Aisulu grimaces while talking about the gauntlet she has been thrown by foreign competitors. “The Chinese say, ‘You took away our market, we will find a way to bring it back. We will produce clothes that are even cheaper than yours.’ She owns a textile workshop in the outskirts of Bishkek. The sewing machines are made in China (“They cost much less than the Japanese ones,” she says) and a dozen young women are working away producing women’s padded coats, which are oversize for local consumption because Aisulu’s target customers are junoesque Russian buyers.
Difficult but necessary: this is the essence of the relationship between China and Kyrgyzstan, its gateway to Central Asia and the first step on its “new Silk Road”, launched by Xi Jingping with his grandiose One Belt One Road (Obor) project.
Meanwhile, Bakyt, Aisulu’s husband, talks politics. He likes the incumbent president, Almazbek Atambayev, 80%; the other 20% relates to Atambayev’s open door for Chinese capital. “We always run the risk of being colonized by the Chinese,” he says. His broad approval is thanks to the relative tranquility the country has experienced since the 2010 riots, when a coup in Bishkek and ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south of the country brought havoc.
“Of course, the Chinese are building roads here, but I’d much prefer it if they were built by the Germans or Russians.” Bakyt thinks every Kyrgyz President must find a balance between Moscow and Washington. “And now we have also the Chinese,” he laughs. The problem with the newcomers, he says, is that they bring no quality and few jobs. But yes, they build roads. “Anyway, I’d prefer the Germans.”
China’s Obor policy is mostly based on infrastructure: roads, bridges, tunnels, internet networks and so on. According to Beijing, this massive material and virtual network will enable a huge Eurasian free trade area, and of course – though the aim is not always stated – help China to export its own oversupply of steel, concrete, and manpower.
In Kyrgyzstan, one symbol of this policy is the new road being built between the two major cities, Bishkek and Osh, a north-south backbone that will bypass the old M41, “the Pamir highway.” China will provide half of the US$855 million initial investment, which will enter Kyrgyzstan through the Export-Import Bank of China (Exim); 30% of the workforce will be Chinese, 70% local.
The project, driven by the strength of China’s economies of scale, won against a German proposal to restructure the M41 and then guarantee its maintenance for 20 years. Critical voices, coming both from deep within Kyrgyz society and from some officials working for international institutions, claim that the true competitive strength of the “Chinese road” consists of putting more money in circulation, which is promptly intercepted by the local kleptocracy. “I don’t like the Chinese but we need them,” says Bakyt. A hushed, creeping Sinophobia is felt almost everywhere.
Emil Nasritdinov is a professor of anthropology at the American University of Bishkek. According to him, the Silk Road proclaimed and publicized by Beijing amounts so far to little more than exporting Chinese textiles on trucks, from Kashgar and Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang Province to the Kyrgyz markets of Dordoy and Madina.
To him, the clearest example of this trend is the road built by the Chinese between Kashgar and Osh. Besides the trucks coming from the east, there are also Kyrgyz trucks heading to China. “Occasionally,” says Nasritdinov, “local truckers protest because they claim the Chinese have a strong government protecting and subsidizing them, which makes the Kyrgyz lose competitiveness.”
According to research by Nasritdinov’s students, Sinophobia in Kyrgyzstan is most common among two groups: anti-Chinese nationalists, on ideological grounds; and the traders, who fear the competition from Chinese goods. Both complain that the Chinese government bribes local politicians, who pocket the money.
“Paradoxically,” says Nasritdinov, “there is a third category that, for different reasons, is critical: established Kyrgyzstan-based Chinese nationals. They argue that Kyrgyz officials ask them for bribes even though Beijing has already paid.”
Back to Aisulu’s business: her oversized parkas are also sold, in a stand run by her sister Nazgul, at the Dordoy market, the hub from which Kyrgyz and Chinese products spread to the countries of the former Soviet Union: Kazakhstan and then Russia, to the north-west; Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to the south.
Dordoy is an evolving universe. “When, in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union happened, the population of the former empire was suddenly hungry for consumer goods, but had no money,” says Nasritdinov. “Where could you find all kinds of cheap goods, then?” Obviously, in China.
And it was the Kyrgyz people – but especially the Kyrgyz women – who rolled up their sleeves and started to carry bags stuffed with all kinds of goods from the newborn “world factory,” westwards. They were called “chelnok” or “shuttle traders.” They used to head to Urumqi and Kashgar, buy goods coming from southern China’s factories, then go back home laden with bags. And hence they started a cross-border trade that brought those goods up all the way to Moscow, through the markets of Eurasia. The Dordoy bazaar has been the hub of this flow, which is human first, and commercial second.