The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century

by Jonathan E. Hillman

  The gap between what Khorgos is and what it aspires to become tests the imagination. It is a clever attempt to turn weakness—isolation from the world’s oceans—into advantage. That ambition has attracted dozens of reporters, bringing global attention to one of Kazakhstan and China’s flagship joint projects. As the procession of these “news” pieces has continued for several years, with little actual change to report, I have occasionally wondered what fraction of traffic through Khorgos is visitors writing about it—a trend to which I have, of course, contributed.

  To the credit of the facility’s managers, Khorgos is always living five years into the future. The caravan of researchers and reporters passing through has created a long record of promises that have not been realized. Yet most visitors are still captivated by what Khorgos could become. Rather than question why the facility has not met its 2020 targets from years ago, journalists tend to cite the most recent year of activity and then an ambitious estimate for future growth. The project’s managers are dreaming big, and some hype around the project is practical. For new routes to take off, people need to learn that they exist.

  Khorgos is more compelling as a model for bringing best practices to Central Asia than as something that will bring change to the rest of the world by shifting significant amounts of trade inland. It is a priority for Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has a flair for starting from scratch. In December 1997, Nazarbayev moved the nation’s capital six hundred miles north, from Almaty to Astana. While Nazarbayev’s move was poor economics, it may have been savvy politics, helping to marginalize his political opponents and cement his hold on power.32 In just twenty years, the city’s population grew more than threefold, from 290,000 to 1.1 million people. Shortly after Nazarbayev’s retirement was announced in 2019, the city was officially renamed Nursultan.

  With similar zeal, Nazarbayev has carved out a special place for Kazakhstan along China’s BRI. In September 2013, at Nazarbayev University in Nursultan, Xi first called for building “an economic belt along the Silk Road.”33 Kazakhstan has been at the front of those plans ever since, and Kazakh officials say, half jokingly, that their country intends to be the “buckle” in China’s Belt.

  More importantly, they have backed up that rhetoric with resources. The following year, in November 2014, Nazarbayev unveiled his own plan for improving Kazakhstan’s infrastructure. Called “Nurly Jol,” meaning “Bright Path,” it entails investments of $40 billion by 2020 and aims to turn Kazakhstan into an east-west trade hub. With favorable geography and natural-resource wealth on which to draw, Kazakhstan is the best positioned among the Central Asian nations to become a hub.

  “China Is Playing Monopoly”

  But Kazakhstan’s rising generation aspires to even more. In May 2018, I gave a presentation at Nazarbayev University, and one of the students asked a simple question with big implications: “Can Kazakhstan use the Belt and Road to become a place where people want to stay, a place that sends things to the world, rather than a place that things pass through?” If Kazakhstan’s only gain from the BRI is as a transit point, the benefits will be smaller and more highly concentrated among the companies and workers providing services at the border and transportation across the country. If new infrastructure helps Kazakhstan increase exports and develop new industries by reaching more markets, a wider cross-section of society could benefit.

  Kazakhstan’s turn as host of the world’s fair, in 2017, was an expensive attempt to move the country in that direction. Its theme, “Future Energy,” was intended to rebrand the Central Asian energy supplier as an energy innovator. Nazarbayev called it “a turning point for Kazakhstan to start a completely new page in economic development.”34 Unintentionally, the big show also put the country’s flaws center-stage. Its $3.5 billion price tag drew criticism in a country where the average salary is below $500 a month, and the first CEO of the expo, Talgat Yermegiyaev, was indicted for corruption.35 A Hilton-branded hotel that was built in the expo complex was delayed and finally opened seven weeks after the expo had concluded.36

  The pavilions, organized by each of the 115 participating countries, were perhaps the most telling.37 The Chinese pavilion included a high-speed-railway simulator, and during Xi’s visit in June 2017, he and Nazarbayev took turns stepping into the cockpit. Using a live video feed, they also “inspected” Khorgos Gateway.38 The Russians brought a large piece of Arctic ice into their pavilion, and when Putin visited, he was given a briefing on the status of Russian nuclear icebreakers. In contrast, the United States did not even send a cabinet-level official, and federal law prohibits funding such exhibitions, placing the burden on private-sector participants.39 In the U.S. pavilion, a video featured famous American inventors and showed their garages.40 While China and Russia were reaching outward, the United States highlighted the benefits of staying home.

  Great powers are playing different games in Central Asia. As the scholar Eric McGlinchey puts it, “China is playing Monopoly. Russia is playing Risk. The United States is playing Solitaire. For policymakers in Beijing, the game is business. For policymakers in Moscow, the game is existential. For policymakers in Washington, the game is an afterthought. Central Asia is material for Beijing; China can easily walk away if its natural resources and infrastructure investments sour. Central Asia is imperial for Moscow; Russia will not walk away if its influence is questioned. Central Asia is inconsequential for Washington; the United States has all but forgotten the region now that attention has shifted away from Afghanistan.”41

  The “game” is changing, however, as China moves deeper into Central Asia. Chinese investments and Chinese workers in Central Asia require security.42 In 2016, a suicide bomber attacked the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, wounding three Kyrgyz staff. China’s treatment of ethnic Uighurs could inspire more attacks from Islamic militant groups in the region. Meanwhile, each new investment makes walking away a bit more difficult, politically and financially, particularly those projects that are associated with the BRI. After winning enough rounds of Monopoly, China, like other great powers before it, may find itself playing Risk.

