Exploring Kazakh Responses to the Rise of China: Elite Band-wagoning, Expert Hedging, and Societal Ambivalence?

Exploring Kazakh Responses to the Rise of China: Elite Band-wagoning, Expert Hedging, and Societal Ambivalence?
Principal speaker

Dr Michael Clarke

Exploring Kazakh Responses to the Rise of China: Elite Band-wagoning, Expert Hedging, and Societal Ambivalence?

Presented by: Dr Michael Clarke, Senior Research Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute

In June 2011 Sino-Kazakh relations were officially upgraded to the status of an “all around strategic partnership” during President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the Kazakh capital, Astana. This, combined with deepening economic and security ties and Astana’s ostensibly pragmatic “multi-vector diplomacy”, has led some to suggest that Kazakhstan is band-wagoning with a rising China in Central Asia. This paper argues however that Kazakhstan’s response, rather than being driven purely by the growth of China’s material capabilities as per neo-realist explanations, is motivated in major ways by a process of regime legitimation whereby the Kazakh ruling elite is attempting to utilise the challenges and opportunities posed by a rising China to consolidate their domestic authority. In this respect, the paper suggests that while the elite have numerous economic and geopolitical incentives to band-wagon with China, such opportunities are offset by growing societal ambivalence toward the growth and impact of Chinese influence in Kazakhstan. In this context the Kazakh government’s “multi-vector” diplomacy emerges as an externally and internally directed hedging strategy designed not only to maintain a balance between Russia and China but also to mediate the disparity between elite and societal views on China.
Dr Michael Clarke is a Senior Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute. His research interests include Chinese policy in Xinjiang, Chinese history and foreign policy (late Qing to the present), Central Asian history and politics, and nuclear strategy and proliferation. He is the author of Xinjiang and China’s Rise in Central Asia - A History, (London: Routledge, 2011).

→ Thursday 14 March 2013
→ N72, Meeting Room -1.18
→ Nathan campus
→ 12.30 – 1:50pm

To RSVP, please contact Natasha Vary on (07) 3735 5322 or n.vary@griffith.edu.au by 5.00pm Monday 11 March 2013.

 

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RSVP

RSVP on or before Monday 11 March 2013 , by email n.vary@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 07 3735 5322

Event contact details
  • Location Nathan campus, building N72 room -1.18 (Business 2) | Nathan campus
  • Time 12.30 pm to 1.50 pm
  • date Thursday 14 March 2013