China's Energy Geopolitics

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Central Asia

Thrassy N. Marketos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415456906
• eBook ISBN: 9781134106011
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

China's need for energy has become a driving factor in contemporary world politics and a precondition for sustaining China's continuing high economic growth. Accordingly, Chinese energy policy has been a political and strategic rather than market-driven policy. This book focuses on the need of a stable and secure investment environment which is necessary for the energy provision of China from the Central Asian states.The author argues that the institutionalization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.), the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty between Russia and China and Chinese bilateral agreements with individual Central Asian states present an avenue and a framework of stability in which pipeline construction can commence. With the backing of the US in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Chinese involvement in the region has now been expanding. However, in order to stabilize the region for Chinese investment in energy resources, the author states that the US needs to be present in the region and that a strategic framework of cooperation between Russia, China and the US has to be developed.The book will be of interest to academics working in the field of International Security, International Relations and Central Asian and Chinese politics.

1
Chinese strategic interests in Eurasia

Eurasia, herein defined as Northeast and Central Asia, has been ravaged by historical and current conflicts of both a military and a political nature, such as Japan or Russia’s occupation of their neighbours, border disputes, etc. This has created an environment where there is a chronic lack of trust among the regional actors and relations are often seen as a zero-sum game, or in relative gains. From an international perspective, it is symptomatic that there is very little cooperation in the military and political fields. For instance, Northeast Asia has no institutionalized regional organization that deals with political and military conflicts whereas transregional organizations that include cooperation between Northeast Asian and Central Asian states are limited to only exercises against terrorism.¹ There have been several organizations initiated in Central Asia working on cooperation but their viability is limited. This is due to limited political support from the respective Central Asia governments and also because of the intraregional rivalry between the five Central Asian states.² Thus, these organizations remain relatively weak and their future prospects uncertain. In order to have conflict management and resolution frameworks in place, and to establish greater trust between the different actors, these organizations would need to integrate deeper into the region, politically and economically.

Since the end of the Cold War, Central Asia has emerged as a newly defined, separate geopolitical space. Its abundant raw materials, particularly oil and gas, and its unique geographic location give the region its importance. Nevertheless, the region was until recently as much geographically as strategically distant and indifferent to the United States and Europe. The events of 9/11 have catapulted the region into the world’s spotlight and it has grown in strategic importance.

Since then, the United States has been activated as a major geopolitical player in Central Asia, in addition to Russia and China. Europe is deeply concerned and involved in the region and has the potential to become a fourth power. Turkey and Iran, having particular interests and influence thanks to historical vantages, should be seen as lesser powers in the region. As can India and Japan, who are quietly penetrating Central Asia in the economic sphere.

The special statuses of China, Russia and the United States in Central Asia are mainly attributed to their involvement and influence in the region on the one hand, and on the other, to the framework of the special relations that the three powers have forged in separate relations with one another. In the aftermath of the establishment of a US military presence in Central Asia, dealing with the bilateral and trilateral relations among the three powers vis-à-vis their relations with Central Asia has become a significant strategic issue for China, Russia and the United States.

Once the Soviet Union collapsed and Central Asia had become an independent geopolitical space, China’s entry into the region thawed a frozen relationship stretching back to the days of the Great Silk Road. Beijing’s geographical closeness to Central Asia and its long common border with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (over 3000 kilometre) has allowed the growing of a robust trade, but also the rise of potentially serious threats to China’s security and development.

China’s positioning in post-Cold War Eurasia

Since the start of the twenty-first century, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has entered a new phase of economic development and in the evolution of the country’s role as a fast-rising world power. China’s economic engine is now so large that it requires vast and expanding volumes of energy, minerals and agricultural raw materials to keep it going. In other words, China’s economic needs have expanded far more rapidly than the country’s strategic reach. For the moment, the PRC lacks the military capabilities that would provide it with reasonable assurance of continued access to resources, regardless of circumstance. Thus, for now, the country is entering a period in which its ability to maintain domestic growth and social stability will be hostage to external events and, perhaps, to the forbearance of those it regards as political foes.

