Kazakhstan’s Xinjiang Dilemma

Kazakhstan and China have developed strong economic and political ties over the last few decades. But the Xinjiang crisis, involving ethnic Kazakh people in addition to Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, could have long-lasting and wide-ranging impacts on the Kazakhstan-China relationship. Kazakhstan may be particularly vulnerable given the power transition process playing out at present.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, China worked on developing relations with its newly independent Central Asian neighbors, starting with establishing borders. Kazakhstan was one of the first Central Asian states to start developing trade relations with China. China’s reliance on energy imports led Beijing to invest heavily in Kazakhstan’s resource sector. Over time, trade between Kazakhstan and China has increased, with China becoming Kazakhstan’s second biggest trade partner (after Russia) and reaching an estimated $11.07 billion in bilateral trade in 2017. Other avenues of economic cooperation include direct Chinese investment in Kazakhstan, which grew 6.6 percent from 2016 to 2018.

These numbers are only projected to increase in the future thanks to Beijing’s ambitious plans for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in which Kazakhstan is a key node. The BRI is an initiative with the stated aim to connect China with Europe through Central Asia (namely, Kazakhstan), and Southeast Asia, plus other routes added into the conceptual framework as it grows. It also aims to stimulate China’s economy at a time when its growth is projected to slow. According to leaders in both China and Kazakhstan, the initiative will benefit Kazakhstan’s economy immensely, in particular by increasing trade with China, attracting Chinese and other investments, establishing logistics hubs, and providing opportunity to jointly oppose currency risks. 

The recent pseudo-power transition in Kazakhstan – in which Nursultan Nazarvbayev resigned from the presidency, but in practical terms retains a great amount of power in the state – has direct bearing on the country’s relations with China. Interim President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev speaks Chinese and has extensive experience working on China affairs (from 1983 to 1991 he progressed from an intern at the Beijing Chinese Language Institute to the first secretary of the Soviet Union’s embassy in China). It’s safe to say that working with China will continue to be one of Kazakhstan’s top priorities during his term. In early April, Tokayev announced snap presidential elections set for June 9 and on April 23, Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party unanimously nominated Tokayev, effectively ensuring he’ll keep the job after the election.

Politically, China and Kazakhstan have also cooperated extensively in the last three decades. China was especially interested in establishing relationships with its Central Asian neighbors in order to pre-empt and suppress their potential cooperation with groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that strived for separation. The new independence of the Central Asian states set an example Beijing did not want Xinjiang to follow. Kazakhstan was interested in establishing a good relationship with China in order to counterbalance Russia’s overwhelming influence in the region, and this motivation remains. (The United States and the countries of Europe have been other sources of balance, but unlike those states China does not have any qualms about Kazakhstan’s autocratic regime and poor human rights record). 

In recent years Kazakhstan’s need to balance Russian influence has only grown, with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and vague comments about Kazakhstan’s legitimacy causing flashes of concern among some in Kazakhstan. In addition, after joining the Eurasian Economic Union with Russia, Belarus, and Armenia (later Kyrgyzstan joined, too) and increasing its connectivity with Russia, Kazakhstan has been affected by Western sanctions targeting Russia. One Kazakh expert, Aidan Karibzhanov, head of SD Visor group, aired concerns about Kazakhstan’s inability to pull out of the agreement.

Kazakhstan’s leaders are aware of these deep connections to Russia and the gravity Moscow emits across the region. In light of this, China has become a critical counterweight, giving Kazakhstan options and greater flexibility on the world stage. 

This deepening relationship between Kazakhstan and China, rooted in both geostrategic and economic needs, makes domestic Kazakh opposition to China’s policies in Xinjiang exceptionally difficult for the Kazakh leadership to manage. China’s internment program in Xinjiang has captured headlines across the world but flummoxed the international community.

According to Human Rights Watch estimates, more than a million Muslim ethnic minorities (primarily ethnic Uyghurs, but also Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and others) are currently being held in “re-education” camps. Early on in the detention program, one of the criteria for internment was having relatives or contacts in one of 26 “sensitive” (mostly Muslim) states. Former prisoners of the Xinjiang camps have reported physical and psychological torture. 

