China In Eurasia

Since Moscow's February invasion of Ukraine, Central Asian governments have sought to limit their reliance on Russia and grapple with the economic fallout from economic sanctions that the Kremlin's war has brought to their region.

For China and Turkey -- two powers with long-standing ties to Central Asia of different magnitudes -- this has opened the door to new opportunities as the region's leaders reassess their balancing acts between various world powers.

Turkey recently expanded its footprint in Central Asia, signing trade and defense agreements, stepping up arms sales, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan conducting high-profile meetings with his counterparts in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

China, meanwhile, has continued to follow the course it set out decades ago by pursuing its security interests in the region and ensuring access to energy exports and valuable minerals. It has also stepped up its diplomatic engagement and hardened its rhetoric.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi wrapped up a visit to Kazakhstan on June 7 and the third annual China + Central Asia foreign ministers' meeting in Nur-Sultan on June 8, where he "expressed deep concern about the serious spillover impact of the Ukraine crisis," urged Central Asian governments to stay out of geopolitical conflicts, and reaffirmed Beijing's economic interests in the region.

"There's a noticeable increase of activity both from Turkey and China in Central Asia [since the war started]," Erica Marat of the National Defense University in Washington told RFE/RL. "Both countries see an opportunity to expand their own presence in the region."

The interest in strong ties is also mutual, she adds.

The Kremlin still wields strong influence over Central Asian capitals and governments have been careful not to criticize Russia, but they've also moved to distance themselves and are eager to find alternative partners to Moscow, especially as they face a dimming regional economic forecast and key political transitions.

In March, Serdar Berdymukhammedov, son of longtime autocratic Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, took office as president.

And Kazakhstan voted in a June 5 constitutional referendum that will reduce the powers of the presidency and strip former President Nursultan Nazarbaev of his remaining influence. The amendments came after violent unrest in January and a shadowy political struggle behind the scenes between current President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and Nazarbaev.

Toqaev says the changes are meant to limit future nepotism by barring the president's relatives from holding government positions, although critics say the new constitution won't alter the nature of Kazakhstan's authoritarian system.

"Russia doesn't have the capacity to follow through on all the initiatives it has brought to Central Asia over the years, so while [Moscow] is looking elsewhere, other states are trying to take advantage of it," Luca Anceschi, a Eurasian studies professor at the University of Glasgow, told RFE/RL. "But for Central Asia, it's about the domestic context. They want to limit and contain any fallout from the war."

The New Business As Usual

Despite Wang's calls to keep geopolitics out of the region during his visit this week, the Chinese official took veiled aim at the United States in the readout from his meeting with Toqaev, which happened shortly after a late May tour of Central Asia by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu.

"China hopes that Central Asian countries will stand firm, eliminate interference, strengthen coordination, cooperate in good faith, and safeguard regional peace and stability," the Chinese statement said. "China has never sought geopolitical interests in Central Asia, and never allows nonregional forces to stir up trouble in the region."

Wang was referring to Washington -- already a target before the Ukraine war -- but the acrimony has grown as China has sought to shift blame for any economic pain felt inside Central Asia on the United States and the West for imposing sanctions against Russia.

The Kazakh readout of the meeting between Toqaev and Wang did not include the Chinese foreign minister's warning about geopolitics, instead focusing on Chinese President Xi Jinping's backing of Toqaev's political agenda at home and his plan to visit Kazakhstan in the fall.

The summit with all five Central Asian foreign ministers ended with mostly boilerplate statements of cooperation and deepening trade ties, with local governments using the talks to call for improved transport links, including a long-discussed railroad project linking China with Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan making it into the final readout.

While Chinese engagement has deepened in recent years and continues to accelerate, there are still lingering questions from regional observers about how entwined Beijing wants to become in Central Asia and whether China can be the economic engine for the region that local governments have hoped.

"I don't know if the war has changed how the region is seen by Beijing," Anceschi said. "I'm also not sure if China wants any more of a footprint in Central Asia than it already has."

A Push From Ankara

Amid the regional reshuffle and Russia's changing financial fortunes, Turkey has made a renewed push into Central Asia.

In March, Erdogan wrapped up a two-day trip to Uzbekistan and left with 10 agreements and a pledge with Tashkent to increase their annual bilateral trade volume to $10 billion. A similar figure emerged from Toqaev's May 10 state visit to Turkey, which both Ankara and Nur-Sultan heralded as a new era of ties.

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine has served as yet another impetus" for Turkish engagement in Central Asia, Emil Avdaliani, from the European University in Tbilisi and director of Middle East studies at the Georgian think tank Geocase, told RFE/RL.

Turkey has had a long-standing presence in Central Asia, but it has developed unevenly since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with Ankara generally struggling to make significant gains for influence. But Turkish hard power -- particularly its drones that gave Azerbaijan a decisive advantage in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and are now being deployed by Ukrainian forces -- has helped boost its image.

Turkmenistan is a longtime client for Turkish arms, especially the Bayraktar TB2 drones, and Kyrgyzstan also bought its own in 2021 following a border conflict with Tajikistan.

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But perhaps the greatest opportunity that Central Asia and Turkey provide for each other is on trade.

Avdaliani says Ankara still faces limits in the size of its economy and the resources available to it when compared to Russia, China, or the United States, but that a larger Turkish role is currently welcomed in the region and is well-placed to fill part of the void left by Russia following the Ukraine invasion.

In particular, Turkey is looking to position itself as a viable alternative to Russia's role along China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which ferries goods from western China through Central Asia and Russia to European markets.

With sanctions against Russia now cutting off that route, Turkey could become a convenient way to bypass Russia.

"The Central Asian states, and Kazakhstan in particular, are seeking greater Turkish engagement because of changes in connectivity patterns across Eurasia," Avdaliani said.

