Comparing the Economic Involvement of China and India in Post-Soviet Central Asia

Abstract

The assertion that Central Asia has become a field of economic competition between China and India is based on a prospective approach. The potential of the two countries is indeed to be competitive, but economic realities show that it is not the case at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Comparisons between India and China in Central Asia, though legitimate in the geopolitical logic of power projection, is less relevant in the economic realm, the comparison being valid only over the medium or long terms, 2020 to 2030. Indeed, for the time being, except for hydrocarbons, where the Indian and Chinese companies have already come to terms, China largely dominates all the other areas. A comparison of trade flows shows that the total trade between China and Central Asia exceeded 18 billion euros in 2008, whereas between India and Central Asia, it was only 247 million euros, or 1.37 percent of that of its competitor (see table 11.1). India is the sixteenth most important trading partner for Uzbekistan and the twenty-second for Tajikistan, while China is almost always in the top three with Russia and the European Union. It is the largest trading partner of Kyrgyzstan, the second largest of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, third for Kazakhstan, and seventh for Turkmenistan, a figure expected to rise in 2010–2011 with the arrival of the first flow of Turkmen gas to Xinjiang.