China In Eurasia

At a time of increasing animosity with the West, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in person for the first time since the start of the Ukraine war to showcase their strong ties.

The two authoritarian leaders gathered on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan's ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand in a show meant to signal deeper coordination and unity between the two countries and reaffirm their relationship amid major battlefield setbacks for Moscow in its nearly seven-month war in Ukraine, which has seen China walk a cautious but supportive line for the Kremlin.

Putin hinted at their September 15 meeting that Beijing may not be satisfied with Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, saying he understood that Xi had "questions and concerns" but praised the Chinese leader for what he called a "balanced" position on the war.

"We highly value the balanced stance of our Chinese friends when it comes to the Ukraine crisis," Putin said during the meeting. "We understand your questions and concerns about this. During today's meeting, we will of course explain our position."

Amid their discussion, Xi referred to Putin as an "old friend" and Putin offered a full-throated endorsement of Beijing's positions over Taiwan and its One China policy that recognizes the self-governing island as part of mainland China. A readout of their conversation showed that Xi did not mention Ukraine or NATO in the talks.

This marks the first meeting between Putin and Xi since February in Beijing just days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when they signed a joint statement declaring the partnership between the two countries had "no limits."

Despite different tones, the leaders were eager to voice their opposition to the United States and what Putin deemed a "unipolar" world order led by the United States that Beijing and Moscow both sought to move against.

"We are ready," Xi said, according to a Kremlin readout, "together with our Russian colleagues, to set an example of a responsible world power and play a leading role in bringing such a rapidly changing world onto a trajectory of sustainable and positive development."

But while Xi and Putin displayed a deepening of ties, the path forward amid a grinding war in Ukraine, global economic shocks, and an altered geopolitical landscape across Eurasia is far from straightforward.

A Symbolic Meeting

Set up in 2001, the SCO consisted of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan before expanding in 2017 to include India and Pakistan. The summit offers a symbolic venue for the leaders as they look to deepen their partnership and voice opposition to the West.

Xi is also looking to highlight his power abroad after strengthening his control in the lead-up to an important Chinese Communist Party congress next month where he is expected to receive a third term as leader.

"The reason for this meeting at the end of the day is very different for each side, but it's ultimately about optics," Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute, told RFE/RL. "Putin wants to show the West that he isn't isolated and still has friends in Asia. For Xi, it's about showing that he is a key powerbroker and just as respected as a leader around the world as he is at home."

Throughout the war, Beijing has refrained from condemning Russia's invasion and offered a diplomatic lifeline to Moscow. Chinese oil companies have also been a top buyer of discounted Russian energy and other raw materials. Beijing also has kept up its military links with Russia, taking part in large-scale war games in the Far East earlier this month.

Both Beijing and Moscow view the SCO as a vehicle to oppose Western-led institutions and offer what officials from both countries have framed as an alternative world order. China also appears eager to respond to the United States following an August visit to Taiwan by U.S. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, which Beijing said was "provocative."

According to The Wall Street Journal, the decision to use part of Xi's first trip abroad in nearly three years to meet with Putin was partly a reaction to Pelosi's visit.

"Both leaders are attracted to the idea of building a non-Western international order," said Pantucci. "The SCO is in many ways a flimsy institution, but this shows how they can engage more with it and other institutions like it to offer an alternative path."

Still, Beijing has taken a pragmatic approach and has shown that despite its declaration of a "no-limits" dynamic with Russia, China does appear to have its red lines.

China has so far complied with sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, with some Chinese companies even cutting ties with Moscow to avoid violating the measures and damaging its access to Western markets.

Despite the meeting in Samarkand, China has not signaled any deviation from this line that it has followed since Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine in late February.

Xi's Balancing Act

All eyes were on Xi and Putin at the SCO, but their tete-a-tete was far from the only meeting on the sidelines of the summit. The diplomatic gathering, along with Xi's Central Asian tour this week, represents a long-term Chinese foreign policy strategy.

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While Xi in many respects doubled down on China's relationship with Russia while in Uzbekistan, the Chinese leader is performing a difficult balancing act for his Eurasian diplomacy while attending the SCO.

China has invested heavily over the years in its relations with countries in Central Asia and Beijing is looking to further cultivate those ties while at the SCO, having already signed a slew of trade and investment pacts with countries in the region.

Amid the fallout from the war, Central Asian countries -- Kazakhstan, in particular -- have also become uncomfortable with Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and growing pressure from the Kremlin.

