by Staff Writers
Bishkek (AFP) March 21, 2010
The United States wants to win supremacy to support troops for a prolonged conflict in nearby Afghanistan. Russia sees the region as its own backyard where its right for influence dates back centuries.
But in the modern-day Great Game battle for influence in the strategic region of Central Asia, it is China who is stealing a march on the two Cold War-era superpowers with its vast chequebook, analysts say.
China has been using the twin distractions of the Afghan war and Russia’s financial woes to secure its own position in Central Asia, Alexander Cooley, a political scientist at Columbia University, told AFP.
In 2009, for the first time, China’s net trade with Central Asia exceeded that of Russia and the trend is likely to persist in the future, he said.
“Russia was traditionally the dominant power in the region, but the financial crisis has undermined its economic power and influence while it has precipitated a wave of new China-Central Asia business deals,” he said.
Ex-Soviet Central Asia, a vast resource-rich region bordering Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan, has long found itself at the centre of power struggles between the world’s leading powers.
In the 19th Century, then-Tsarist Russia and the British Empire held an epic century-long struggle for influence here known as The Great Game, their troops and spies facing off along the dusty plains of the legendary Silk Road.
But if the Great Game was defined by two roughly-equal opponents fighting over an established idea — the Russian Empire’s thrust towards British India — the new contest is more complicated.
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