December 12, 2024 • 38 mins
China's growing influence in Central Asia marks a strategic pivot in its bid to challenge a global order still largely led by the US. Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Beijing is positioning itself as a dominant player in a region long under Russia’s sway. With Moscow’s focus diverted by its war in Ukraine, China is leveraging the moment to deepen ties with Central Asian republics. This strategic expansion serves a dual purpose: securing its borders and bolstering its ambitions for global leadership. But with shifting alliances and overlapping interests, how will China balance its aspirations in Central Asia with its delicate relationship with Russia? What risks and rewards come with this regional push? And could success in Central Asia tip the scales in China's global rivalry with the United States? Dr. Geoff Raby, former Australian Ambassador to Beijing and author of new book Great Game On: The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy, joins host Ali Moore to explore these critical questions. An Asia Institute podcast. Produced and edited by profactual.com. Music by audionautix.com.
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Episode Transcript
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The Ear to Asia podcast is made available on the Jakarta Post platform under agreement
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between the Jakarta Post and the University of Melbourne.
Hello, I'm Ali Moore.
This is Ear to Asia.
There's a lot of things about the Ukraine invasion that China doesn't like that it weakens
Russia.
I think on one hand, China might see that as a welcome development.
But what does China want in this relationship with Russia?
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Well, what I can say is what it absolutely doesn't want.
It doesn't want Putin to implode.
It doesn't want any prospect of a colour revolution occurring in Russia, as those events would
be very, very threatening to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
In this episode, why Central Asia is the key to unlocking China's global ambitions.
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Ear to Asia is the podcast from Asia Institute, the Asia research specialist at the University
of Melbourne.
China is asserting a growing influence in Central Asia, driven by its interest in ensuring
its western borders remain secure, but also as a prerequisite to challenging the United
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States for global leadership.
Beijing has sought to deepen ties to the region with the likes of the Belt and Road Initiative
or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a strategy that positions China as a key competitor
to Russia, the traditional power in the area.
Notably, as our guest on this episode of Ear to Asia argues, Russia's ongoing invasion
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of Ukraine has weakened its grip on Central Asia and its numerous republics, providing
China an opening to even further expand its influence.
As alliances and influences continue to shift in what was once an unchallenged western-led
global order, Central Asia has become yet another arena in which China seems best poised
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to hold sway.
So what does China hope to gain, and how does it perceive threats from the region?
How will Beijing balance its ambitions in Central Asia with its relationships with Russia
and other powers with interests there?
And how will a successful campaign for influence in the region boost China's quest for geopolitical
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supremacy over its economic and military rival, the US?
Joining me to discuss how Central Asia is key to China's execution of its grand strategy
is Dr Geoff Raby, former Australian Ambassador to Beijing, long-time China observer and author.
Geoff Slater's book is Great Game On!
The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy, published by Melbourne University Press.
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Geoff, congratulations on your new book and welcome back to Ear to Asia.
Well, thanks very much, Ellie.
The original Great Game was all about the British Empire and Russia in the 19th century.
This new Great Game you write about is, as you put it, same stage but different pieces
and some new players.
Is this essentially about remaking the world order with China as the dominant power?
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Yes, very much so.
I think though it's not driven by, not initially, by an ambition or an intent to do so.
This book, as with my previous book, tries to look at the world order from Beijing's
perspective in terms of how it derives its security.
And for the best part of three millennium, China's main threats to its security have
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come from the Eurasian landmass.
And so China, which has 22,000 kilometers of land border to defend, has always looked
to Central Asia as a very, very important frontier that it needs to secure in order
to maintain its security over the whole country.
And it's only in very recent times that China has started to look to the oceans, to its
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near island chain, and indeed even further along.
But historically, it's been Eurasia, which has been the source of threat and challenges
to China's security.
And just, I suppose, a little bit of geographical definition maybe here, because you write in
the book that Eurasia is key.
From a geographic perspective, that's the landmass between the Western Pacific and the
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Eastern Atlantic.
What do you mean by Eurasia in the context of China?
Yeah, I don't define it quite so broadly, Ali, but it's a big area.
I've basically defined it from the eastern borders of Poland through to the Sea of Japan.
But much of the book focuses on what's called core Eurasia.
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And that's essentially Central Asia as we know it, plus Mongolia, plus Afghanistan.
So sitting where we are today, Xi Jinping in Beijing, Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Donald
Trump soon to be in the White House, we can drill down into the greater detail in a tick.
But from a big picture point of view, how do you see this competition playing out?
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Yes, well, first of all, I think what's happened is that the balance of power has shifted decisively
across the Pacific to China.
That was happened in the first two decades of this century.
And that's why we have so much, if you like, tension in the relationship between China
and the US.
That's why we're talking about great power competition.
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But then in the last decade, particularly in the last few years, power has shifted also
across Eurasia from Russia to China.
But as you correctly and incisively said, that throughout much of history, it has been
Russia that's been the dominant power across this entire area.
So what we're seeing now with the shift of power to China is really quite new.
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And I think I called the last chapter of the book from Soviet stand, referring to Russia's
dominance over the core Eurasia to Sinistan.
And I think that's what's been happening.
And those trends have been accelerated by Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Well, let's look at that.
Let's look at Russia, I suppose, because it has been so key.
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Can you give us an idea of the significance of Central Asia, both, I guess, to the Soviet
Union, but also the Russian Federation, which followed?
Yes, well, I mean, the Tsars in the 19th century began the late 18th century, but very much
in the 19th century, established colonial dominance over the whole of what we call Central
Asia.
And from then on, Central Asia has been seen by Russia, by Moscow, and then by St. Petersburg
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as being absolutely essential to Russia's security.
So Russia, unlike China, it derives its security from occupying neighboring states, buffer
states.
China derives its security from having what it sees as client states.
So for Russia, Central Asia is of absolute key importance.
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It's always been the buffer between it and China.
The elites in this part of the world all spoke and still do speak Russian.
And under the Soviets, Central Asia moved from being colonies to actually being fully
institutionally and administratively integrated into the Soviet Union.
So what we're seeing now with the drift of Central Asia away from Russia is in itself
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quite a major geopolitical shift.
But that drift is coming from Central Asia's side.
Is it any less important from Russia's perspective today?
Oh, yes.
I mean, it challenges Russia's sense of security.
It's been dominant in the area.
It's been a major economic benefit to Russia to have that dominance in the area.
So this is something that I don't think Moscow will and can accept lightly.
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Also, I mean, there's another piece on this chessboard which is very important.
And that is what we call Manchuria or Russian Far East.
Now these are massive areas, up to a million square kilometers of territory that Russia
took from China under two treaties, the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the 1860 Treaty of Peking.
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And Russia alone amongst the imperial powers that carved up China in the 19th century,
Russia alone has not returned one square kilometer of that territory that was lost under what
the Chinese call unequal treaties.
So there's potential for great tension in the relationship.
So against that backdrop, how has China gained traction in the region?
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And we can talk about Ukraine in a minute, but prior to the invasion of Ukraine, it was
already gaining ground.
How has it done that?
Well, it did it very much as you mentioned in your introduction.
The Belt and Road Initiative was very deliberately directed at Central Asia, involving large
amounts of Chinese credit, investment, the development of infrastructure, the railways
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across Central Asia connecting China to Europe.
In fact, in the book, it's a great story.
I think I recounted anecdotes.
Soon in my time as ambassador in May 2007, I went to call on the mayor of Chongqing.
And to my complete astonishment, he laid out plans of how they were going to build a railway
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from Chongqing, which is two and a half thousand kilometers, as you know, from Shanghai up
the Yangtze River.