Beijing has tried to show a sensitivity to these anxieties, with Xi beginning his regional trip on September 14 in Nur-Sultan where he met with his counterpart, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, and said China "will continue to resolutely support Kazakhstan in protecting its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity."

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"On the one hand, China will provide diplomatic support for Russia and broad commitments to a Beijing-Moscow entente whose principal rationale and focus is to counterbalance Washington," Evan Feigenbaum, vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, wrote recently.

"On the other [hand], China will continue de facto compliance with Western sanctions to avoid painting a target on its own back, and it will deploy mealy-mouthed language about 'peace' and 'stability' aimed at placating the Central Asian nations and partners in the 'global south' that are uneasy about Moscow's war in Ukraine," he added.

Long-Term Shift

Neither explicitly an economic or military bloc, the SCO was originally envisaged as a forum through which China and Russia could manage their shared authority over Eurasia and improve relations with their neighbors.

But the Ukraine war has thrown that strategy off balance.

The aftermath of the invasion has seen Russia's economy shrink, its relations with neighbors damaged, and its influence weakened while Moscow has become increasingly dependent on China both economically and politically.

During their meeting in Samarkand, Putin appeared deferential to Xi by praising the Chinese leader, saying he respects his "balanced stance" on the war in Ukraine, backing Beijing's One China policy, and opposing "provocations" by the United States in the Taiwan Strait.

For years, analysts have warned that relations between Beijing and Moscow could become increasingly unbalanced in China's favor, leading to Russia becoming a junior partner in any future dynamic.

"There's no doubt that the power balance has shifted between them. Things used to be much more equal between [Xi and Putin]," said Pantucci. "This is a trend that's been under way for some time and this meeting is further affirmation of it."

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- In the days leading up to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s arrival in the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan, activists have been arrested and intimidated for protesting their relatives’ imprisonment in China's Xinjiang Province and its vast internment camp system.

Bakhyt Zharykbasova’s husband, Baibolat Kunbolat, was one of those arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail. For more than a year and half, Kunbolat has been organizing demonstrations outside the Chinese Consulate in Almaty, the country's biggest city, demanding the release of his brother along with other Kazakhs whose relatives are missing, jailed, or trapped in the neighboring region.

But in the lead-up to Xi’s high-profile September 14 visit -- his first trip abroad in more than two years -- protesters say they have been met with a wave of arrests, police summonses, and warnings not to travel to Nur-Sultan in an attempt to prevent dissent during the Chinese leader’s state visit.

“The authorities warned him and I warned him, [too], but he decided that this is what he is going to do and [that] he will keep doing it,” Zharykbasova, whose husband was arrested on September 10, told RFE/RL. “Baibolat says he is fine [in detention], but I know they will not let him out as long as the Chinese president is here.”

China’s crackdown in Xinjiang has seen more than 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities put into mass detention camps. Since Beijing’s dragnet accelerated in 2017, the plight of ethnic Kazakhs interned in China has been an unexpected source of dissent, with the testimonies of former detainees and family members fueling a guerrilla advocacy campaign that brought outsized international attention to the issue.

This left the Kazakh government walking a tightrope between appeasing Beijing -- which denies the long list of abuses that have been documented in its camp system -- and dealing with an exasperated segment of its population lobbying for family members in China.

“There is only one goal here [with these arrests and threats] -- to please the Chinese leader,” Yerbol Dauletbek, the leader of the officially registered chapter of Atazhurt Eriktileri, a group lobbying for ethnic Kazakhs detained in Xinjiang and their relatives, told RFE/RL. “This is how [the government] helps to hide the crimes of China.”

Silencing Xinjiang Protests

Demonstrators were facing growing pressure from the authorities even before Xi’s meeting with Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev was announced.

In recent years, the government has led a swift crackdown against activists working on Xinjiang issues in the country: shutting down organizations, arresting activists, and intimidating leading figures into exile, leaving only a small but devoted segment -- such as Kunbolat and his peers -- for public protests.

On September 12, Gulfiya Kazybek, Gaukhar Kurmanaliyeva, and Qalida Akytkhan -- who were all part of ongoing protests outside the Chinese Consulate in Almaty and embassy in Nur-Sultan since February 2020 -- said police officers removed them from a bus that they were on while traveling to a wedding in the southwestern city of Shymkent.

