Kazakhstan announced billions of dollars in deals with China on Tuesday, emphasising central Asia’s gradual shift from Moscow towards Beijing.
Meeting in Beijing on Tuesday, Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Chinese leader Hu Jintao signed a series of agreements including high-speed rail, uranium supplies and a $5bn energy infrastructure loan.
China’s investments in Kazakhstan have for years centred upon oil production – but Tuesday’s deals show Beijing’s reach now extends beyond the energy sector.
Among the deals was a $1.7bn loan by China to Kazakhstan’s national welfare fund; a supply agreement for about 55,000 tonnes of Kazakh uranium to meet China’s increasing nuclear needs; and a memorandum of understanding for China’s Ministry of Railways to help construct an Astana-Almaty high-speed rail link.
Agreements were also reached about water quality controls for rivers that flow from western China into Kazakhstan, and on co- operation in the fertiliser sector. China sees this as important since it looks to its neighbour for a new source of food.
“China has become the real great power in the region,” says Shamil Midkhatovich Yenikeyeff, research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “China represents the future [while] Russia represents the past . . . China has an upper hand over Russia in terms of its cash power and in terms of effective implementation of large-scale projects.”
China helped finance and build a pipeline to carry oil 1,000km from central Kazakhstan to its north-western frontier, opened in 2007. The pipeline will span Kaz-akhstan and provide China with access to oil resources in the Caspian Sea.
Resource：www.ftchinese.com