They were going to build a railway directly from Chongqing to Duisburg in Germany.
And I thought this was just astonishing.
It was hard to believe.
It was hard to even conceptualize in those days.
And after the meeting, I said to my staff, look, how are we ever going to report this
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to Canberra?
Because they'll think I've already got localitis my first few months in the job, because it
just seems so incredible.
Well, here we are 17 years later, and there's something like 220 points in Europe that rail
links serve from China, massively reducing transport costs, of course.
And of course, when you change the arteries of global trade, as this is doing, you change
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everything about global politics as well, and geopolitics.
So that Belt and Road investment, deeper and deeper economic engagement, deep engagement
through trade, all of that has been drawing Central Asia closer to China for many, many
years.
But you've had the existing Russian political dominance.
Russia has been certainly most important in Central Asia for military reasons, providing
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aid, equipment, training, education.
Russia has been the preferred area for educating elites.
And there was a long period when China and Russia happily, and foreign analysts actually
happily talked about what they call the division of labour.
Russia guaranteed Central Asia security, and China did the rest on the economy, trade and
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investment.
All that's broken down as Putin so depleted Russia with the invasion of Ukraine.
Which comes to the next question, I guess, that if China has been building economic links,
it's around developments around infrastructure, so essentially China can play banker, can
it also play and would it want to play sheriff?
I think so.
It will do so in and so far as it can't be seen to be confronting Russia directly.
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But it's done a lot, right?
And a lot of this is driven again, I keep coming back to this point, driven by China's
own need for security.
And the Afghanistan piece on the chessboard is extremely important because China has a
large Uighur Islamic population in Xinjiang with very open porous borders.
And Beijing has long been very concerned about Islamic fundamentalist threats to the security
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of Xinjiang and hence the wider security of the Chinese state.
And with the return of the Taliban, this has just heightened China's sense of insecurity
in this area.
So, for example, even when NATO and the US were still in Afghanistan, China established
a military base in Tajikistan near the Pamir Mountains.
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And that was secret for a while.
It's sort of public now or it's been outed.
But it's been establishing a military presence, supplying more weapons, a lot more training
consistently for the past decade.
And again, I think there's a sense in Central Asia that they wish to look to China for more
support with their security.
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Has China stepped up that focus, I guess, on the West since the US and its allies withdrew
from Afghanistan?
Well, very much its anxiety about Islamic fundamentalism is greatly heightened as a
result.
Now, one of the vehicles through which collective security is provided in Central Asia is through
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
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Now, arguably, or ostensibly, I should say, it's jointly led by Russia and China.
The reality is China drives it, largely funds it, and the permanent secretariat is based
in Beijing.
So that's been an important means for China to increase its security presence.
Much of the work of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has been directed to internal
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security against terrorist threats.
So that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is very central to this whole notion of security
and providing both justification and legitimacy for China to have an increasing military presence
in Central Asia.
And just to go back to the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and you've talked about
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a weakened ability to be the guarantor of the region's security, but you write about
another part of this too.
It's also accelerated, this is a quote from your book, public discussion in these lands
about Russian colonialism and a rethinking of the Soviet past.
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, this is really, really interesting development and a very recent development.
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Up until, say, the invasion of Ukraine, I wouldn't want to draw the line so sharply,
but up until about then, Central Asian elites, as I mentioned, really basically looked to
Russia.
They all spoke Russian, all their networks were basically with Russia.
The elites families were engaged with Russian elite families and that sort of thing.
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So there's a great interflow backwards and forwards between them and the Russians.
So this still goes on today.
Don't get me wrong, it's still there and very powerful.
But what has begun is this questioning, as you say, of the colonial past.
First of all, the Russian occupation of Central Asia and then the Soviets, and particularly
the Soviets are very fraught.
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Under the Tsars, so say up until 1917 when the Russian Revolution occurred, under the
Tsars, basically Central Asia was left to themselves.
So the local Khans and Imams and basically they practiced their own regional religious
practices and had their own dialects and languages were permitted.
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As I said earlier, the Soviet Union adopted a very different model and forced Central
Asia into the Soviet state and that there was one state and that was the Soviet Union
and these were all Soviet republics.
And interestingly enough, and to the chagrin of these local communities, the Soviet Union
often, Stalin on a number of occasions, changed the borders just unilaterally, willy-nilly
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to try and get different groupings of ethnicity so there would not be one single powerful
ethnic group that would have the potential of breaking away.
And that was all deeply resented and the local customs, languages, dialects and so on, was
simply quashed.
And that's coming back and there's a reappraisal of particularly language in these areas and
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there is now, for example, for a long time, they've all had to have a Russian radio station,
Russian television station, that sort of thing.
All of that's being questioned and challenged now.
You're listening to Ear to Asia from Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne and
just a reminder to listeners about Asia Institute's online publication on Asia and its societies,
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politics and cultures.
It's called the Melbourne Asia Review.
It's free to read and it's open access at melbonaisiatereview.edu.au.
You'll find articles by some of our regular Ear to Asia guests and by many others.
Plus, you can catch recent episodes of Ear to Asia at the Melbourne Asia Review website,
which again, you can find at melbonaisiatereview.edu.au.
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I'm Ali Moore and I'm joined by long-time China watcher and author Dr Jeff Raby.
We're talking about Central Asia in the context of China's global ambitions.
Jeff, when you look at what you've written in the book and of course that was written
before we knew that Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States,
how much could that change how you see the great power dynamics unfolding?
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It will have a very big impact.
Just which way it goes will depend on a lot of things, including the sorts of people Trump
puts around himself and how much he's prepared to take advice.
But towards the end of the book, when I was writing it, obviously, I had an eye to the
fact that the election was coming up.
I have a bit of a speculation about how the US responds to China becoming the dominant
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power in Eurasia and whether it will be prepared to cede strategic space to China or not.
My view is ultimately the US has no option but to cede strategic space to China just
in the way that Great Britain did at the end of the 19th century to the United States.
That was a very fraught relationship until the First World War.
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Also, and this is less well appreciated, how Britain ceded strategic space to Tsarist Russia
after the end of the Great Game in 1907.
Short of all that war, then I think at some point, the US will accept that it's no longer
in its interest, in the US interest, to pursue global primacy.
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There is a message for Australia because currently Australian foreign and security policy is
very much geared to maintaining US primacy in East Asia.
Another option and a real possibility under Trump is that the US just takes its baton
ball and goes home.
It disengages increasingly from the rest of the world.
Why I say that's a serious possibility is that Trump has made it very clear he has no
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interest in foreign wars, which I think is a very welcome development.
But also, China does not present a systemic threat to the United States in any way, shape
or form.
It's too far away from China to be threatened militarily.
It has all the resources, energy and markets it needs inside its own borders.
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It has no insecure or unstable borders, or is it in contest with any country for border
security.
Putting all that together, it's actually a fairly low cost option for a Trump government
to say, well, enough.
So they're the challenges, I think, for Australia that we need to think about how do we position
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ourselves in a world where primacy is seeded, not given up entirely to China, but China
is seeded greater strategic space and the US becomes less interested in maintaining
primacy in East Asia, which means, for example, that the US becomes less interested in the
possibility of having to defend Taiwan.
Or the other alternative is the US basically takes its bat and ball, goes home and we'll
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need to find our way in the region without a strong active US presence.
Georgie Tunny So, Geoff Rabie, that's an entirely new podcast
that we could potentially do.
There's much to discuss.
And I do want to come back to your thoughts around what you describe as two bounded orders.
