Posted on 04/25/2023 3:33:47 AM PDT by FarCenter
NEW YORK – Central Asian countries increased imports from China in March by 55% over the year-earlier month, beating the 35% jump in Chinese shipments to Southeast Asia reported previously.
Former Soviet republics as well as Turkey and Iran all contributed to a near-record gain in Chinese exports to the region, a focus of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
China’s exports to the region have nearly tripled since 2018. The chart below includes Turkey and Iran in the Central Asian total.
Several factors contributed to the export boom, which included every country in the region.
China is investing heavily in energy, mineral resources and rail transport across the Asian continent, including a new rail line between China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan scheduled to start construction next year.
The rail project, which will link China to European markets, has been planned since 1997 but only won approval in 2022, after Russia backed the venture. Russia’s need for Chinese support in the Ukraine war outweighed longstanding strategic rivalries between the two powers.
“The CKU railway is crucial to China for two interconnected purposes—to advance its geopolitical interests and to secure favorable relations with Central Asian elites for their support over Chinese legitimacy in Xinjiang (East Turkestan),” Niva Yau Tsz Yan wrote in a March 2023 commentary for the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“Russia’s war in Ukraine has made new trade routes bypassing Russia more profitable, and a new Uzbek government is looking to expand regional and international engagement,” Yan wrote.
Iran’s imports from China had fallen to just US$800 million a month during 2019-2022 from a 2014 peak of $2.8 billion a month. But seasonally-adjusted Chinese shipments to Iran more than doubled to $1.7 billion in March.
Chronically short of cash, Iran depends on trade credits from China, by far its largest trading partner. The March increase evidently reflected more Chinese financing, and came after Iran accepted Chinese mediation in restoring diplomatic relations with its regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. A reasonable inference is that Iran was being rewarded for good behavior.
China’s exports to Russia continued to rise sharply, along with exports to Turkey, which acts as an intermediary for Chinese trade with Russia. China has avoided direct violation of American sanctions on Russia, but Turkey and former Soviet republics have resold sanctioned goods to Moscow. The sharp increase in China’s exports to Kazakhstan probably reflects this intermediation.
United States is busy spending money on foreign wars.
Vietnam was a fiasco
Iraq was a fiasco.
Afghanistan was a fiasco.
Ukraine is another fiasco
While China focus is on manufacturing, buying land and mines and factories all over the world, including United States.
Thus saith a neo isolationist
China is taking Central Asia away from Russia.
It is stopped in Africa as Africans see it as a worse form of colonialism.
It is distrusted in India and South-East Asia
This says a financial genius who has no clue what it means when debt is 139% of GDP.
What a gei-polutical genius you are! /S
China has stolen American wealth, not Russia.
Wake up and use whatever little grey matter you still may have.
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