Beijing and Moscow Go From ‘No Limits’ Friendship to Frenemies in Russia’s Backyard

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan—When Vladimir Putin visited this arid capital as part of a recent jet-setting charm offensive in Asia, local officials decorated the boulevards with posters of the Russian leader’s face—an expected tribute in a former Soviet republic where Moscow still casts a large shadow.

But beneath the posters was evidence of a shift with gloomy implications for Moscow’s international heft: More and more cars with Chinese brand names such as BYD and Geely are zooming around the streets of Uzbekistan as the number of Russian Ladas dwindles.

Relations between China and Russia are at a historic high as the authoritarian powers band together to confront what they see as a Western campaign to hem them both in. But in Central Asia, which Moscow regards as its backyard, the friendship that Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared as having “no limits” is colliding with Beijing’s global ambitions.

That tension hovers in the background with Xi and Putin both in Kazakhstan this week for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional political and security bloc. Xi is scheduled to continue on to Tajikistan as part of his eighth visit to Central Asia since becoming China’s president in 2013.

China has seized on the Ukraine invasion to chip away at traditional Russian spheres of influence. In Central Asia, as in the Arctic, Moscow’s reliance on Beijing to sustain its war machine forces it to acquiesce to the encroachments.

Across the strategically situated region, Beijing is drawing local economies into its orbit. Chinese investments are diverting the region’s young workers away from Russia. A Chinese-funded railroad promises to connect it with Europe, bypassing Russian territory. Chinese renewable energy projects are helping reduce its reliance on Russian gas.

Sanjarbek Qulmatov, a 29-year old worker at a Chinese factory in central Uzbekistan, said Chinese money had dramatically changed the job prospects for him and his countrymen.

Roughly 1.3 million Uzbeks were working in Russia in 2023, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, down from 1.45 million in the year before. The reasons for the drop are complex, but Qulmatov attributes part of it to the rise of Chinese-funded alternatives.

“Anyone who is unemployed can find a job here instead of having to go to Russia,” he said.

For Tsarist Russia, Central Asia was akin to what the West was to American pioneers: a supposedly wild territory to expand into, modernize and extract resources from. The exploitation and modernization continued under the Soviets, who jealously guarded the borders of their empire against Chinese encroachment.

The power shift in the region has been in the making for years but accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was seen by many in the region as a blithe and ominous violation of the territorial integrity of a fellow former Soviet republic. Instead of supporting Moscow, all five Central Asian states opted to stay neutral on the invasion.

“China provides an image of the future for Central Asia. Russia is a shortsighted political regime that doesn’t invest in Central Asia’s own strategic goals,” said Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

For China and Russia, two land-based powers, Central Asia is an increasingly important thoroughfare. It gives Putin more direct access to markets in South Asia. And it is central to Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, the vast infrastructure project that aims to connect China through various land and sea routes with the rest of the Eurasian continent.

The U.S., too, has recently increased efforts to regain its influence in Central Asia, dispatching a string of senior-level officials to the region, though its focus has been mostly limited to fighting any resurgent terrorism from Afghanistan.

For years, Russia and China have had a tacit division of labor in the region: Russia is the main security provider while China focuses on development and investment.

Now, Beijing is tipping that balance by leaning harder into its role—using its enormous economic clout to increase its political sway. Trade between China and Central Asia rose to $98 billion last year, more than tripling since 2016.

In Uzbekistan, the most populous and industrialized of the five post-Soviet Central Asian nations, China knocked Russia from the top trade partner spot in 2023, according to official statistics. The country has been trying to integrate with the global economy after two decades of isolationism.

The Peng Sheng Industrial Park, where Qulmatov works, was launched with Chinese funding near the central Uzbek city of Sirdaryo in 2009. With a recent influx of investment, it is now home to more than a dozen Chinese companies.

Qulmatov said he likes to take his son to a park, also built with Chinese money, next to the industrial zone and hopes to send the child to a new kindergarten there that teaches in Chinese and English.

“I’d like to see even more Chinese companies here,” he said.

One newly arrived Chinese company, electric-vehicle company BYD, started production on Thursday at a new factory in Jizzax, the province where Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was born, with the aim to make 50,000 vehicles per year. Batteries and other key components will be shipped from China, while local workers handle anything from welding and painting to car assembly.

In 2023, nearly 80% of the more than 73,000 vehicles Uzbekistan imported came from China, according to official statistics. Russia exported around 4,500 cars to Uzbekistan in 2021, but demand has fallen so low that the country’s cars are now pooled under the “other countries” category.

A new 12-mile Chinese-built tunnel opened a path for the first ever direct rail connection between the Fergana Valley, in far eastern Uzbekistan, and the rest of the country. A Chinese-built highway linking northern and southern Tajikistan has cut travel time by eight hours.

In the past, most of the rail lines and highways the Soviets had built in Central Asia led to Moscow. A lack of connections internally and with the rest of the world made Central Asia one of the world’s most isolated places.

Bigger changes could be coming. In early June, the presidents of China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed a key agreement for the construction of a railroad line meant to connect their countries that had been in discussion since 1997. The project would shorten travel between East Asia to the Middle East and southern Europe by hundreds of miles by circumventing Russia.

For years, Russian has used its influence on Kyrgyzstan, a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, to slow down the progress of the route’s development, according to Mirshohid Aslanov, founder of the Tashkent-based think tank Center for Progressive Reforms, who previously worked as an Uzbek diplomat. But sanctions related to the Ukraine war have changed the dynamics around running trade through Russia.

China is also challenging Russia in energy, a sector Moscow has traditionally dominated. Uzbekistan signed a deal to buy Russian gas in 2023 after a string of blackouts, but limited the contract to two years so far in what analysts say is a hedge against Russia using gas as political leverage.

Meanwhile, trucks and trains carrying solar modules and wind turbines from Chinese renewable champions LONGi and Goldwind can be seen crisscrossing the country—part of Tashkent’s push to get at least 40% of electricity production from renewable energy sources by 2030.

“We are friends with Russia but at the same time, we are looking for opportunities,” said Aslanov. “Very eagerly, we are looking eastwards.”

China can’t fully usurp the role of Russia. The careers and networks of the region’s elites are deeply intertwined with Moscow, and Russian remains the lingua franca. People across the region still tend to view Russia more favorably than China, according to a 2022 survey by the nonprofit Central Asia Barometer.

China’s reputation has been hurt by its treatment of Turkic Muslim Uyghurs, with whom many in Central Asia share a similar culture and language, and by anti-Chinese sentiment fanned by some Russian-language media.

But there are already signs China is making inroads with a new generation of Central Asian elites.

Nodirxon Mahmudov, a 19-year-old business student who graduated from an elite high school in Uzbekistan, said three of his 26 classmates went to China to study and none went to Russia. In the past, he said, many would have applied to Russian universities.

Mahmudov, who says he covets a BYD, also works as a marketing manager at Hong Kong Academy, a private language-tutoring company. On a summer afternoon, eight students between the ages of 11 and 21 were diligently cramming Chinese characters in a beginners’ class.

Government officials and business people were also coming to the academy in search of Chinese tutors for professional advancement, according to Mahmudov. “They all think China is the future,” he said.

Askar Jumanov contributed to this article.

Write to Sha Hua at [email protected]