But just before I do that, in terms of a US presidency under Donald Trump and Ukraine,
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if Ukraine has been so core to weakening Russia in the region, there's been a lot of speculation
that a second Trump presidency would see Ukraine being forced into an unfavorable peace deal
so that Russia, the war would end and Russia would potentially get to keep what it has
got.
So in that context, could this mean that the weakening that you have seen of Russia is
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somewhat limited?
Geoff Rabie Yes, it certainly could be.
But I think the shift has occurred.
The other thing that's happened with this, which we didn't really mention when we're
talking about Central Asia before, is that Ukraine amounts to a Putin doctrine.
And Putin has articulated this pretty much himself.
And that is that any territory that has substantial Russian ethnic presence, he regards as being
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part of Russia and should be reincorporated in some way, shape or form.
So 25% of Kazakhstan's population, and Kazakhstan is the biggest state in Central Asia, is ethnically
Russian.
And so you can imagine what the Kazakhstani think of this and the Putin doctrine.
So I think Russia in many ways has been weakened by the invasion of Ukraine, not just militarily,
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but whatever.
It's going to take a long time for that to recover.
And I don't think anyone really has a strategy to maintain war in Ukraine to consciously
weaken Russia.
And there'll be all sorts of security guarantees, which will make it hard for Russia to be a
threat in the region again, if there's some settlement.
Georgie Tunny Of course, if you look at the relationship
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between China and Russia back in 2022, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin jointly proclaimed
that theirs was a friendship without limits.
It was a very interesting development at the time and one that made huge headlines.
But you see that as nothing but I think the quote is a concert of convenience.
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Paul Holmes Yes, absolutely.
And the interesting thing is, Ali, you never hear that phrase anymore, neither from the
Russians or Chinese.
That was a rush of blood to the head, I think, by Xi and Putin.
Obviously, Putin, I believe, manipulated Xi into that position, because the invasion
took place two weeks after that statement was made.
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And there's no evidence that China was in on it at all.
I mean, there's something like 6,000 Chinese students that were left exposed to the Russian
invasion that China had to scramble to get out once the invasion took place.
A lot of people have looked at this in great detail.
There really doesn't seem to be any evidence that Xi was in on it.
And in fact, why would he?
Because it goes against the most fundamental principle of China's foreign policy, which
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is non-interference and respect the borders.
And that's because it serves China's interest to have that position, but it's absolutely
being maintained throughout the history of the People's Republic of China.
So there's a lot of things about the Ukraine invasion that China doesn't like, that it
weakens Russia.
I think on one hand, China might see that as a welcome development.
But what does China want in this relationship with Russia?
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Well, I'm not exactly sure.
What I can say, though, is what it absolutely doesn't want.
It doesn't want Putin to implode.
It doesn't want any prospect of a color revolution occurring in Russia, because those events
would be very, very threatening to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
So in a sense, it's found itself having to ride the tiger.
It doesn't really like what Putin does.
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In fact, it probably hates what Putin has done.
It's also increased the risks around Putin.
The Putin might fail and fall.
And the last thing it wants is an implosion of Putin, even if they don't like him and
they don't like what he's doing.
At the same time, can I just ask what, I mean, Beijing's silence essentially on Ukraine,
what message does that send to Central Asian states?
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Well, that's interesting as well.
I mean, not the only one that's silent.
And it's not the only one that's importing oil.
I mean, India is the biggest oil importer from Russia since the Ukraine invasion, not
China.
This is very interesting because none of the regional bodies, there's Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, the BRICS, none of them have endorsed or supported Russia's invasion of
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Ukraine, even though Russia has lobbied and advocated that they show that support.
And then last year, unannounced, suddenly we find that Xi Jinping has convened a meeting
of the heads of state of the five Central Asian states.
And there's now a new permanent body in the region called C plus C5, which is China plus
the five Central Asian states with its permanent secretary at the headquarters in Xi'an in
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China.
And Russia's not part of that.
And at the C plus C5 meeting last year, there was no mention of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But there were strong statements about respecting territorial integrity and borders.
So I mean, you've got to read a bit of diplomatic doublespeak into these things.
But there is no way that in my view, China is complicit.
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And I think more than that, I think what China hasn't done will really have irritated and
annoyed Putin very much.
There isn't the support that you'd expect.
And that's that phrase, the concept of convenience.
I actually wrote that for an article I did soon after the invasion of Ukraine for the
Australian Foreign Affairs magazine.
And I called it a concept of convenience then.
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I likened it to the von Rippentroff Molotov pact in 1939, which was signed between Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union.
It was really just that a concept of convenience until Nazi Germany was ready to invade the
Soviet Union and the Soviet Union was ready to resist.
So I'm not saying we're talking about conflict, but these pacts are only as good as they're
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good.
And the shelf life of this concept of convenience, their friendship without limits, has been
far shorter than me or anyone else would have predicted.
Do you have any sense that China is changing or would change its approach to security and
to territory?
You've talked about how it takes the tributaries route and Russia takes the occupation route.
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But you also say that Beijing's becoming more overt in its ambitions.
Do you see China maybe be more, I don't know what the right term is, is aggressive the
right term?
I think that's a possibility.
Some people say it's already happened.
I think that needs to be put in some sort of context.
But what I say, and this is sort of where the book starts to come to conclusion, is
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that with China establishing its preeminence over Eurasia, if that is correct, if it has,
then you're looking at a situation historically akin to that of the end of the 19th, early
20th century, when the US consolidated its territory of the United States and established
hegemony over the Western Hemisphere.
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At that point, the US began to turn globally, including towards East Asia and China, it
turned globally and was in a position to project power globally.
But it really wasn't until that consolidation occurred that it was able to do so.
I think what we're seeing in Eurasia with China consolidating its power is very, very
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similar.
What China does when it has the capacity to project power globally, I think that's something
that should be debated and discussed further.
But if you go back to my previous book, I described China in that book as Prometheus
bound, a constrained superpower.
And those constraints are really nonetheless now that China's consolidated in Central Asia,
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other than perhaps the borders are less of a constraint.
But it's still got the constraints of being an empire with disaffected colonies, if you
like, like Xinjiang and Tibet and Taiwan and now Hong Kong.
It is utterly, and this is the key thing, utterly dependent on world markets for everything
it needs to survive.
And I think this is very different than Russia and very different than the United States.
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And China is much, much more deeply integrated in the international system than, for example,
Russia, and probably much more than the United States was at this particular time in the
US's development.
So China, even if it wants to be an ugly bruiser on the block, it's really constrained in what
it can do.
So we have to be mindful that it now has the capacity to project power globally.
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But how and in what way it does it, I think that's still something that we need to understand
better.
And you talk about China's ascent sort of cleaving the world into two what you call
bounded orders.
So we're not talking about blocks, we're talking about bounded orders.
How do you see that world operating?
And while it's not blocks, do you see countries literally falling onto one side or the other?
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Yeah, the concept comes from John Meisheimer, who flagged it about a decade ago as a theoretical
possibility.
It's only very, very recently he started to talk about it as maybe something that describes
the current situation in the world order.
But what we have now is without argument.
I mean, when I wrote my last book four years ago, it was arguable had we moved to a multipolar
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world.
Well, we are in a multipolar world.
And the US is unable to project its power in the Middle East, in the Eastern Front in
Europe and so on.
And it was defeated and retreated from Afghanistan.
So we are in a multipolar world.
And how does that multipolar world organize and arrange itself?
Well, I argue it's through these bounded orders.
And you saw that most recently with the BRICS summit in Kazan in Russia.
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This is a Chinese initiated institution, started in 2007.