BUDAPEST -- A few months after leaked documents first showed the Hungarian government's plans to use an estimated $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds to build a satellite campus for a Chinese university, more than 10,000 people took to the streets in Budapest to protest the controversial project.

The June 5, 2021, protests signaled a mounting public backlash against plans to host Shanghai's prestigious Fudan University in the capital and represented a high-water mark for Hungary's disparate opposition as it targeted Prime Minister Viktor Orban's warm ties with Beijing.

In the wake of the protests, the government sought to distance itself from the project and other Chinese investment projects in the country that have drawn accusations of corruption and misuse of state funds, with Orban saying the future of the campus would be put to a referendum -- which was a demand of the protesters.

But a year later, the government is backtracking on that pledge, with the Constitutional Court ruling on May 18 that the referendum on the Fudan University campus in Budapest -- which reached the court after opposition activists gathered more than 200,000 signatures -- was unconstitutional, as it concerns an international agreement between Hungary and China.

The decision is part of a wider set of moves by the nationalist Orban following his April 3 landslide victory that analysts say is designed to consolidate his hold on power and use the court to sideline the political opposition while clearing the way for the Chinese project.

"The court's ruling on the referendum was a political decision," Andras Jambor, an activist who helped organize the June 2021 protests and was elected to parliament in April for the left-wing Spark Movement, told RFE/RL.

The ruling Fidesz party has been accused by activists and watchdog groups of stacking Hungary's top court with its own candidates in order to further support its agenda and remove obstacles to the democratic backsliding that the country has undergone in the last decade.

Jambor says that while the decision to block the referendum is another step forward for the Fudan campus, the ruling should be seen primarily as part of Fidesz's postelection strategy of preventing the opposition from having "any or even partial successes" to point to.

The Hungarian prime minister's office did not respond to RFE/RL's requests for comment.

Pushing Forward

Since the election, the government has also returned to more explicitly endorsing and defending its plans for the Chinese campus.

"If we do not build Fudan University [it] would be like voluntarily cutting off one of our arms," Culture and Innovation Minister Janos Csak said at a May 18 parliamentary hearing. "We in Hungary have to look both to the East and to the West, just as Western countries do. We need to understand both worlds -- not for political reasons -- but because this kind of knowledge is also needed for innovation in Hungary."

The deal would make Fudan the first Chinese university in the European Union and the first foreign outpost for the Shanghai-based school, which the Hungarian government has argued will raise higher-education standards in the country.

Csak continued with this justification in a June 1 interview with the pro-government outlet Mandiner, where he called Fudan "one of the best universities in the world" and said Hungary "needs to understand China on a level that we understand Western civilization," and that a Chinese university would be a great tool for this.

Hungary remains China's closest ally in the EU and Orban has capitalized on the bloc's requirement for unanimity in crafting foreign policy to block numerous resolutions targeting Beijing and Hong Kong and gain political room to maneuver with Brussels amid rule-of-law violations by Budapest that could block billions of euros in funding to Hungary.

But despite the high-level endorsement from Beijing and Budapest, plans for the university will need to overcome several obstacles.

Jambor says that the Fudan campus still faces economic and political problems. The total price tag for the campus is $1.8 billion, with $1.5 billion paid for with a Chinese loan. Concerns around funding and debt could be an issue, especially as the university is not a standalone construction project but rather bundled with a wider development venture for an entire neighborhood that will require navigating local politics in Budapest.

He also warns that the campus could find itself targeted by the EU as it becomes stricter about monitoring Chinese investment within the bloc that could create further headaches for Orban. Similarly, Jambor says that concerns are currently being raised about whether Hungary will want to use taxpayer money for the costly project amid a gloomy global economic picture for the coming years.

"I've met government officials who have knowledge on this investment, and they've subtly hinted that the investment is not on solid ground at all," Jambor said.

Too Big To Fail?

Despite these obstacles, analysts believe that the project is too important for Hungary's relations with China for it to not come to fruition.

Charles Dunst, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told RFE/RL that the project could pave the way to further Chinese investment inside Hungary, "which could benefit Orban politically depending on how he plays it."

Strengthening ties with Beijing by building the campus despite opposition could be valuable for Orban as his warm relationship with Moscow and resistance to sanctions against Russia comes under further scrutiny amid the Ukraine war.

"Orban could wield stronger ties with China to extract more benefits from the EU," Dunst said. "Just as Budapest blocked the EU's proposed Russian oil embargo until Brussels gave Hungary some special carve-outs, Orban could...use his Chinese ties to demand more from the EU."

Tamas Matura, an assistant professor at Corvinus University in Budapest and the founder of the Central and Eastern European Center for Asian Studies, told RFE/RL that given the high-level endorsement from both Orban and Chinese President Xi Jinping that the university has received, neither party is likely to walk away from the agreement.

"Based on what we know about the financial agreement, Beijing does not have anything to lose if the project gets implemented, while abandoning it may be perceived as a loss of face," Matura said.

Domestic pushback to the project is not gone, however. Opposition politicians and activists against the project are currently exploring new avenues following the court ruling, with Krisztina Baranyi, the mayor of Budapest's ninth district, where the campus would be located, telling the Hungarian outlet ATV on June 1 that preparations were already under way to organize a local referendum as opposed to the nationwide vote that was struck down in May.

Opposition lawmaker Jambor says a local referendum could be a valuable political tool in resisting the campus and that he and other politicians are currently exploring any other legal tools available for stopping the investment moving forward.

But he adds that Hungary's opposition parties are deflated and regrouping after their decisive loss in April.

"This means the opposition is not ready to organize any counteraction or larger demonstration at least in the next few months," Jambor said.

Written and reported by Reid Standish in Prague with reporting by Akos Keller-Alant in Budapest