By Tristan Kenderdine

October 19, 2017, the CACI Analyst

International Capacity Cooperation is China’s policy answer to comparative advantage, a vast state-planning exercise to coordinate China’s trade and investment strategy in external geographies. It is the practical industrial policy matrix allowing industries, local governments, and policy banking to intersect with partner economies as part of the wider geoeconomic Belt and Road strategy. For China’s aluminum sector, which is already heavily state subsidized and widely considered to be dumping on international markets, it represents an opportunity to extend the lifespan of the industrial policy and policy bank model. The formation of an aluminum capacity cooperation enterprise alliance should be a warning signal to the non-ferrous metals industries of China’s trading partners in Central Asia.

 By Stephen Blank

October 16, 2017, the CACI Analyst

The recent Indo-Chinese crisis over the Doklam area has been peacefully resolved for now, yet its repercussions risk spilling over to both South and Central Asia and beyond. The Doklam clash has demonstrated to China that it can no longer push India around, and India immediately registered that lesson in self-confidence by stating that it will play a larger role in Southeast Asia, another area where they both jostle for influence. Similarly, we can expect an expanded rivalry in Central Asia, not least within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) now that India and Pakistan are both members.

By Richard Weitz

August 3, 2017, the CACI Analyst

The June Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Astana marked the SCO’s first membership expansion since its creation in 2001. By finally ending this logjam, the SCO has raised expectations of continued enlargement and increased geopolitical weight. However, major obstacles to further growth persist; meanwhile, more members deepen the mutual tensions and rivalries within the institution.  

By Farkhod Tolipov

June 6, 2017, the CACI Analyst

In April this year, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev made it clear that Kazakhstan intends to change from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. Thereby, this country took a new step in the overall course of its post-Soviet development as an independent state. Kazakhstan became the third state in Central Asia after Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan that decided to undergo such a change. Kyrgyzstan will supposedly be the next country to move in the same direction. The change of alphabets was met with geopolitically saturated aversion in Russian political circles and media, in contrast to the relatively peaceful manner with which it is being introduced in the countries themselves.

By Stephen Blank

March 22, 2017, the CACI Analyst

Central Asia has never ranked high on U.S. priorities. That is unlikely to change under the Trump Administration. Yet recent developments in Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan, do offer an opportunity to advance U.S. interests through a greater economic-political presence in the region, whilst also countering growing Chinese economic dominance and Russian efforts at military hegemony at a relatively low cost. The two key countries in this possible opportunity for the U.S. are Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.