No one thought much about it at all then.
Arguably, this BRICS meeting is more important now than the G20 meeting.
And there's a long tail of countries lining up to become members.
With China as a dominant organizer, if you like, of the BRICS, the agendas and so on
will reflect China's priorities and policy.
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And so China's order will be an order that, if you like, works to accommodate authoritarian
regimes in the world order, has no interest in things like human rights and so on, but
will pursue ways of balancing the United States and other Western powers, for example, by
de-dollarization as being a major agenda.
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So these orders will be defined by shared values, both in the Western order and the
Chinese led order, by common purpose priorities.
But they're not exclusive, as you say.
And there are many global issues, be it climate change, transnational crime, asymmetric security,
terrorism, and those sorts of things, where members of each order have to and will and
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happily will work together.
Now, it's interesting, if you look at the BRICS, countries like Malaysia and Thailand
have indicated that they're very, very keen to join.
Yet interestingly enough, they see no conflict between being a member of the BRICS and pursuing
agendas like de-dollarization, which is very important for Malaysia, and continuing good
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members of ASEAN.
So I think this is how you get a rearrangement of the multipolar world.
It has order through these bounded orders.
But it's basically, I think, a fairly optimistic view, because it doesn't mean conflict.
They're not blocks that are going to be in military conflict with each other.
No, it's reflective of what Australia now says about China, cooperate where we can,
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disagree where we must.
But I do want to ask you, Geoff Rabie, about where India might fit in this as the most
populous nation on Earth.
I note that the University of Melbourne's Michael Wesley recently wrote that India might
become a third pole of a triangular balance.
It's the only country that has the scale, the demographic weight, and the internal cohesion
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to rise to the equivalence of the US and China.
Is it not possible that India too might be there as part of a bounded order, not just
with China and the US?
I haven't seen Michael's piece.
I must track it down.
But yes, I mean, that's a reasonable argument to make.
A couple of things on that which qualifies.
I mean, India is very focused on maintaining its independence from any grouping.
(31:28):
So that goes to it being a third pole.
But the extent of its weight and influence, that I think remains to be seen again.
It's obviously the dominant power in the Indian Ocean.
It will be unchallenged in that part of the world.
But when I was writing my book, Great Game On, it was amazing to me to see how minimal
(31:48):
India's presence in Central Asia and Eurasia is.
It's almost non-existent.
So it's been sort of opening and developing for 30 years now, but it's had no projection
of economic or other power influence into that region.
And of course, India really isn't part of the East Asian security mechanism.
Its interests in East Asia pretty much end with the eastern extent of the Indian Ocean.
(32:12):
And so the main areas of contest, it's not really part of.
So yes, it will be something of a, it can be something of a balancer between these two
bounded orders.
It's got a certainly strong foot in China's bounded order.
It's a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
It's a member of the BRICS.
It was one of the first members, if not the first member of China's initiated Asia Infrastructure
(32:35):
Investment Bank, and I think second largest donor to the bank.
And interestingly enough, just before this Kazan meeting, when Xi and Modi met in Russia
in Kazan, they came to some accommodation about the border dispute, which led to violence
in June 2020.
So India may be starting in many ways to move back into China's order, but it's not going
(32:59):
to be as deeply integrated, it won't allow itself to be as deeply integrated in it as,
say, some other countries, for example, Russia or Brazil or some of the Southeast Asians.
So how do you see the West responding, needing to respond to the future as you've outlined
(33:19):
it?
I think the most important thing is that the West doesn't jump at shadows.
I think we're still in a transition for the US from a position of global preeminence to
a position of shared power.
And I think we may see a throwback to the preeminence that, seeking preeminence that
(33:42):
once existed among some of Trump's advisors and official appointments.
I don't think Trump himself cares about this stuff.
He's probably got a much more realistic appreciation of what the costs are to America of not being
preeminent and feels that it's not such a big deal for the US in terms of security or
economic well-being.
I think that's the most important thing, that we understand the nature of the risks and
(34:05):
the threats.
We're not blind to them.
But equally, we don't exaggerate them.
And there's a propensity, I think, to exaggerate some of the risks of a multipolar world.
It does mean you don't get your way on all issues, but we're seeing that daily in Ukraine
or in Gaza.
There's another element to this, though, which I touch on at the end of the book, and I would
like to see more discussion and debate on it.
(34:27):
And that is, if I'm right about China becoming the dominant power of Eurasia and preeminent,
who balances China?
Now, the US will always be a balancer, but not in Eurasia.
And Simu Brzezinski warned about this in his book in 1997, Chessboard.
If the US leaves Eurasia, which it did when it withdrew from Afghanistan, then some other
(34:51):
power, he didn't name China, but it's clearly China now, will be the dominant power.
And who will balance that power?
Well, to my mind, the only way that power can be balanced, China can be balanced, is,
believe it or not, by Russia.
Now, it's not going to happen, of course, whilst Putin's running the show.
It may not happen immediately after.
But I do urge Europeans at the end of the book to start thinking about how Europe can
(35:15):
re-Europeanize Russia.
Because my viewers, and many people would agree with me, that Russia's natural home
is not Asia, it's Europe.
And Putin's taken them a long way from that.
I think that will be an element of weakness and could be part of Putin's eventual, and
his clique's eventual undoing.
But Europe now, I think, has a huge historical moment to try and re-Europeanize Russia and
(35:40):
balance China in doing so.
Doing it not because they like Russia, or they're going to forgive Russia for what's
happened, but just narrowly in Europe's own self-interest that China can't be the unbalanced
power in Eurasia.
So that should be, I must say, should be part of the response to what's happening with China's
ascendancy to preeminence in Eurasia.
(36:02):
And Jeff Raby, we're coming to the end of our conversation, but you're looking there
at a post-Putin Russia.
If we look at a post-Xi Jinping China, do you think it changes how the game might be
played?
Much less so.
Why I say that is I think there's a fundamental mistake made, and I've written about this
(36:23):
in my AFR columns and things, fundamental mistake that somehow it's all Xi Jinping.
Xi and Putin are very politically, are very, very different.
Xi stands at the head of a 97 million person strong party called the Communist Party.
He's part of the institutional fabric of the party.
(36:44):
Even if he surrounded himself in the top positions with loyalists, he still is bound by the party
and the party has one objective and it goes to the core of China's security, and that
is to keep ruling.
This is not a sort of cavalier Putin style situation at all.
So I think if Xi's out of the picture, you can expect still much, much more policy continuity
(37:06):
from China than you've got any idea what will happen in Russia once Putin's gone.
We have no idea what happens when Putin's gone, but you can be pretty sure of policy
continuity in China because of the institutional structure of the Communist Party.
Dr. Jeff Raby, an enormous thank you for sharing your time with Ear to Asia.
Thanks Ellie, thanks very much for having me.
(37:28):
Our guest has been Dr. Jeff Raby.
His new book is called Great Game On!
The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy.
Ear to Asia is brought to you by Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia.
You can find more information about this and all our other episodes at the Asia Institute
website.
Be sure to keep up with every episode of Ear to Asia by following us on the Apple Podcast
(37:52):
app, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you like the show, please rate and review it.
Every positive review helps new listeners find the show.
And please help us by spreading the word on your socials.
This episode was recorded on the 13th of November, 2024.
Producers were Kelvin Parham and Eric Van Bimmel of Profactual.com.
(38:13):
Ear to Asia is licensed under Creative Commons Copyright 2024, the University of Melbourne.
I'm Ali Moore.
Thanks for your company.
The Ear to Asia podcast is made available on the Jakarta Post platform under agreement
(00:05):
between the Jakarta Post and the University of Melbourne.