  Evidence of this shift is already apparent in Tajikistan, where China has quietly assembled a military presence. To guard against an influx of militant groups from Afghanistan, China has built or improved thirty to forty border posts on the Tajik-Afghan border, a stretch of which Tajikistan has effectively handed over to Chinese control.43 After years of free riding on U.S. military activities in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have guarded Chinese-owned mines and other investments, China may be taking on more responsibility.

  These measures are also noteworthy for what they indicate about regional relations, especially that Tajikistan is willing to host Chinese troops and that Russia has tolerated them. Hosting foreign military forces is rarely a popular option for leaders, but the area is so remote that Tajik leaders might enjoy the financial and security benefits of the base while suffering little public scrutiny. In addition to bases in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Russia maintains a military base in Tajikistan that it staffs with roughly seven thousand troops. But Russian officials do not appear to be threatened by China’s venture into a region they have dominated for so long, perhaps because it is far from Russia’s borders and reflects a shared interest. All three countries stand to benefit from increased security in the area, through which militants and drugs have long flowed.

  While China’s security presence is a mere toehold, its economic footprint has blown past Russia’s in recent years. By 2009, China had overtaken Russia as the region’s leading trade partner. That year, the China–Central Asia gas pipeline, running through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, was completed, pulling the region away from Russia and toward the east. China has also become the region’s leading lender, edging out not only Russia but also the World Bank and other international financial institutions.44 It has used resource-for-loan deals to secure access to Turkmen gas and Kazakh oil. Kazakhstan tops
the list for China’s trade and investment partners in the region, but its neighbors are also grabbing the BRI as a lifeline.45

  In Central Asia, the competition to court China has occasionally resembled a BRI talent show. While in office, President Almazbek Atambayev of Kyrgyzstan said, “we can become an effective hub for transshipment of Chinese goods to Eurasia and Europe.”46 President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan has said that “Tajikistan can be a connecting bridge between China and other countries adjoining to the region” and that Chinese projects will “revive the southern branch of the Great Silk Road.”47 Uzbekistan has been the wildcard in the region since its long-standing president, Islam Karimov, died in 2016. His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has taken a warmer approach to the BRI, stating, “Uzbekistan supported the Belt and Road initiative from the start, and its delivery is an important factor in the sustainable development of our countries.”48 In 2017, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan released a book titled Turkmenistan Is the Heart of the Great Silk Road and made that phrase the official national slogan for the following year.49

  Privately, of course, Central Asian officials have reservations. They say that China offers flexibility but subpar quality. “They are great at building to the budget you have. But ten or fifteen years later, you have to rebuild everything,” one official told me. Several have said that their governments bargained hard with the Chinese to ensure that a high percentage of local labor is used, citing some of China’s investments in Africa that primarily used Chinese workers. It is less clear whether they appreciate the dangers of unsustainable debt. Debt levels as a percentage of GDP in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are among the highest of China’s BRI partners.

  China’s growing presence also inflames popular grievances about government corruption and inequity. In 2016, the Kazakh government announced plans to extend the period that foreigners can lease agricultural land from ten years to twenty-five years. The changes became a flashpoint for broader fears about Chinese influence and grievances against the Kazakh state, sparking the country’s largest protests since its independence. In Kyrgyzstan, citizens are roughly split as to whether they view China as the most important economic partner or the greatest economic threat.50 It is difficult to disentangle these reactions, but that is partially the point. Citizens suspect corrupt bureaucrats are among the BRI’s main beneficiaries.

  Crossing the Caspian

  A year after crossing Kazakhstan’s eastern border with China, I traveled to its western border on the Caspian Sea. The Caspian is the world’s largest inland body of water, five times the size of Lake Superior and larger than all of Japan. Its oil reserves have long attracted the interest of world powers, and the fall of the Soviet Union opened the door to foreign firms.51

  Oil remains the top prize, but another contest is heating up. The Caspian is at the center of a competition to connect Asia and Europe with new railways, ports, and other infrastructure. China’s BRI envisions two corridors that stretch westward and through the region to Europe. India and Russia are backing a north-south corridor that runs through Iran and Azerbaijan. In 2018, the United States finalized an agreement to send supplies across the sea to Kazakhstan and on to Afghanistan via Uzbekistan.

  Like other places in the middle, the Caspian is hoisted up and held back by middlemen. Countries bordering the sea—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan—are jockeying to become hubs along emerging routes. Paradoxically, they are among the strongest supporters of the BRI but also harbor one of its greatest challenges. All five countries rank in the bottom third of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Their average score is lower than sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s worst-performing region in 2017.

