“One Belt one Road” and the Chinese Central Asia-Strategy: An Analysis of the Chinese Economic Cooperation with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

• Main Authors: Roman Herold, 賀黎明
• Other Authors: Teng-Chi Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/em2uvd

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 政治學研究所 === 105 === After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the newly emerged Central Asian countries left China with a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity to its Western frontier. In order to alleviate possible instabilities, China launched a number of integrational and institutional concepts, thus increasing its interlinkage with Central Asia. In 2013, China propagated the procedure-based One Belt One Road-strategy, a large scale development initiative which also relies on the Chinese Reform and Opening experience. The strategy not only targets the mutual development of Central Asia and China itself, but is of a world-wide extent without given limits in scope or field of cooperation area. This thesis analyses the performance of China within its energy cooperation along with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in terms of the One Belt One Road-strategy. In order to provide further explanations for the Chinese engagement, the thesis makes use of John Mearsheimer’s Structural Realism, as well as Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin’s Liberal Institutionalism. The first theory focuses on the structural economic power and influence reflected by the Chinese economy within the cooperation, whereas the second one focuses on the positive outcome of relative gains created by institutions between the respective countries. On the one hand, although the cooperation has gained a large variety of achievements, its past record has shown that China in certain respects didn’t abide by or correspond to its own rules and standards assumed for the strategy. From a realist perspective, there are obstacles and restrictions to the Chinese approach created by the Central Asian countries and also given by their various legal identities. From an institutionalist perspective however, institutions created for or within the cooperation are rather functional in terms of the fulfillment of the cooperation with every single country, but do not create outcomes both sides can equally profit from.