The reason why the Xinjiang region is under increased surveillance by the Chinese state goes far back to its origins. Xinjiang has long had deep connections with various Central Asian Muslim states, experienced intermittent periods of self-governance, and even made an attempt to declare independence in the early 20th century. That effort was suppressed, with Xinjiang being brought under China’s firm control in 1949. 

The idea of Xinjiang as a potentially independent entity remained at the forefront of the political agenda for both for Xinjiang residents (with protests happening during 1990s) and China’s government. Further increasing the stakes is the fact that Xinjiang is rich with natural resources; it contains an estimated 40 percent of the national total coal reserves and 35 million barrels of crude oil are expected to be extracted in the region by 2020. Xinjiang is also a valuable strategic location, and has become more so as the BRI develops. With these factors in mind, the Chinese government began investing heavily into Xinjiang’s development. But Beijing’s efforts ended up benefiting newcomers to Xinjiang – educated and technically skilled Han Chinese –  disproportionately more than the region’s indigenous Uyghurs and other minorities. Furthermore, there has been a distinct cultural aspect to Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang. Matters of language, religion, education, and integration have become ideological battlegrounds; Uyghur language is pushed aside in favor of Mandarin in government schools, for example.

By 2009, the tensions in Xinjiang had escalated, evidenced by large-scale protests in Urumqi, the regional capital. Protests continued and resulted in mass sentencing (and in some cases death sentences) of “terrorist groups,” with China blaming the East Turkestan Islamic Movement of being either an organizer of or an inspiration for the protests. Local groups were also perceived as having ties with international terrorist networks. Australian academic Michael Clarke argues that these connections have been exaggerated by Beijing. Nicholas Bequelin, the East Asia director at Amnesty International, spoke to The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan last August about how “war on terror” rhetoric is useful to the Chinese state. Such rhetoric helps Beijing assert control over the region, suppressing dissent, under the guise of “counterterrorism.” This rhetoric is what has been currently used to justify the massive detentions in Xinjiang.

Anti-Islamic rhetoric is also currently used in emerging Han nationalist narratives as the Chinese state insists on aggressive assimilationist policies toward ethnic minorities. The “re-education camps” – now referred to by the Chinese state as “vocational training centers” after months of denying their very existence – are an attempt to both weed out potential terrorism and promote a pan-Chinese identity that is incompatible with any religion, and Islam in particular. This turn on Islam is why ethnic Kazakhs living in Xinjiang, despite being formerly viewed as a “model minority,” have also became a target of the internment policies. Kazakhstan is one of the 26 “sensitive” countries, having links with citizens of which could get one detained in Xinjiang. A recent report by Reid Standish and Aigerim Toleukhanova for Foreign Policy highlighted several cases of ethnic Kazakhs detained in the region. Those detained either had lived in Kazakhstan, had relatives in Kazakhstan, had tried to become Kazakh citizens, or, indeed, were Kazakh citizens.

These cases became much more widely known in Kazakhstan after former Xinjiang camp employee Sairagul Sauytbay was arrested in Kazakhstan and, seeking asylum, begun speaking out about the camps. Sauytbay illegally crossed the border between China and Kazakhstan to reunite with her family in 2018. She was unable to do so legally, having had her passport taken by the Chinese authorities. Sauytbay, after her arrest, said that she would accept punishment for crossing the border, as long as she was not deported to China. She feared persecution or worse given that in the course of her trial she spoke openly about what was happening in the Xinjiang camps – all at a point in time when the Chinese authorities were still denying their existence. Sauytbay was not deported to China, but the Kazakh courts have also refused to grant her refugee status. Sauytbay is in a precarious position, with hearings continuing to this day regarding her status. Her current status as an asylum seeker has been extended twice and is set to expire on April 25.