Hello, I'm Ali Moore.
This is Ear to Asia.
There's a lot of things about the Ukraine invasion that China doesn't like that it weakens
Russia.
I think on one hand, China might see that as a welcome development.
But what does China want in this relationship with Russia?
(00:28):
Well, what I can say is what it absolutely doesn't want.
It doesn't want Putin to implode.
It doesn't want any prospect of a colour revolution occurring in Russia, as those events would
be very, very threatening to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
In this episode, why Central Asia is the key to unlocking China's global ambitions.
(00:54):
Ear to Asia is the podcast from Asia Institute, the Asia research specialist at the University
of Melbourne.
China is asserting a growing influence in Central Asia, driven by its interest in ensuring
its western borders remain secure, but also as a prerequisite to challenging the United
(01:16):
States for global leadership.
Beijing has sought to deepen ties to the region with the likes of the Belt and Road Initiative
or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a strategy that positions China as a key competitor
to Russia, the traditional power in the area.
Notably, as our guest on this episode of Ear to Asia argues, Russia's ongoing invasion
(01:39):
of Ukraine has weakened its grip on Central Asia and its numerous republics, providing
China an opening to even further expand its influence.
As alliances and influences continue to shift in what was once an unchallenged western-led
global order, Central Asia has become yet another arena in which China seems best poised
(02:01):
to hold sway.
So what does China hope to gain, and how does it perceive threats from the region?
How will Beijing balance its ambitions in Central Asia with its relationships with Russia
and other powers with interests there?
And how will a successful campaign for influence in the region boost China's quest for geopolitical
(02:21):
supremacy over its economic and military rival, the US?
Joining me to discuss how Central Asia is key to China's execution of its grand strategy
is Dr Geoff Raby, former Australian Ambassador to Beijing, long-time China observer and author.
Geoff Slater's book is Great Game On!
The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy, published by Melbourne University Press.
(02:46):
Geoff, congratulations on your new book and welcome back to Ear to Asia.
Well, thanks very much, Ellie.
The original Great Game was all about the British Empire and Russia in the 19th century.
This new Great Game you write about is, as you put it, same stage but different pieces
and some new players.
Is this essentially about remaking the world order with China as the dominant power?
(03:11):
Yes, very much so.
I think though it's not driven by, not initially, by an ambition or an intent to do so.
This book, as with my previous book, tries to look at the world order from Beijing's
perspective in terms of how it derives its security.
And for the best part of three millennium, China's main threats to its security have
(03:34):
come from the Eurasian landmass.
And so China, which has 22,000 kilometers of land border to defend, has always looked
to Central Asia as a very, very important frontier that it needs to secure in order
to maintain its security over the whole country.
And it's only in very recent times that China has started to look to the oceans, to its
(03:58):
near island chain, and indeed even further along.
But historically, it's been Eurasia, which has been the source of threat and challenges
to China's security.
And just, I suppose, a little bit of geographical definition maybe here, because you write in
the book that Eurasia is key.
From a geographic perspective, that's the landmass between the Western Pacific and the
(04:18):
Eastern Atlantic.
What do you mean by Eurasia in the context of China?
Yeah, I don't define it quite so broadly, Ali, but it's a big area.
I've basically defined it from the eastern borders of Poland through to the Sea of Japan.
But much of the book focuses on what's called core Eurasia.
(04:39):
And that's essentially Central Asia as we know it, plus Mongolia, plus Afghanistan.
So sitting where we are today, Xi Jinping in Beijing, Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Donald
Trump soon to be in the White House, we can drill down into the greater detail in a tick.
But from a big picture point of view, how do you see this competition playing out?
(04:59):
Yes, well, first of all, I think what's happened is that the balance of power has shifted decisively
across the Pacific to China.
That was happened in the first two decades of this century.
And that's why we have so much, if you like, tension in the relationship between China
and the US.
That's why we're talking about great power competition.
(05:22):
But then in the last decade, particularly in the last few years, power has shifted also
across Eurasia from Russia to China.
But as you correctly and incisively said, that throughout much of history, it has been
Russia that's been the dominant power across this entire area.
So what we're seeing now with the shift of power to China is really quite new.
(05:44):
And I think I called the last chapter of the book from Soviet stand, referring to Russia's
dominance over the core Eurasia to Sinistan.
And I think that's what's been happening.
And those trends have been accelerated by Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Well, let's look at that.
Let's look at Russia, I suppose, because it has been so key.
(06:05):
Can you give us an idea of the significance of Central Asia, both, I guess, to the Soviet
Union, but also the Russian Federation, which followed?
Yes, well, I mean, the Tsars in the 19th century began the late 18th century, but very much
in the 19th century, established colonial dominance over the whole of what we call Central
Asia.
And from then on, Central Asia has been seen by Russia, by Moscow, and then by St. Petersburg
(06:30):
as being absolutely essential to Russia's security.
So Russia, unlike China, it derives its security from occupying neighboring states, buffer
states.
China derives its security from having what it sees as client states.
So for Russia, Central Asia is of absolute key importance.
(06:52):
It's always been the buffer between it and China.
The elites in this part of the world all spoke and still do speak Russian.
And under the Soviets, Central Asia moved from being colonies to actually being fully
institutionally and administratively integrated into the Soviet Union.
So what we're seeing now with the drift of Central Asia away from Russia is in itself
(07:17):
quite a major geopolitical shift.
But that drift is coming from Central Asia's side.
Is it any less important from Russia's perspective today?
Oh, yes.
I mean, it challenges Russia's sense of security.
It's been dominant in the area.
It's been a major economic benefit to Russia to have that dominance in the area.
So this is something that I don't think Moscow will and can accept lightly.
(07:42):
Also, I mean, there's another piece on this chessboard which is very important.
And that is what we call Manchuria or Russian Far East.
Now these are massive areas, up to a million square kilometers of territory that Russia
took from China under two treaties, the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the 1860 Treaty of Peking.
(08:04):
And Russia alone amongst the imperial powers that carved up China in the 19th century,
Russia alone has not returned one square kilometer of that territory that was lost under what
the Chinese call unequal treaties.
So there's potential for great tension in the relationship.
So against that backdrop, how has China gained traction in the region?
(08:25):
And we can talk about Ukraine in a minute, but prior to the invasion of Ukraine, it was
already gaining ground.
How has it done that?
Well, it did it very much as you mentioned in your introduction.
The Belt and Road Initiative was very deliberately directed at Central Asia, involving large
amounts of Chinese credit, investment, the development of infrastructure, the railways
(08:46):
across Central Asia connecting China to Europe.
In fact, in the book, it's a great story.
I think I recounted anecdotes.
Soon in my time as ambassador in May 2007, I went to call on the mayor of Chongqing.
And to my complete astonishment, he laid out plans of how they were going to build a railway
(09:07):
from Chongqing, which is two and a half thousand kilometers, as you know, from Shanghai up
the Yangtze River.
They were going to build a railway directly from Chongqing to Duisburg in Germany.
And I thought this was just astonishing.
It was hard to believe.
It was hard to even conceptualize in those days.
And after the meeting, I said to my staff, look, how are we ever going to report this
(09:28):
to Canberra?
Because they'll think I've already got localitis my first few months in the job, because it
just seems so incredible.
Well, here we are 17 years later, and there's something like 220 points in Europe that rail
links serve from China, massively reducing transport costs, of course.
And of course, when you change the arteries of global trade, as this is doing, you change
(09:50):
everything about global politics as well, and geopolitics.
