Abstract
This chapter examines the public cooperation and hidden rivalry that have characterized Russian and Chinese-led efforts to promote Eurasian economic and security integration. Though both Moscow and Beijing have shared similar concerns about the role and influence of the United States in Central Asia, they each have championed their own preferred regional organizations as instruments of regional cooperation and influence, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union. Though the Central Asian states in the 2000s embraced the presence of multiple external patrons and regional organizations as part of their overall pursuit of multivector foreign policies, post-2014 Western influence in the region has declined, while Russian and Chinese efforts have intensified. However, the asymmetry in power between Moscow and Beijing has led Russia to increasingly accommodate and acquiesce to China’s Eurasian agenda, including the recent Belt and Road Initiative.
[W]e understand [that Central Asia is your backyard]. But you [Russia] are supposed after all to look after your own yard, water the flowers. Please excuse my frankness.
—Chinese official responsible for Eurasian policy1
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Cooley, A. (2019). Tending the Eurasian Garden: Russia, China and the Dynamics of Regional Integration and Order. In: Bekkevold, J.I., Lo, B. (eds) Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92516-5_6
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