The situation regarding ethnic Kazakhs detained in the Xinjiang camps also gained greater publicity with the work of a new organization, Ata Zhurt. The group, founded by Bilash Serikzhan in the spring of 2017, began to tape testimonies of people who claimed their relatives had gone missing in Xinjiang. Ata Zhurt also gathered the relatives of Xinjiang residents, and detainees, for events and organized letter writing campaigns directed at both the Kazakh and Chinese authorities. The group’s work has focused largely on the oralman community, a term meaning “returnees” and a label for ethnic Kazakhs who have moved back to Kazakhstan from abroad – primarily other Central Asian states, Russia, and China – since the country’s independence. This migration of ethnic Kazakhs back to their “motherland” was an actively supported state policy for the past two decades. The detention of ethnic Kazakhs in China, in a sense, lays bare a tension between Kazakhstan’s previous social and nationalistic policies and its present policies regarding the Xinjiang situation.

Another reason why China’s Xinjiang policies have become an especially sensitive topic in Kazakhstan is already extant Sinophobia, both a legacy of the Sino-Soviet split and more recent events generating suspicion of China and its intentions. A pointed recent example are the land reform protests that occurred in Kazakhstan in 2016. The protests happened, in part, as a  response to the Kazakh state planning to issue legal changes that would allow long-term foreign leasing of land, with the expected implication being the leasing of Kazakh land to Chinese entities. This, in turn, played into Kazakh fears of Chinese expansion, not entirely unfounded given land swaps in the early years of independence that favored China. The 2016 protests were a shocking rarity for authoritarian Kazakhstan and were quickly shut down by the government.

The growing awareness of the detention of ethnic Kazakhs in China made the Kazakhstani state look weak. Subsequently, there have been some efforts to release citizens of Kazakhstan (but not ethnic Kazakh Chinese citizens). Growing dissatisfaction with the state is particularly dangerous for Kazakhstan, first because it is currently is undergoing a power transition process. Second, existing dissatisfaction with the state’s domestic policies – difficult to quantify due to a lack of independent government approval polls – can be seen from recent protests, despite the sizable risks to participants engaging in those protests. 

Dissatisfaction with socioeconomic conditions in Kazakhstan was expressed most prominently in a recent wave of protests by mothers following a tragic fire that took the lives of five children while their parents were working night shifts. The Kazakh government tried to mitigate this dissatisfaction by in part by directing National Fund resources, taxes accumulated from the gas and oil trade, toward the improvement of living standards, but such efforts are argued to be a band-aid solution at best. Another expression of discontent, this time with the country’s political situation, occurred on the third day of Tokayev’s presidency, with protests and petitions (raising more than 30,000 signatures in the first few days, despite being blocked rather quickly in Kazakhstan) against the renaming of Astana to Nur-Sultan, after Nazarbayev. With such shakiness in the opening days of Tokayev’s term, any other source of public anger poses an outsized threat for Kazakhstan’s government.

Following the aggressive (and deadly) suppression of protests in Zhanaozen in 2011, the response of the Kazakh government to protests and loud dissent goes along the lines of throwing money at socioeconomic issues and suppressing the leaders of resistance selectively, rather than deploying overly heavy-handed tactics against protesters. The first method – throwing money at a problem area – is noted above with regard to the domestic issue focused protests earlier this year. The latter method is at play with regard to those speaking out against the detentions in Xinjiang. 

Ata Zhurt founder Serikzhan Bilash was warned several times against continuing his efforts to raise awareness about the detention of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang. His applications to register Ata Zhurt were denied multiple times and as a result he was fined for running an unregistered organization. Bilash was arrested in February 2019 and then released on house arrest, facing incitement charges. His arrest has been framed by the state as the detention of a pro-jihad activist, although his supporters argue that the clip shown at his hearings – in which he argues in favor of “jihad” – was taken out of context. Bilash, they say, was referring to the hard work of spreading information about the situation in Xinjiang, that he was advocating for more information, not for violence. The word “jihad” is Arabic and has many meanings to Muslims – it can be translated as referring to hard work on the way to God, often phrased as “struggle” or “effort” of a spiritual nature. But it has also been used as a call to violence by extremists, which is the meaning that the Kazakh prosecution is using in its case, arguing Bilash was advocating a “war on ethnic Chinese.” 

