Sinophobia finds ground in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
“Take this away, you f — — Chinese scum“ — a belligerent-looking middle-aged man in black clothing shouts in Russian at a group of Chinese students carrying a red dragon figure, a traditional symbol of luck and prosperity.
“Explain this to me, what is this?” — adds a Kazakh woman in equally unceremonious attire. “I am a Kazakh, and this is my land!” The students exhibit no small degree of confusion before a young man steps in and smacks the dragon’s head down, causing an escalation.
“Let’s not fight!” — pleads the woman now, before continuing her nationalistic tirade further on. The students start reassembling the disgraced dragon from the snowy pavement.
The above exchange took place on January 23 in the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan. No more than an unpleasant interruption of the New Year’s celebrations for these Chinese students, it was nevertheless another manifestation of sinophobia that’s been on the rise in Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Conflict data gathered by ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project) shows that a total of 112 public incidents (protests, riots etc.) with visible anti-Chinese sentiment happened in the two republics between January 2018 and November 2020. Previously sporadic, the protests have intensified since August 2019 up until the Covid-19-related lockdowns in early spring of last year. Let’s look at these incidents in more detail.
The majority of the events were protests expressing concern over Chinese companies’ investments. The recent wave began in August 2019, when villagers of Solton Sary, a remote mountain community in central Kyrgyzstan, accused a Chinese mining company of polluting the river upstream. Subsequent riots between the villagers and the miners have left 40 people injured.
„That’s how we drive the Chinese away!“ — proclaimed a man on horseback, gallopping in between an angry crowd of some hundreds of his countrymen. Below, a single Chinese miner filmed the proceedings through the shattered window of his tractor.
The villagers’ claims about water pollution were not confirmed, and some officials expressed doubt about their intentions — a Chinese company monopolizing the mine posed a threat to the illegal gold mining operations the villagers themselves had been running. Regardless, on August 5th, the company left, with the workers marching down the mountain road, under the protection of the Special Police Forces in uniform. A crowd of angry men villagers surrounded them and yelled to stop.
China is the top investor in Kyrgyzstan, with gold accounting for more than half of all export value. Efforts to diversify the overreliance on mining, however, have also been met with resistance, as a logistics hub project worth 280-million was abandoned after more anti-China protests rocked the country in February 2020.
In Kazakhstan, anti-China sentiment burst up in September of 2019, as citizens of Zhanaozen, a town in Western Kazakhstan rich in oil and gas deposits, gathered in protest against President Tokaev’s visit to Beijing and the proposed agreement of 55 Chinese projects to be set up in Kazakhstan. Solidarity protests took place in other urban centres of Kazakhstan, which forced Tokaev to declare the project numbers as ‘false’, despite former president Nursultan Nazarbayev having uttered the numbers in public.
Unlike Kyrgyzstan, China is only the number 3 investor in Kazakhstan, behind the Netherlands and Switzerland. Nevertheless, there has been next to no incidents directed against any other countries other than China. Partly due to Chinese companies’ reluctance to hire from the local workforce pool, the protesters in both countries have repeatedly spoken against land sales to Chinese companies. As these companies naturally participate in the corruption-ridden finance allocation systems present in the two post-Soviet republics, anti-Chinese sentiment is also expressed by local opposition leaders as part of their criticism of state policies.
However, the anti-China sentiment in Kazakhstan also exhibits more diverse causes. Due to successful activism by the organization Atajurt Eriktileri, condemnations of the treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in China’s province of Xinjiang has accounted for almost one-third of the incidents in Kazakhstan during the researched period. Since the arrest Turkey of the organization’s head Serikzhan Bilash, public outcry over the issue has somewhat diminished.
With the emergence of the Covid-19 virus in China, anti-Chinese sentiment was visible in protesters demanding the closure of the border to prevent the virus’ spread. Since then, the number of public incidents has dropped significantly due to strict public lockdown measures in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, tensions continue to simmer: 9 incidents were recorded between September and November of last year.
Asked about the roots of Sinophobia in Central Asia, regional experts point to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960’s. Following border clashes next to the Amur (Heilongjiang) river, the Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were subject to an anti-Chinese propaganda campaign by central authorities as part of a militarized region in preparation of a conflict on China’s western border.
Looking at the context of all incidents, however, the recent wave of sinophobia seems more like a manifestation of increasing discontent towards the governments of the two countries. In 2020, ACLED has recorded a 213% increase in the total number of incidents in comparison to 2018. As governmental debt towards China keeps growing, corrupt practices not dealt with, sinophobic sentiments seems only likely to gain more traction, and ever more so with the global impact of the coronavirus in mind.