Because Chinese strategic thought and strategic-planning process, contrary to that of the West, are rooted less on planning a specific sequence of moves towards a precisely specified goal and more on assessing, shaping and exploiting the overall ‘propensity of things’ in order to move in a generally favourable direction,³ the PRC’s post-Cold War grand strategy is organized around four notional axioms.

Avoid conflict

The collapse of the Soviet Union removed a long-standing potential threat to the PRC’s security and allowed Beijing to pursue new possibilities for expanding its influence into Central Asia, while simultaneously shifting resources from frontier defence to the projection of air and sea power off China’s coasts. At the same time, there was a greater risk that the tacit anti-Soviet alliance that had held the United States and China together for almost two decades would begin to fray and might fall apart. With the Tiananmen Square revolt (June 1989) still fresh in people’s minds, the fear that Washington might try to promote a ‘peaceful evolution’ by overthrowing Communist Party rule – just as in Russia – was uppermost in the thoughts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Deng Xiaoping when he penned the directive outlining the principles of the strategy for securing China’s place in the post-Cold War protracted era of unipolarity, or a US-dominated world (1991).

US leaders, knowing that they must block and derail the rise of China if the US is to retain its own position of dominance, have implemented a twofold strategy towards China since the early 1990s: on the one hand, they promote economic and social engagement, whereas on the other they practise military and diplomatic containment. In this way, they envision strengthening the US ability to project power throughout Asia under the guise of ‘transformation’, encouraging Japan to increase its own capabilities, and seeking new, quasi-alliance partners (India) to contain the PRC’s rise, resulting in slowing in the growth of Chinese power, keeping the expansion of China’s influence in check, weakening and dividing the country domestically, and ultimately overthrowing the CCP. Given China’s present condition of relative weakness, Beijing is obliged to maintain the best possible relationship with Washington.

The events of 9/11 may have resulted in the deployment of US forces to Central Asia and in the acceleration of Japanese rearmament, but the net impact for China has been positive. After a decade-long focus on East Asia, US strategy has shifted to the Middle East. The asymmetrical threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation have forced Washington to consider cooperation from other countries, including China, and this has given the ancient ‘Middle Kingdom’ additional leverage for influencing America’s policy. This has increased the likelihood that confrontation can be avoided, at least in the near to medium term.⁴

Build comprehensive national power

The PRC needs time to ‘build’ a combined measure of economic, military and technological capabilities so as to improve significantly its overall national strength.

Advance incrementally

Continuing relative weakness and potential vulnerability will have to mobilize Chinese policy-makers to take full advantage of the post 9/11 ‘period of strategic opportunity to help dissuade, deflect, and delay what Beijing senses as US efforts at containment and subversion. In fact, China has capitalized on the recent cooling of relations between Russia and the United States and is working hard to draw Moscow closer through arms purchases, energy deals and military exercises, both at the bilateral and at the multilateral level, in the framework of pursuing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) regional strategic aims.

Maintain stability, defend sovereignty, achieve pre-eminence, pursue parity

Given that China continues as a one-party autocracy, the CCP has staked its legitimacy in large measure on the promise that the party will pursue stability and reclaim the territory taken from China during its century of weakness and humiliation. The CCP is committed to preventing Taipei from making a formal declaration of independence, or letting external enemies or domestic ‘separatists’ from weakening Beijing’s control over Tibet or the western province of Xinjiang. The rightful ownership of large swaths of what is now the Russian Far East may have to wait for a suitable moment.

