Kazakhstan
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China’s Global Security Initiative: Tilting the Balance in Central Asia
In recent years, Beijing has been reevaluating its conceptual framework for foreign policy, with a focus on enhancing its role in global governance. With the aim of transforming China into the world's leading country, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has put forward a number of new initiatives — including the Global Security Initiative (GSI) — as a way of creating new formats of cooperation between China and the countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global South.
What Does Further Expansion Mean for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?
Last week, foreign ministers from member-states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) gathered in Astana, Kazakhstan. The nine-member SCO — made up of China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — represents one of the largest regional organizations in the world. And with the SCO’s annual heads-of-state summit slated for early July, the ministers’ meeting offers an important glimpse into the group’s priorities going forward. USIP’s Bates Gill and Carla Freeman examine how regional security made its way to the top of the agenda, China’s evolving role in Central Asia and why SCO expansion has led to frustrations among member states.
New Central Asian Leaders Look to Balance Relations with Major Powers
For the first time ever, all five presidents of the Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) met in-person with a U.S. president as part of “C5+1” summit on the sidelines of last week’s U.N. General Assembly.