China’s Rise and Central Asia: What Will Next Ten Years Look Like?

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For much of my time as a journalist, the story of China’s rise has come with a familiar undertone of alarm. China is either becoming the next great global power, challenging the West, rewriting the rules of international politics or quietly building a parallel system that the rest of the world will eventually have to adapt to. All of these arguments have some basis. But I sometimes wonder whether we make the China story too simple, especially from Central Asia, where China is not some distant geopolitical competitor, but a country next door, a major trading partner and an increasingly visible part of our economic landscape.

So I wanted to ask a broader question: if China continues to gain economic and geopolitical weight over the next 10 years, what will that power actually look like by 2035, and what will it mean for Central Asia? I spoke to several experts and their answers were more nuanced than the usual China-versus-the-West narrative. The most interesting conclusion was not that China will necessarily replace the existing international order. It may not have to.

China may reshape the order without replacing it

Jiyang Dong, assistant professor at Nazarbayev University’s Graduate School of Business, made a point that immediately shifted the question for me. “Ironically, the key variables impacting China’s future role in the international system are not necessarily within China,” he said.

China’s policies, he said, are already laid out in successive five-year plans and implemented with consistency. What matters just as much is what happens elsewhere: whether the United States (U.S.) continues to retreat from multilateralism and whether institutions such as the World Bank and IMF continue to meet the development needs of the Global South.

If they do not, Dong believes, institutions in which China plays a central role could gradually become more important. He points to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as one example. That means China’s rise may not depend entirely on Beijing building a new system from scratch. It may also depend on whether existing institutions leave enough space for China and other emerging powers to build something alongside them.

Gulnar Shaimergenova, director of the China Studies Center in Kazakhstan, sees the process in similar terms. “I would rather speak not about the creation by China of a completely alternative world order, but about an attempt to change the balance and rules within the existing international system,” she said.

By 2035, she expects a more polycentric system in which China becomes one of the key centers of economic, technological and political influence. The real question, she said, is not whether one world order will simply replace another, but which institutions and norms will adapt to the new balance of power.

Deputy Chairman of the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies under Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Amangeldy Tazhenov reaches a similar conclusion. China, he said, is not trying to “break” the existing system. It is pushing for its transformation and reform so that it better reflects current realities and the changing distribution of power.

But Ken Moriyasu, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, offered a sharper interpretation of the same trend. For much of the post-Deng Xiaoping era, he noted, China largely adapted to an international system shaped by Western powers. Under Xi Jinping, the ambition is different. 

“It is less about reforming China to fit the existing order and more about changing the order to fit China,” Moriyasu said.

At the same time, he cautions against assuming Beijing is confident it can simply build the order it wants. China also knows that its rise generates resistance and suspicion. That, he said, helps explain why Beijing continues to emphasize the UN and existing institutions while simultaneously promoting BRICS, the SCO and a more multipolar system. 

“Beijing will preserve institutions that reinforce China’s status, seek to reshape institutions where Western influence remains predominant, and simultaneously build organizations, relationships and economic networks that give Beijing alternatives,” he said. 

I find that distinction more useful than the familiar question of whether China is trying to become “the next U.S.” Perhaps China does not need to replace the system. It may simply need to become powerful enough to change the way the system works around it.

Central Asia is becoming more important for a different reason

This is where the discussion becomes more interesting for Central Asia. For years, China’s relationship with the region was discussed largely through the familiar vocabulary of trade, energy, resources and transport corridors. Those things still matter. But the strategic logic appears to be changing. Moriyasu calls the emerging logic “strategic resilience.” Much of China’s trade and energy still moves through maritime routes exposed to American naval power. Central Asia gives Beijing something the South China Sea cannot: a vast continental hinterland connecting China westward across Eurasia. “Central Asia matters to Beijing not only because of the energy, minerals and markets within Central Asia, but increasingly because of what lies beyond it. It connects China westward across the Eurasian landmass,” he said. 

His forecast is striking: “I would expect Central Asia to move from China’s economic periphery toward the strategic center of China’s relationship with Eurasia.”

That changes the question because Central Asia’s value for China is no longer simply what Beijing can obtain from the region. It is also what the region allows China to reach. Jiyang Dong approaches this from a more economic perspective. “Central Asia’s greatest strategic significance hinges on its potential as a connectivity hub in the heart of Eurasia,” he said.

Without sufficient connectivity infrastructure, he notes, trade volumes remain limited, and resources remain effectively locked in the region. That is why projects such as the expansion of the Aktau container hub and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway matter beyond their immediate economic purpose. They are helping turn Central Asia’s geography into an asset. Perhaps this is where we should stop thinking of infrastructure simply as infrastructure.

Infrastructure may be the new geopolitics

Moriyasu said something that stayed with me: “Infrastructure becomes the new hinge of geopolitics.”