“The police demanded that we get off the bus and then they took us to the police station,” Kazybek told RFE/RL.

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Once at the police station, the three women were told that an administrative case had been opened over the violation of “the procedure for holding peaceful assemblies” and they were handed summonses.

Kurmanaliyeva and Kazybek went to their local police station in Almaty on September 13 but were told by officers that no materials on their case had been received yet and they were asked to wait for a phone call for more information which had not been provided by the time this article was published.

Kurmanaliyeva told RFE/RL that she believes security operatives had been tailing her and other protesters since September 10, saying that she and others had documented instances of being followed at the market and outside their homes.

“We'll keep protesting until our relatives are out,” she said. “I am against Xi Jinping's visit. He is making genocide against Kazakhs and Muslims in Xinjiang and he comes here like nothing has happened. He should answer for what he is doing.”

Following the release of a damning UN report earlier this month that said China has committed “serious human rights violations” in mass detention camps in Xinjiang that may be crimes against humanity, activists urged Toqaev to raise the issue of the treatment of ethnic Kazakhs during his talks with Xi.

Kurmanaliyeva says an official from Almaty's city administration had told her Toqaev would raise the plight of their relatives when he meets with Xi, although she doubts it will happen.

“They just didn't want us to go to [the capital],” Kurmanaliyeva said. “They told us: ‘You'll create a bother.’”

Other protesters who had been part of the regular pickets outside the Chinese Consulate and embassy also faced detention and harassment in the lead-up to Xi’s visit.

Akikat Kaliolla, a musician whose relatives are believed to be in Xinjiang’s camp system, was also sentenced to 15 days in jail for allegedly violating laws on public protests and was taken directly by police from his recording studio.

Nurzat Yermekbay, who has also regularly participated in demonstrations against the camps, said he was detained for four hours on September 10 in Almaty and warned by police “not to go to the capital.”

Bekzat Maksutkhan, the head of Naghyz Atazhurt, an unregistered advocacy group that works with families who have relatives missing in Xinjiang, told RFE/RL that the Kazakh authorities have been effective in silencing dissent around the issue and that the treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang is not receiving mainstream attention in the country.

The Chinese Embassy in Nur-Sultan has not responded publicly to the appeals of protesters and neither the embassy nor the consulate in Almaty responded to RFE/RL’s request for comment about the fate of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang and the protesters’ complaints.

Xi Arrives

The fact that Xi chose Kazakhstan and Central Asia as the location to first step outside of China since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic brings prestige and geopolitical significance to the government in Nur-Sultan.

Expanding its already deep economic and political ties with China has been a priority for the Kazakh government and local authorities have treaded cautiously with Beijing over the issue of interned Kazakhs.

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The issue is further complicated by the complex family connections across the lengthy 1,782-kilometer border between China and Kazakhstan.

Cross-border ties have been a mainstay for centuries but accelerated when the Kazakh government sought to attract ethnic Kazakhs living in Xinjiang to move following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This led to many Chinese-born Kazakhs uprooting and resettling in neighboring Kazakhstan. They have become permanent residents and even Kazakh citizens while still maintaining close connections to family in China.

In instances where Kazakh citizens, many of whom were originally born in China, were detained in Xinjiang, the Kazakh government has negotiated behind-the-scenes with Beijing to secure their release. But it says it has no jurisdiction in other cases.

“Since the Kazakh diaspora living in Xinjiang are citizens of the People's Republic of China, all issues related to them relate to China's internal affairs,” a spokesperson for the Kazakh foreign ministry told RFE/RL. “Therefore, it’s necessary to consider ways to resolve this issue without prejudice to the comprehensive and eternal strategic partnership between Kazakhstan and China.”

Temur Umarov, an expert on China’s relations with Central Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told RFE/RL that the internment camps are a sensitive political topic for Beijing and, given Nur-Sultan’s track record, Toqaev is unlikely to raise the issue publicly and even less likely to criticize China’s detention system during meetings with Xi.

“There is an unspoken rule in relations between Kazakhstan and China: only successes are publicly raised and problems are never spoken about,” he said. “The countries of Central Asia cannot afford to criticize Beijing simply because they depend on [China]. Criticism can come back to haunt them with economic consequences.”

Written and reported by Reid Standish in Prague based on reporting by Nurtai Lahanuly and Elnur Alimova in Almaty, and Chris Rickleton in Nur-Sultan.