Russia, China, and the Race to Rebuild the Silk Road

Lachie Macfarlan | Europe and Eurasia Fellow

Image sourced from Prime Minister's Office - Government of India via Wikimedia Commons.

For centuries, Central Asia was the connective tissue of the Silk Road, the historic route that moved goods, people and ideas between China, the Middle East and Europe. UNESCO describes these routes as an “interconnected network” linking oasis cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara to the Mediterranean.

Today, their modern successors are the Belt and Road railways and the “Middle Corridor”, which carries freight from western China across Kazakhstan, the Caspian and the South Caucasus to Europe. Traffic along this route has more than doubled since 2022 as sanctions on Russia pushed traders to find alternatives. This shift is not merely commercial, but instead representative of a profound geopolitical reorientation: Central Asia is no longer strategically overlooked and has now become a key arena of great-power competition between China, Russia and a relatively cautious Western world.

Russia’s Unravelling and China’s Advance

For three decades after the Soviet collapse, Russia acted as Central Asia’s informal security guarantor, maintaining military bases, cultural ties and economic dominance through labour migration and energy interdependence. That confidence began to crumble in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For states like Kazakhstan, the invasion substantially weakened the assumption that Russia was a stabilising force rather than a potential aggressor.

Significantly, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev refused to recognise the “Donetsk” and “Luhansk” entities, publicly affirming support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity while seated next to Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan followed suit, issuing statements that stopped short of condemnation but emphasised neutrality. Chatham House analysts argue that these gestures reflected a deeper unease: Russia’s image as protector gave way to concerns that its territorial revanchism could one day extend south.

China has moved quickly to fill the vacuum and to capitalise on this uncertainty. At the June 2025 China-Central Asia Summit in Astana, Xi Jinping signed a Treaty on Permanent Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation with all five regional leaders. The agreement consolidated a network of trade and security agreements built over a decade through the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). As of 2025, China has overtaken Russia as the largest trading partner of the Central Asian republics. China’s strategy is deliberate: build connectivity, supply infrastructure, and extend credit while framing it as mutual development.

Russia, constrained by sanctions and war, is struggling to keep pace. Putin’s October 2025 visit to Dushanbe saw appeals for deeper trade and new energy projects, while in 2024, Russia agreed to construct Uzbekistan’s first nuclear power plant. These gestures highlight Russia’s desire to remain relevant, yet its resources are limited and its diplomatic appeal diminished. Analysts at the Carnegie Endowment warn that the two powers’ overlapping ambitions may soon clash as China’s economic dominance quietly challenges Russia’s influence in its former sphere.

Balancing Between Giants

The erosion of Russian authority and the rise of Chinese influence have forced Central Asian governments to pursue active diversification rather than passive alignment. Kazakhstan’s long-standing multi-vector foreign policy exemplifies this logic, aiming to engage every major power without dependence on any. Astana welcomes Chinese investment in logistics and digital technology while cooperating militarily with Russia and courting Western firms for energy and rare-earth extraction. The planned China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, championed and financed by Beijing, further demonstrates this shift, connecting Asia to Europe through the Caspian Sea and Turkey, bypassing Russian territory entirely.

Europe is also increasingly engaging, as showcased by the European Commission’s Global Gateway program, which has pledged €10 billion for transport and digital infrastructure across Central Asia. While the Middle Corridor remains costlier than the traditional northern railways through Russia, its political value is immense, since it offers Europe a non-Russian gateway to Asia and strengthens the autonomy of Central Asian transit states.

Critical-mineral politics add another layer to the competition. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan hold vast reserves of rare earths, lithium and uranium. As China tightens export controls on critical minerals, Western and Japanese firms are exploring Central Asia as an alternative supply base. For the region, this competition offers leverage, but only if governments can attract investment without sacrificing independence.

The Russia-China Collision and Western Choices

Russia and China remain partners of convenience, but their interests in Central Asia are increasingly incompatible. Russia seeks deference and security dominance while China seeks access, markets and a stable environment for trade. China’s growing role in energy infrastructure, pipeline finance and digital systems, such as Huawei’s “Safe City” surveillance projects in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, feeds anxiety that economic dependence could translate into political control.

Western powers have been slower to act, with the United States’ (US) C5 + 1 dialogue (comprising the United States and the five Central Asian republics) offering only limited security cooperation, while the European Union’s (EU) engagement has been largely economic.  Yet the stakes undoubtedly extend beyond trade routes. Whoever builds and maintains Central Asia’s connective infrastructure will shape the region’s political and economic alignments, and potentially even its long-term dependencies.

Central Asia’s governments are not seeking ideological patrons. They want sovereignty and leverage. As they walk a narrow path between two giants – one declining but unpredictable, the other ascendant but demanding (with EU and the US also watching on), the region’s ability to balance these pressures will determine whether it remains a crossroads of cooperation or becomes another fault line of confrontation.

Lachie Macfarlan is a final-year student at the Australian National University, where he studies a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) specialising in International & Comparative Law, and a Bachelor of International Security Studies. He recently returned from a year in Vienna – spending six months on academic exchange studying international law at University of Vienna, and six months working on multilateral policy full-time at Australia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations (Vienna).

Through this fellowship, Lachie hopes to provide accessible commentary on intra-European dynamics and Europe’s evolving role in the international system, aiming to connect European developments and experiences with Australian foreign policy debates.

Our 2025 Europe and Eurasia Fellow is sponsored by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy (CDD) at the University of Canberra. For more information, visit their website here.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Young Australians in International Affairs. All content is original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.