Even though Bilash is currently under house arrest, volunteers continue to raise awareness via his YouTube channel. Bilash’s arrest shows just how inconvenient his spreading of information on Xinjiang had become for the government of Kazakhstan. Perhaps even more illustrative was Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi thanking Kazakhstan for “the Kazakh government’s understanding and support for China’s position” after a recent meeting with his colleague from Kazakhstan, Beibut Atamkulov. “We will never let any person or any force damage the friendship and mutual trust between China and Kazakhstan,” Wang added. 

Talking about the future prospects of the Xinjiang crisis for both Kazakhstan and China, the uncertainty brought by Nazarbayev initiating the process of transition has to be kept in mind. The activism triggered by the Xinjiang situation is likely to continue despite the state’s efforts at suppression due to close ties Kazakhs have with Xinjiang residents, many of whom are their family members. Nazarbayev will retain significant power over Kazakhstan for the rest of his life, and this suggests that as long as he is alive, Kazakh-Chinese relations will continue along the same trajectory. But Nazarbayev’s time overseeing the transition process is limited by his lifespan (he is currently 78) and his death could trigger great changes.

Neither Interim President Tokayev nor Dariga Nazarbayeva (Nazarbayev’s daughter and currently second in line for the presidency in her new position as chair of the Senate) hold the innate legitimacy Nazarbayev does. As Rico Isaacs, a lecturer in international studies at Oxford Brookes University, argues, Nazarbayev’s legitimacy is strongly rooted in his “father of the nation” charisma, which “emphasizes President Nazarbayev’s centrality to the unity, prosperity, and stability of the nation.” Neither Tokayev nor Nazarbayeva has the kind of track record Nazarbayev has; neither is viewed as the state’s savior in the way Nazrabayev is. Tokayev is seen as a tertiary figure in Kazakh politics, with his unpopular decision to honor Nazarbayev by re-naming Astana to Nur-Sultan only serving to strengthen his image of being Nazarbayev’s lackey. This image was supported by his recent reception by Russian officials in Moscow, which some viewed as lukewarm. At the same time Nazarbayeva’s connection with her father, as well as her 2013 PR scandal going viral in Kazakhstan again (she was widely seen as badmouthing people with disabilities) hinder her chances at garnering wide public support. 

Tokayev’s announcement of snap elections put a timeframe of two months on the next phase of the transition, though arguably the power transition process in Kazakhstan will only be complete once Nazrabayev passes away. As of writing, Tokayev has been named as the candidate to stand for Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party in the upcoming election – presumably, he will win easily.

Conclusion

The detention of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang and the way the Kazakh state deals with the situation might become a major problem for Kazakhstan. Increased civic activism around the issue will require Kazakhstan’s leaders either to put more pressure on civil society, with an increasing risk of a pushback, or to reconsider its partnership with China, an unpalatable option. Meanwhile, the power transition process kicked off by Nazarbayev’s March 19 resignation, and now presidential elections set for June 9, add a layer of uncertainty. Tokayev’s first days in office were marked by protest against his initiative to rename the Kazakh capital and the realization that as long as Nazrabayev is alive, he’ll remain the true core of power in the state. 

For China’s side of this partnership, Kazakhstan’s current track of working on issues relating to specific Kazakh citizens through quiet diplomatic channels and tamping down on sources of vocal criticism of the Xinjiang situation is highly beneficial. It removes the need to deal more directly with international criticism knocking at the very borders of Xinjiang. If Kazakhstan were to take a different position, and allow itself to become a platform for existing criticism of Beijing’s policies, it could undermine aspects of its Belt and Road Initiative.

However, as the costs of this partnership and the present status quo rise for Kazakhstan, the question is how much domestic pressure Nur-Sultan can withstand until it becomes a problem for China, either by Kazakhstan losing control over the domestic situation or by asking more than Beijing is willing to invest to maintain the situation. For now, circumstances work in China’s favor, and the Kazakh authorities are not standing empty-handed either: On April 11, Kazakhstan settled a $297 million soft loan from China to modernize border checkpoints and facilitate the further growth of trade in the region.