The countries in China’s immediate neighbourhood, its ‘surrounding environment’ to which Chinese strategic thinkers assign top priority, need to realize that the PRC’s goal is to become ‘East Asia’s major power’, or the ‘pre-eminent’ or ‘dominant’ power in Asia.⁵ To this end, China’s neighbours would support the PRC’s position both in international institutions and in any disputes between China and non-Asian powers. Beyond this, China might press the nations of Asia to ‘adopt trade and investment policies compatible with Chinese interests … be generally open to immigration from China; prohibit or suppress anti-China and anti-Chinese movements within their societies; respect the rights of Chinese within their societies … (and) promote the use of Mandarin as a supplement to and eventually a replacement for English’.⁶ Thus, the goal of Chinese strategists is to achieve a position in Asia roughly equivalent to that enjoyed by the United States in the Western Hemisphere since the early part of the twentieth century.

To claim success in its grand strategy, Beijing needs to scramble for resources in sending the PRC off in many different directions at once, into three concentric geographic zones. The first is made up of China’s immediate neighbourhood, or ‘surrounding environment’, the 360 degrees around China’s coasts and borders, including the long interior frontier from Siberia, through Central, South and continental Southeast Asia, as well as the maritime portions of Northeast and Southeast Asia, and the islands of Oceania. Here the PRC is seeking both energy and raw materials. The Middle East and Persian Gulf are contained in a second zone, from where China imports energy, and from the third, that is Africa and the Western Hemisphere, including both South and North America, it seeks energy and raw materials. Truly, ever since the late 1990s Beijing has intensified efforts to secure access to oil and natural gas in Russia and Central Asia.

In the implications of China’s fast-growing, truly global pursuit of resources, noteworthy is the vulnerability emerging from its dependency on critical imports to sustain the country’s rapid growth, and thus potentially to cause disruptions or sharp price increases. The security of oil and natural gas supplies will, if not already, be a prominent concern, since a sharp economic downturn would have profoundly unsettling effects inside China and might even threaten the continued rule of the CCP.

China’s desperate need for ‘resource security’ makes energy diplomacy one of the most important considerations of the country’s diplomatic strategy. Given the PRC’s heavy reliance on maritime transport and the prevailing balance of power at sea, the primary danger to supplies in transit now comes from the US navy. Among the possible methods China’s military planners and strategic thinkers are considering for reducing the country’s exposure to naval blockade is a shift towards a greater reliance on contiguous sources and overland transport, already pursued through variable energy deals with the energy-rich neighbouring Russia and Central Asian states. It is noteworthy that, both bilaterally and within the scheme of the SCO, Beijing seeks to acquire the capabilities necessary to project military power in order to defend friendly foreign governments in Eurasia and their national economic interests, such as the authoritarian regimes of the Central Asian states.

In this context, Beijing’ seffort to hold Russia close by the lure of its large market for energy and materials and positive consideration of President Putin’s proposal (Shanghai SCO summit, June 2006) to give the SCO an energy dimension by creating the ‘Asia energy club’ or ‘Gas OPEC’ is indicative of China’s energy policy goals. It is also natural that the SCO member states of Central Asia, a key resource-exporting region to both Beijing and Washington, may converge US and Chinese interests in maintaining stability and regional security.

PRC interests in Central Asia

In particular, Chinese aims in Central Asia are the following: first, to constrain the separatist forces of ‘East Turkestan’; second, to keep Central Asia as China’s stable strategic rear area; and third, to make Central Asia one of China’s diversified sources of energy resources and a regional economic partner.

The term ‘East Turkestan’ was initially used by Russians and Europeans in the eighteenth century to designate the south part of Xingjian province in western China. In 1933 and 1944 two ‘East Turkestan Republics’ were established but were both short-lived. A contemporary ‘East Turkestan’ movement in Xingjian aimed to set up an independent ‘East Turkestan’ state. Sometimes its followers engaged in terrorism and violence.⁷ The Chinese s...

Table of contents

• Routledge Contemporary China Series
• Contents
• Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Chinese strategic interests in Eurasia
• 2 Shanghai Cooperation Organization
• 3 Clashes and coexistence between the three major powers in Eurasia
• 4 Is a strategic meeting of minds among Washington, Beijing and Moscow for the sake of Eurasia’s stability realistic?
• 5 The nexus between energy, security and maritime power and SCO’s role in China’s energy security
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index