So that Belt and Road investment, deeper and deeper economic engagement, deep engagement
through trade, all of that has been drawing Central Asia closer to China for many, many
years.
But you've had the existing Russian political dominance.
Russia has been certainly most important in Central Asia for military reasons, providing
(10:14):
aid, equipment, training, education.
Russia has been the preferred area for educating elites.
And there was a long period when China and Russia happily, and foreign analysts actually
happily talked about what they call the division of labour.
Russia guaranteed Central Asia security, and China did the rest on the economy, trade and
(10:36):
investment.
All that's broken down as Putin so depleted Russia with the invasion of Ukraine.
Which comes to the next question, I guess, that if China has been building economic links,
it's around developments around infrastructure, so essentially China can play banker, can
it also play and would it want to play sheriff?
I think so.
It will do so in and so far as it can't be seen to be confronting Russia directly.
(11:01):
But it's done a lot, right?
And a lot of this is driven again, I keep coming back to this point, driven by China's
own need for security.
And the Afghanistan piece on the chessboard is extremely important because China has a
large Uighur Islamic population in Xinjiang with very open porous borders.
And Beijing has long been very concerned about Islamic fundamentalist threats to the security
(11:25):
of Xinjiang and hence the wider security of the Chinese state.
And with the return of the Taliban, this has just heightened China's sense of insecurity
in this area.
So, for example, even when NATO and the US were still in Afghanistan, China established
a military base in Tajikistan near the Pamir Mountains.
(11:46):
And that was secret for a while.
It's sort of public now or it's been outed.
But it's been establishing a military presence, supplying more weapons, a lot more training
consistently for the past decade.
And again, I think there's a sense in Central Asia that they wish to look to China for more
support with their security.
(12:07):
Has China stepped up that focus, I guess, on the West since the US and its allies withdrew
from Afghanistan?
Well, very much its anxiety about Islamic fundamentalism is greatly heightened as a
result.
Now, one of the vehicles through which collective security is provided in Central Asia is through
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
(12:27):
Now, arguably, or ostensibly, I should say, it's jointly led by Russia and China.
The reality is China drives it, largely funds it, and the permanent secretariat is based
in Beijing.
So that's been an important means for China to increase its security presence.
Much of the work of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has been directed to internal
(12:49):
security against terrorist threats.
So that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is very central to this whole notion of security
and providing both justification and legitimacy for China to have an increasing military presence
in Central Asia.
And just to go back to the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and you've talked about
(13:10):
a weakened ability to be the guarantor of the region's security, but you write about
another part of this too.
It's also accelerated, this is a quote from your book, public discussion in these lands
about Russian colonialism and a rethinking of the Soviet past.
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, this is really, really interesting development and a very recent development.
(13:33):
Up until, say, the invasion of Ukraine, I wouldn't want to draw the line so sharply,
but up until about then, Central Asian elites, as I mentioned, really basically looked to
Russia.
They all spoke Russian, all their networks were basically with Russia.
The elites families were engaged with Russian elite families and that sort of thing.
(13:54):
So there's a great interflow backwards and forwards between them and the Russians.
So this still goes on today.
Don't get me wrong, it's still there and very powerful.
But what has begun is this questioning, as you say, of the colonial past.
First of all, the Russian occupation of Central Asia and then the Soviets, and particularly
the Soviets are very fraught.
(14:14):
Under the Tsars, so say up until 1917 when the Russian Revolution occurred, under the
Tsars, basically Central Asia was left to themselves.
So the local Khans and Imams and basically they practiced their own regional religious
practices and had their own dialects and languages were permitted.
(14:36):
As I said earlier, the Soviet Union adopted a very different model and forced Central
Asia into the Soviet state and that there was one state and that was the Soviet Union
and these were all Soviet republics.
And interestingly enough, and to the chagrin of these local communities, the Soviet Union
often, Stalin on a number of occasions, changed the borders just unilaterally, willy-nilly
(15:01):
to try and get different groupings of ethnicity so there would not be one single powerful
ethnic group that would have the potential of breaking away.
And that was all deeply resented and the local customs, languages, dialects and so on, was
simply quashed.
And that's coming back and there's a reappraisal of particularly language in these areas and
(15:24):
there is now, for example, for a long time, they've all had to have a Russian radio station,
Russian television station, that sort of thing.
All of that's being questioned and challenged now.
You're listening to Ear to Asia from Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne and
just a reminder to listeners about Asia Institute's online publication on Asia and its societies,
(15:46):
politics and cultures.
It's called the Melbourne Asia Review.
It's free to read and it's open access at melbonaisiatereview.edu.au.
You'll find articles by some of our regular Ear to Asia guests and by many others.
Plus, you can catch recent episodes of Ear to Asia at the Melbourne Asia Review website,
which again, you can find at melbonaisiatereview.edu.au.
(16:11):
I'm Ali Moore and I'm joined by long-time China watcher and author Dr Jeff Raby.
We're talking about Central Asia in the context of China's global ambitions.
Jeff, when you look at what you've written in the book and of course that was written
before we knew that Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States,
how much could that change how you see the great power dynamics unfolding?
(16:34):
It will have a very big impact.
Just which way it goes will depend on a lot of things, including the sorts of people Trump
puts around himself and how much he's prepared to take advice.
But towards the end of the book, when I was writing it, obviously, I had an eye to the
fact that the election was coming up.
I have a bit of a speculation about how the US responds to China becoming the dominant
(16:55):
power in Eurasia and whether it will be prepared to cede strategic space to China or not.
My view is ultimately the US has no option but to cede strategic space to China just
in the way that Great Britain did at the end of the 19th century to the United States.
That was a very fraught relationship until the First World War.
(17:19):
Also, and this is less well appreciated, how Britain ceded strategic space to Tsarist Russia
after the end of the Great Game in 1907.
Short of all that war, then I think at some point, the US will accept that it's no longer
in its interest, in the US interest, to pursue global primacy.
(17:40):
There is a message for Australia because currently Australian foreign and security policy is
very much geared to maintaining US primacy in East Asia.
Another option and a real possibility under Trump is that the US just takes its baton
ball and goes home.
It disengages increasingly from the rest of the world.
Why I say that's a serious possibility is that Trump has made it very clear he has no
(18:04):
interest in foreign wars, which I think is a very welcome development.
But also, China does not present a systemic threat to the United States in any way, shape
or form.
It's too far away from China to be threatened militarily.
It has all the resources, energy and markets it needs inside its own borders.
(18:25):
It has no insecure or unstable borders, or is it in contest with any country for border
security.
Putting all that together, it's actually a fairly low cost option for a Trump government
to say, well, enough.
So they're the challenges, I think, for Australia that we need to think about how do we position
(18:47):
ourselves in a world where primacy is seeded, not given up entirely to China, but China
is seeded greater strategic space and the US becomes less interested in maintaining
primacy in East Asia, which means, for example, that the US becomes less interested in the
possibility of having to defend Taiwan.
Or the other alternative is the US basically takes its bat and ball, goes home and we'll
(19:12):
need to find our way in the region without a strong active US presence.
Georgie Tunny So, Geoff Rabie, that's an entirely new podcast
that we could potentially do.
There's much to discuss.
And I do want to come back to your thoughts around what you describe as two bounded orders.
But just before I do that, in terms of a US presidency under Donald Trump and Ukraine,
(19:32):
if Ukraine has been so core to weakening Russia in the region, there's been a lot of speculation
that a second Trump presidency would see Ukraine being forced into an unfavorable peace deal
so that Russia, the war would end and Russia would potentially get to keep what it has
got.