  These efforts all aim to carry goods and people faster and farther, and there is plenty of room for improvement. During my journey, time and space seemed to expand. The sea itself was calm, but crossing it required navigating confusion on its shores. Every step of the way, someone was eager to help—for a price, naturally.

  My trip across the Caspian began in Aktau, Kazakhstan, a city where the streets truly have no names. Developed in the 1950s, it still uses a Soviet-era grid system that assigns numbers to districts and blocks. Upon arriving, I called the Caspian Shipping Company, which has a monopoly on Caspian ferry tickets. The next boat? Tomorrow, the day after, or maybe the day after that, I was told. Earlier travelers said it could take days.

  There are no set schedules for the ferries, which carry railway cars, vehicles, and the occasional passenger. There is nothing fast or cheap about the trip. Flying from Aktau to Baku takes an hour and costs about $100. The same route by ferry takes anywhere from twenty to forty hours and costs $80. For intrepid bikers and motorcyclists, the extra time can be worth the hassle. The Caspian Shipping Company lists its ferry fleet online, but when I checked, the vessel locations had not been updated for a month. The waiting game had begun.

  There are few distractions in Aktau. Lonely Planet, the travel guide, lists five “top sights,” one of which is the sea and all of which can be seen during a fifteen-minute walk. Among those attractions are a decommissioned Soviet MiG fighter plane, a remnant of empire, and a statue of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, who has become a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism.

  Restless after a day and another unsuccessful call to the ticket office, I started checking the names of the ferries on a website that compiles updates from ship transponders. Strangely, two ferries listed their destination as Kuryk, located fifty minutes south of Aktau. Another search turned up an announcement about a new ferry complex there. I called the ticket office again and was assured the ferries only left from Aktau. I tried a few numbers for the Caspian Shipping Company, including, mistakenly, a “help line” that I learned is not for confused travelers but for reporting graft and ethics violations.

  With some luck, I did not so much catch a boat as stumble onto one. After two days in Aktau, I set out for Kuryk, a village of less than ten thousand people that the government aims to transform into another key hub on the New Silk Road. “Now we can say that Kazakhstan is not a landlocked country and has access to all the seas, including the Persian Gulf,” President Nazarbayev proclaimed at an opening ceremony in Kuryk for an automobile-ferry terminal in December 2017.52

  The past and future collide just outside Kuryk. There is a graveyard with headstones from the 1950s and, moments later, large white letters placed on the side of the road: KAZAKHSTAN 2050. Looking across the flat expanse, I wondered how much had really changed in this area during the past eighty years and how much would during the next thirty. The hour drive was a landscape of endless lines, the most commanding of which was where brown steppe meets blue sky. Pipelines and powerlines were accents, running parallel and perpendicular to the horizon. The same flat steppe watched the Soviet Union rise and fall, watched an independent Kazakhstan emerge, and now watches as China tries to reach across the Caspian.

  The port’s office was not used to visitors. A customs official was explaining that they did not sell tickets, when a man wearing a dark-blue shirt with epaulets emerged from a back room. He was the dispatcher, the maritime equivalent of air traffic control. The next ferry would be leaving tomorrow, he assured me. His coworker, who I will call Amir, was also staying in Aktau and could give me a ride.

  The next morning, after a few phone calls, Amir generously picked me up. We made three stops, one for food and two to pick up more coworkers. Their exact jobs were unclear, but all involved coordinating—with the government, military, shipping companies, and customers. Naturally, that involved a lot of waiting. They were required to be on call around the clock, usually only getting notice about incoming ships a day or so in advance. Each made a few hundred dollars a month. No one could say when the boat was leaving, but I was the only one worried about missing it.

  Close to Kuryk, we passed yet another port. Surrounded by high fences and signs that promised, “Tough Projects in Safe Hands,” it is run by t
he subsidiary of an Italian company. They were too rigid, one of my new companions explained, and required hard hats, speed limits for driving within the complex, and other rules. “They have their way of doing business. We have our way of doing business,” he said as we swerved around potholes. A new road was being paved, he noted, but because everyone took a little piece, it was taking twice as long to finish.

  We arrived, and despite not working in the ticket office, Amir eagerly secured my ticket. Three burly Russian bikers roared past us and into the hull of the ship. I boarded just as railcars were rolling on. Twenty minutes later, the deck started vibrating, and black smoke rose from the ship’s twin exhaust stacks. We were off.

  “Only Mother Nature Knows”

  The sea was as calm as the shore had been chaotic. After land was out of sight, it was only the ship, the sun, and the sea. Commissioned in 1986, the Professor Gül was named after an Azerbaijani professor of geography. It stretches over five hundred feet and holds up to twenty-eight railway containers. Only a fraction of that capacity was being used on my voyage. Surrounded by nothingness and having barely caught the boat, I had a new appreciation for the influence of the people who navigate these “places in between” and the longer-term challenges they may pose for China’s BRI.

  After all, the BRI is a middleman’s dream. Its megaprojects and multitude of new connections offer ample opportunities for bribery, kickbacks, and theft.53 The world’s most corrupt sectors are construction, transportation, and extraction, which includes oil and mining. The BRI has a heavy focus on all three.