Which country is more successful in projecting its influence in Central Asia – USA or China? Famous Kazakh expert in China, Mr. Adil Kaukenov translated and posted in his telegram-channel an article from a Chinese newspaper and shared his comments on same.
Literal translation of Mr. Kaukenov’s post below:
What They Write in China?
Not very often do Chinese Mass Media analytics about Kazakhstan. But recently, they posted an article with an intriguing intro – “China and Kazakhstan sign agreement on mutual visa-free regime, but extremists protest. Kazakh police take all steps in regards to those protests, but we must remain alert about forces standing behind those protests…”
The author of above is Professor Chen Feifu, which individual emphasizes that behind those protests there could be the interests of the USA aimed at geopolitical rivalry with China in the region. That opinion is very interesting, because it gives better understanding of Chinese assessments of situation in Central Asia in the light of struggle among global powerhouses for the influence.
Opinion From China Expert
Maintaining geopolitical debates, I would like to emphasize that the “long arm of the US Department” was kind of running low on length this time, because only several individuals went out to protest. On the other side, the fact that police telegraphically apprehended protesters and brought them away in a police van, may, if to follow the logics of the Chinese professor, indicate at the fact, that there was Beijing behind such a fast reaction shown by enforcers.
And the fact that all protesters will be released in the matter of a couple of hours, and they will meet again sometime later for the same reason, speaks for the fact that the longest arms in our region belong to Central Asian ruling elites.
That is why, any mess will happen only once we have a brutal domestic fight for power, in which fight, the fighters will resort to external support. So it happened in the times of the fall of the Chinese Min Dynasty. China was under domestic turmoil and Chinese generals invited Manchurian rulers, opening the gates of the Great China Wall for them.
Chen Feifu and His Article About Protests in Kazakhstan
(This is the machine translation, because, unfortunately, I did not have the time to do it myself)
Kazakh Mass Media report, that Kazakhstan plans on entering into an inter-governmental agreement concerning the mutual visa-free regime with China. By new rules, citizens of Kazakhstan and China shall have 30 days of visa-free regime, starting from the date of entry. It is anticipated that Foreign Ministers of the two countries shall sign that agreement during President Tokayev’s to China some time on May 18 and 19.
The reciprocal visa-free regime is a common policy supposed to facilitate the exchange between the two countries. At present, hundreds of countries have one or several agreements with China, by which visitors are liberated from necessity to seek diplomatic, officials, common, tourist and academic visas. Which means, that the discussed agreement with Kazakhstan is not something special.
Such an agreement is to the benefit of both the countries, but extremist organizations are seeking for “black sides”. According to latest news communications, the Movement for the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan were actively distributing anti-Chinese statements in social networks and organized a public gathering, participants of which shouted out anti-Chinese slogans and protested against the visa-free regime.
It is necessary to highlight that the Democratic Choice was announced extremist by the government of Kazakhstan. Its leader is Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is famous as the “leader” of the Kazakh opposition, Once, he was one of the wealthiest individuals in Kazakhstan and Minister of Energy and Trade. Then he was put in detention for corruption and power abuse. To evade justice, he fled abroad more than 10 years ago.
In the last several years, protests have become an often phenomenon in Central Asia. Many of those protests have sings of Revolutions of Colors and behind them, there always are shadows of collective west headed by the USA. That is not a random phenomenon. The last protest against visa-free regime may not be interpreted as the “manifestation of the public opinion”.
For a long time, the USA maintained the so-called “public diplomatic help” to Kazakhstan, which help finds its implementation in existence of numerous NGOs in this country. Statistics show, that there are some 23 thousand NGOs in Kazakhstan, many of which are funded by the USA and other Western countries. In the last 20 years, Kazakh NGOs received more than USD 2 billion, as help from USAID and other agencies.
Kazakh police acted in the decisive manner and apprehended the majority of active protesters.
Every time relations between China and neighbors undergo rounds of development, US and Western countries will undermine them. Earlier, some US officials, including State Secretary Blinken visited several countries bordering on China and the aim of those visits was to provoke those countries to confront China.
China and Kazakhstan signed a regular agreement, which triggered interference of Western forces. It shows that the USA and West have infiltrated deeply in Central Asia, and China must be more alert in regards to those concealed forces.”