So in that context, could this mean that the weakening that you have seen of Russia is
(19:59):
somewhat limited?
Geoff Rabie Yes, it certainly could be.
But I think the shift has occurred.
The other thing that's happened with this, which we didn't really mention when we're
talking about Central Asia before, is that Ukraine amounts to a Putin doctrine.
And Putin has articulated this pretty much himself.
And that is that any territory that has substantial Russian ethnic presence, he regards as being
(20:23):
part of Russia and should be reincorporated in some way, shape or form.
So 25% of Kazakhstan's population, and Kazakhstan is the biggest state in Central Asia, is ethnically
Russian.
And so you can imagine what the Kazakhstani think of this and the Putin doctrine.
So I think Russia in many ways has been weakened by the invasion of Ukraine, not just militarily,
(20:45):
but whatever.
It's going to take a long time for that to recover.
And I don't think anyone really has a strategy to maintain war in Ukraine to consciously
weaken Russia.
And there'll be all sorts of security guarantees, which will make it hard for Russia to be a
threat in the region again, if there's some settlement.
Georgie Tunny Of course, if you look at the relationship
(21:05):
between China and Russia back in 2022, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin jointly proclaimed
that theirs was a friendship without limits.
It was a very interesting development at the time and one that made huge headlines.
But you see that as nothing but I think the quote is a concert of convenience.
(21:26):
Paul Holmes Yes, absolutely.
And the interesting thing is, Ali, you never hear that phrase anymore, neither from the
Russians or Chinese.
That was a rush of blood to the head, I think, by Xi and Putin.
Obviously, Putin, I believe, manipulated Xi into that position, because the invasion
took place two weeks after that statement was made.
(21:48):
And there's no evidence that China was in on it at all.
I mean, there's something like 6,000 Chinese students that were left exposed to the Russian
invasion that China had to scramble to get out once the invasion took place.
A lot of people have looked at this in great detail.
There really doesn't seem to be any evidence that Xi was in on it.
And in fact, why would he?
Because it goes against the most fundamental principle of China's foreign policy, which
(22:11):
is non-interference and respect the borders.
And that's because it serves China's interest to have that position, but it's absolutely
being maintained throughout the history of the People's Republic of China.
So there's a lot of things about the Ukraine invasion that China doesn't like, that it
weakens Russia.
I think on one hand, China might see that as a welcome development.
But what does China want in this relationship with Russia?
(22:33):
Well, I'm not exactly sure.
What I can say, though, is what it absolutely doesn't want.
It doesn't want Putin to implode.
It doesn't want any prospect of a color revolution occurring in Russia, because those events
would be very, very threatening to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
So in a sense, it's found itself having to ride the tiger.
It doesn't really like what Putin does.
(22:55):
In fact, it probably hates what Putin has done.
It's also increased the risks around Putin.
The Putin might fail and fall.
And the last thing it wants is an implosion of Putin, even if they don't like him and
they don't like what he's doing.
At the same time, can I just ask what, I mean, Beijing's silence essentially on Ukraine,
what message does that send to Central Asian states?
(23:15):
Well, that's interesting as well.
I mean, not the only one that's silent.
And it's not the only one that's importing oil.
I mean, India is the biggest oil importer from Russia since the Ukraine invasion, not
China.
This is very interesting because none of the regional bodies, there's Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, the BRICS, none of them have endorsed or supported Russia's invasion of
(23:37):
Ukraine, even though Russia has lobbied and advocated that they show that support.
And then last year, unannounced, suddenly we find that Xi Jinping has convened a meeting
of the heads of state of the five Central Asian states.
And there's now a new permanent body in the region called C plus C5, which is China plus
the five Central Asian states with its permanent secretary at the headquarters in Xi'an in
(24:01):
China.
And Russia's not part of that.
And at the C plus C5 meeting last year, there was no mention of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But there were strong statements about respecting territorial integrity and borders.
So I mean, you've got to read a bit of diplomatic doublespeak into these things.
But there is no way that in my view, China is complicit.
(24:23):
And I think more than that, I think what China hasn't done will really have irritated and
annoyed Putin very much.
There isn't the support that you'd expect.
And that's that phrase, the concept of convenience.
I actually wrote that for an article I did soon after the invasion of Ukraine for the
Australian Foreign Affairs magazine.
And I called it a concept of convenience then.
(24:45):
I likened it to the von Rippentroff Molotov pact in 1939, which was signed between Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union.
It was really just that a concept of convenience until Nazi Germany was ready to invade the
Soviet Union and the Soviet Union was ready to resist.
So I'm not saying we're talking about conflict, but these pacts are only as good as they're
(25:08):
good.
And the shelf life of this concept of convenience, their friendship without limits, has been
far shorter than me or anyone else would have predicted.
Do you have any sense that China is changing or would change its approach to security and
to territory?
You've talked about how it takes the tributaries route and Russia takes the occupation route.
(25:31):
But you also say that Beijing's becoming more overt in its ambitions.
Do you see China maybe be more, I don't know what the right term is, is aggressive the
right term?
I think that's a possibility.
Some people say it's already happened.
I think that needs to be put in some sort of context.
But what I say, and this is sort of where the book starts to come to conclusion, is
(25:53):
that with China establishing its preeminence over Eurasia, if that is correct, if it has,
then you're looking at a situation historically akin to that of the end of the 19th, early
20th century, when the US consolidated its territory of the United States and established
hegemony over the Western Hemisphere.
(26:13):
At that point, the US began to turn globally, including towards East Asia and China, it
turned globally and was in a position to project power globally.
But it really wasn't until that consolidation occurred that it was able to do so.
I think what we're seeing in Eurasia with China consolidating its power is very, very
(26:34):
similar.
What China does when it has the capacity to project power globally, I think that's something
that should be debated and discussed further.
But if you go back to my previous book, I described China in that book as Prometheus
bound, a constrained superpower.
And those constraints are really nonetheless now that China's consolidated in Central Asia,
(26:56):
other than perhaps the borders are less of a constraint.
But it's still got the constraints of being an empire with disaffected colonies, if you
like, like Xinjiang and Tibet and Taiwan and now Hong Kong.
It is utterly, and this is the key thing, utterly dependent on world markets for everything
it needs to survive.
And I think this is very different than Russia and very different than the United States.
(27:21):
And China is much, much more deeply integrated in the international system than, for example,
Russia, and probably much more than the United States was at this particular time in the
US's development.
So China, even if it wants to be an ugly bruiser on the block, it's really constrained in what
it can do.
So we have to be mindful that it now has the capacity to project power globally.
(27:42):
But how and in what way it does it, I think that's still something that we need to understand
better.
And you talk about China's ascent sort of cleaving the world into two what you call
bounded orders.
So we're not talking about blocks, we're talking about bounded orders.
How do you see that world operating?
And while it's not blocks, do you see countries literally falling onto one side or the other?
(28:05):
Yeah, the concept comes from John Meisheimer, who flagged it about a decade ago as a theoretical
possibility.
It's only very, very recently he started to talk about it as maybe something that describes
the current situation in the world order.
But what we have now is without argument.
I mean, when I wrote my last book four years ago, it was arguable had we moved to a multipolar
(28:28):
world.
Well, we are in a multipolar world.
And the US is unable to project its power in the Middle East, in the Eastern Front in
Europe and so on.
And it was defeated and retreated from Afghanistan.
So we are in a multipolar world.
And how does that multipolar world organize and arrange itself?
Well, I argue it's through these bounded orders.
And you saw that most recently with the BRICS summit in Kazan in Russia.
(28:52):
This is a Chinese initiated institution, started in 2007.