“Once trade routes, pipelines, power grids and supply chains are built around particular networks, they begin to shape the economic choices available to countries using them,” Moriyasu said.

That is a much more subtle form of power than the geopolitics I grew up reading about. There is no flag going up. No alliance is announced. No military base appears. But the network changes. And once a country’s trade, logistics, power systems, digital infrastructure or industrial supply chains are deeply embedded in a particular network, those connections can begin shaping the choices available to it. This is also where my own perception of China has changed.

It is difficult to ignore the efficiency of some of the infrastructure projects I see around me. The LRT in Astana is a very concrete example. Whatever one’s broader political view of China may be, a functioning project creates a different impression than a political speech or diplomatic statement. This is where infrastructure can begin to operate as soft power. Not necessarily because Beijing tells people to admire China, but because people encounter its capabilities in practical ways: a railway, a road or a technology. Over time, that can produce something harder to measure but politically significant: familiarity, respect and, potentially, a certain degree of loyalty.

Tazhenov described China’s approach in similarly long-term terms, noting that Beijing tends to think in much longer horizons than many other countries. He also pointed to the growing visibility of Chinese economic activity in Kazakhstan: from infrastructure and roads to new enterprises and resource projects. That matters because soft power is usually discussed in terms of culture, education or films. Perhaps in the next decade, we will have to add infrastructure to that list.

The next phase may be about technology, not concrete

This is where the forecasts become even more interesting. Shaimergenova believes the development most underestimated today is the transition from physical infrastructure connectivity to technological and institutional connectivity. A few years ago, the China conversation in Central Asia focused on roads, railways, pipelines and energy. Today, she notes, the agenda increasingly includes AI, digital infrastructure, green technologies and critical minerals.

 “Central Asia will be not only a territory through which flows between China and Europe pass, but increasingly a space where different technological, production and regulatory systems will intersect,” she said.

That is probably the part of the China story that deserves more attention. Dong sees another underestimated area: cooperation in non-fossil energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, energy storage, flexible grids and nuclear power could all become increasingly important as Central Asian economies grow and demand more electricity. In other words, China’s future role in Central Asia may be less about simply connecting the region to China and more about helping shape the systems through which the region itself develops.

More China: more choices, or fewer?

This is where the experts stop agreeing. Dong sees growing competition among major powers as potentially useful for Kazakhstan because it creates more room to advance national interests through different partners and financial systems. 

Shaimergenova is more cautious. “The strengthening of competition among major powers provides Kazakhstan with additional opportunities for investment, technology, transport projects and access to different markets. But at the same time, the risk increases that economic, technological and even logistical decisions will increasingly be viewed through the prism of geopolitical choice,” she said.

Tazhenov is even more direct: “My opinion is that an aggravation of geopolitical rivalry is certainly unfavorable for Kazakhstan. It actually narrows the field for foreign policy maneuver.” 

This may be the real paradox of the next decade. China’s rise can give Kazakhstan access to more capital, infrastructure, technology and markets. But if rivalry between China and the U.S. continues to harden, those same economic choices may increasingly be interpreted as political choices. The more interconnected Kazakhstan becomes with major external powers, the more important it is to remain capable of deciding where each connection leads.

What we may be underestimating

One idea kept returning throughout these conversations, even when the experts approached it from very different directions. It is not simply that China is becoming more present in Central Asia. The region and China are becoming more mutually interested in one another. Tazhenov believes this growing mutual interest, connectivity and economic complementarity is one of the least appreciated trends. For China, Central Asia offers transport routes, resources, energy and stability. For Kazakhstan and its neighbors, China increasingly offers markets, investment and technology. The relationship is therefore becoming more complicated than a simple story of a rising power expanding into a neighboring region.

It is also becoming a story of mutual dependence which is not automatically good or bad. Its consequences depend on who has the capacity to negotiate, diversify and create value of their own. That may be the most important question for Kazakhstan as we look toward 2035. Not whether China will become stronger or have more influence in Central Asia. It is already deeply embedded in the region’s economic geography. The more interesting question is what kind of region Central Asia becomes as that influence grows.

If the next phase is about technology, industrial capacity, energy systems, and digital infrastructure as much as railways and ports, then Central Asian countries will have to think beyond attracting projects. They will have to think about what they build themselves. Because by 2035, I suspect the China story in Central Asia will no longer be mainly about a powerful country coming into the region.

It will be about systems becoming intertwined: railways with ports, energy with technology, trade with digital payments, industrial projects with skills and education. There may be no dramatic moment when the old order ends, and a new one begins. The balance may simply look different one day because the underlying architecture has changed.

And perhaps that is the real foresight question: not whether China will reshape the world, but how much of Central Asia’s future architecture will be shaped by China, and how much Central Asia will be capable of shaping itself.

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