas such as logistics and trade, value-added industry, and the agricultural processing industry. Does this mean that Kazakhstan has more leverage over China than our conventional view of the unbalanced relationship between the two might suggest? Or is this a result of various sub-national negotiations that have fragmented logic and contradictory interests? Are the state-level asymmetric hypothesis and the sub-national social conflict hypothesis competing against or complement each other?These two sets of state-to-state and sub-national hypotheses will be tested in part through systematic tracing of state-level and sub-national dynamics by desktop research of national speeches, government reports, and local newspapers in China and Kazakhstan. This will be supplemented and triangulated by fieldwork to investigate the reality on the ground of Chinese involvements in Kazakhstan, featuring in-depth interviews with local stakeholders, industrial practitioners, and focus groups.This study will build on the PI’s previous research on China’s rail freight activities in Kazakhstan, which have equipped her with an extensive network of contacts in the relevant areas in both Kazakhstan and China. The research outcomes will take the forms of a book-length study of China’s involvements in Kazakhstan published with a university press; four articles published in peer-reviewed, high-impact journals; two presentations at international conferences; talks for interested groups such as members of business associations; a database of instances of conflicts and cooperation between China and Kazakhstan over the past three decades, to be made available to other researchers; and a research web site capturing the fieldwork journals, photo story and other related resources to enhance the social impact.