No one thought much about it at all then.
Arguably, this BRICS meeting is more important now than the G20 meeting.
And there's a long tail of countries lining up to become members.
With China as a dominant organizer, if you like, of the BRICS, the agendas and so on
will reflect China's priorities and policy.
(29:15):
And so China's order will be an order that, if you like, works to accommodate authoritarian
regimes in the world order, has no interest in things like human rights and so on, but
will pursue ways of balancing the United States and other Western powers, for example, by
de-dollarization as being a major agenda.
(29:35):
So these orders will be defined by shared values, both in the Western order and the
Chinese led order, by common purpose priorities.
But they're not exclusive, as you say.
And there are many global issues, be it climate change, transnational crime, asymmetric security,
terrorism, and those sorts of things, where members of each order have to and will and
(29:59):
happily will work together.
Now, it's interesting, if you look at the BRICS, countries like Malaysia and Thailand
have indicated that they're very, very keen to join.
Yet interestingly enough, they see no conflict between being a member of the BRICS and pursuing
agendas like de-dollarization, which is very important for Malaysia, and continuing good
(30:19):
members of ASEAN.
So I think this is how you get a rearrangement of the multipolar world.
It has order through these bounded orders.
But it's basically, I think, a fairly optimistic view, because it doesn't mean conflict.
They're not blocks that are going to be in military conflict with each other.
No, it's reflective of what Australia now says about China, cooperate where we can,
(30:41):
disagree where we must.
But I do want to ask you, Geoff Rabie, about where India might fit in this as the most
populous nation on Earth.
I note that the University of Melbourne's Michael Wesley recently wrote that India might
become a third pole of a triangular balance.
It's the only country that has the scale, the demographic weight, and the internal cohesion
(31:03):
to rise to the equivalence of the US and China.
Is it not possible that India too might be there as part of a bounded order, not just
with China and the US?
I haven't seen Michael's piece.
I must track it down.
But yes, I mean, that's a reasonable argument to make.
A couple of things on that which qualifies.
I mean, India is very focused on maintaining its independence from any grouping.
(31:28):
So that goes to it being a third pole.
But the extent of its weight and influence, that I think remains to be seen again.
It's obviously the dominant power in the Indian Ocean.
It will be unchallenged in that part of the world.
But when I was writing my book, Great Game On, it was amazing to me to see how minimal
(31:48):
India's presence in Central Asia and Eurasia is.
It's almost non-existent.
So it's been sort of opening and developing for 30 years now, but it's had no projection
of economic or other power influence into that region.
And of course, India really isn't part of the East Asian security mechanism.
Its interests in East Asia pretty much end with the eastern extent of the Indian Ocean.
(32:12):
And so the main areas of contest, it's not really part of.
So yes, it will be something of a, it can be something of a balancer between these two
bounded orders.
It's got a certainly strong foot in China's bounded order.
It's a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
It's a member of the BRICS.
It was one of the first members, if not the first member of China's initiated Asia Infrastructure
(32:35):
Investment Bank, and I think second largest donor to the bank.
And interestingly enough, just before this Kazan meeting, when Xi and Modi met in Russia
in Kazan, they came to some accommodation about the border dispute, which led to violence
in June 2020.
So India may be starting in many ways to move back into China's order, but it's not going
(32:59):
to be as deeply integrated, it won't allow itself to be as deeply integrated in it as,
say, some other countries, for example, Russia or Brazil or some of the Southeast Asians.
So how do you see the West responding, needing to respond to the future as you've outlined
(33:19):
it?
I think the most important thing is that the West doesn't jump at shadows.
I think we're still in a transition for the US from a position of global preeminence to
a position of shared power.
And I think we may see a throwback to the preeminence that, seeking preeminence that
(33:42):
once existed among some of Trump's advisors and official appointments.
I don't think Trump himself cares about this stuff.
He's probably got a much more realistic appreciation of what the costs are to America of not being
preeminent and feels that it's not such a big deal for the US in terms of security or
economic well-being.
I think that's the most important thing, that we understand the nature of the risks and
(34:05):
the threats.
We're not blind to them.
But equally, we don't exaggerate them.
And there's a propensity, I think, to exaggerate some of the risks of a multipolar world.
It does mean you don't get your way on all issues, but we're seeing that daily in Ukraine
or in Gaza.
There's another element to this, though, which I touch on at the end of the book, and I would
like to see more discussion and debate on it.
(34:27):
And that is, if I'm right about China becoming the dominant power of Eurasia and preeminent,
who balances China?
Now, the US will always be a balancer, but not in Eurasia.
And Simu Brzezinski warned about this in his book in 1997, Chessboard.
If the US leaves Eurasia, which it did when it withdrew from Afghanistan, then some other
(34:51):
power, he didn't name China, but it's clearly China now, will be the dominant power.
And who will balance that power?
Well, to my mind, the only way that power can be balanced, China can be balanced, is,
believe it or not, by Russia.
Now, it's not going to happen, of course, whilst Putin's running the show.
It may not happen immediately after.
But I do urge Europeans at the end of the book to start thinking about how Europe can
(35:15):
re-Europeanize Russia.
Because my viewers, and many people would agree with me, that Russia's natural home
is not Asia, it's Europe.
And Putin's taken them a long way from that.
I think that will be an element of weakness and could be part of Putin's eventual, and
his clique's eventual undoing.
But Europe now, I think, has a huge historical moment to try and re-Europeanize Russia and
(35:40):
balance China in doing so.
Doing it not because they like Russia, or they're going to forgive Russia for what's
happened, but just narrowly in Europe's own self-interest that China can't be the unbalanced
power in Eurasia.
So that should be, I must say, should be part of the response to what's happening with China's
ascendancy to preeminence in Eurasia.
(36:02):
And Jeff Raby, we're coming to the end of our conversation, but you're looking there
at a post-Putin Russia.
If we look at a post-Xi Jinping China, do you think it changes how the game might be
played?
Much less so.
Why I say that is I think there's a fundamental mistake made, and I've written about this
(36:23):
in my AFR columns and things, fundamental mistake that somehow it's all Xi Jinping.
Xi and Putin are very politically, are very, very different.
Xi stands at the head of a 97 million person strong party called the Communist Party.
He's part of the institutional fabric of the party.
(36:44):
Even if he surrounded himself in the top positions with loyalists, he still is bound by the party
and the party has one objective and it goes to the core of China's security, and that
is to keep ruling.
This is not a sort of cavalier Putin style situation at all.
So I think if Xi's out of the picture, you can expect still much, much more policy continuity
(37:06):
from China than you've got any idea what will happen in Russia once Putin's gone.
We have no idea what happens when Putin's gone, but you can be pretty sure of policy
continuity in China because of the institutional structure of the Communist Party.
Dr. Jeff Raby, an enormous thank you for sharing your time with Ear to Asia.
Thanks Ellie, thanks very much for having me.
(37:28):
Our guest has been Dr. Jeff Raby.
His new book is called Great Game On!
The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy.
Ear to Asia is brought to you by Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia.
You can find more information about this and all our other episodes at the Asia Institute
website.
Be sure to keep up with every episode of Ear to Asia by following us on the Apple Podcast
(37:52):
app, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you like the show, please rate and review it.
Every positive review helps new listeners find the show.
And please help us by spreading the word on your socials.
This episode was recorded on the 13th of November, 2024.
Producers were Kelvin Parham and Eric Van Bimmel of Profactual.com.
(38:13):
Ear to Asia is licensed under Creative Commons Copyright 2024, the University of Melbourne.
I'm Ali Moore.
Thanks for your company.
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