As the "hometown" of the poet fairy Li Bai,
Kyrgyzstan is not well-known in China, but its strategic location is very important. Kyrgyzstan is located in the southeast of Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and the Aksu Prefecture of Xinjiang on the mainland to the east and Kizilsu Kirkez Prefecture to the east. Kyrgyzstan covers an area of about 200,000 square kilometers, equivalent to the sum of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, with a population of about 7.2 million. Don't look at the small area and small population of Kyrgyzstan, but there are more than 80 ethnic groups, of course, the main body is Kyrgyz, accounting for about 73% of the total population. Kyrgyzstan, like its neighbor Tajikistan to the south, is a country of high mountains, with an altitude of more than 1,500 meters above sea level accounting for ninety percent of the total area, and an average altitude of more than 2,700 meters. Kyrgyzstan's plains are very small and crowded into border areas, such as the capital Bishkek and Li Bai's birthplace of Tokmak (Broken Leaf City), both of which border Kazakhstan at the northern end.
What is the strategic significance of Kyrgyzstan to China?
The biggest problem facing the United States in trying to encircle China is that China is not an island country or a semi-closed land country, but a super-large land country that is integrated with the Eurasian continent. The limit of what the United States can do is to make Europe obey its strategic baton and create problems for China's rise. However, Europe is an independent economy, and even if it is politically constrained by the United States, it has its own economic demands. China's huge market is impossible for Europe to give up. Economic cooperation between China and the EU is a "general trend" that cannot be stopped by manpower. The most cost-effective mode of transportation between China and Europe is the railway, so Russia and Kazakhstan, the largest country in Central Asia, are the necessary places for China-Europe railway traffic, and it is difficult to bypass.
As the old saying goes: you can't put all your eggs in the same basket. The railway traffic between China and Europe must be prepared with many hands, so as not to rely on this railway line and take advantage of it, especially Russia. As can be seen from the map, the Eurasian Land Bridge enters Kazakhstan through Alashankou, and then enters Russia all the way west to Europe. However, the railway traffic between China and Europe needs a copy, just like the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, so the Beijing-Shanghai second line needs to be built. The difference is that the Beijing-Shanghai second line is to alleviate the transportation pressure of the first line, while the copy of the China-Europe railway traffic is for strategic security.
And this copy, it is necessary to mention Kyrgyzstan. Or Kyrgyzstan in the strategic framework of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway. It is not enough and unsafe to have an Eurasian land bridge, a new one is needed.
That is, China will go through Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan-Iran-Turkey-Europe, and it must bypass Russia.
The first stop of the new Eurasian Continental Bridge is Kyrgyzstan, and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway has not made progress for more than 20 years since it was planned, and the problem lies in Kyrgyzstan. As a landlocked country in the mountains, Kyrgyzstan's land interests are not of high value, and there are no resources, with such a railway, the strategic significance to Kyrgyzstan is huge. However, Kyrgyzstan has a unclear attitude on the issue of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, and is very susceptible to the influence of external forces.
The so-called external forces are the United States. Among the five Central Asian countries, Kyrgyzstan seems to be the most pro-American. There is an important reason that Kyrgyzstan is divided into two factions, the north and the south, and the competition between the north and the south is very fierce. The north is industrialized, the south is agricultural, the north is secular, and the south is religious.
Because of the serious north-south division, it is very easy for the United States to find an entry point within Kyrgyzstan and thus carry out strategic layout.
Another external force influencing Kyrgyzstan is Russia. Russia is the main body of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan was once one of the member states of the Soviet Union, and Russian is still the lingua franca of Kyrgyzstan. The construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is not good news for Russia, and it is difficult to use the China-Europe railway transit through Russia to carry out strategic coercion. The United States and Russia are both world-class powers, while Kyrgyzstan is a small country, and it is simply unable to refuse the influence of the two major powers, so it can only walk a tightrope between the three major powers of the United States, Russia, and China, and neither side can afford to offend.
More than 20 years ago, and even more than 10 years ago, China's economy was still accelerating, and the impact on Kyrgyzstan was small.
Now that China is the world's second largest economy and has the world's largest market, China is in a position to strengthen its influence on Kyrgyzstan. In the Kyrgyzstan strategy of the three major powers of the United States, Russia, and China, China has one of the greatest advantages, that is, it borders Kyrgyzstan, and it borders both the north and the south. The north-south problem in Kyrgyzstan is, in fact, a contradiction between economically developed and economically backward areas. To solve the problem of economic development in backward areas, China is a person from the past and has very rich experience in poverty alleviation.
Kyrgyzstan is the key to China's access to the southern part of Central Asia and the opening of the new Eurasian land bridge, and China must face and solve this problem. Under China's current conditions, narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor within Kyrgyzstan is like solving the problem of economic backwardness in a remote autonomous prefecture within China, and it is not very difficult.
It solves the problem of the development gap between the north and the south within Kyrgyzstan and minimizes the possibility of great changes within Kyrgyzstan. Just now, Kyrgyzstan thwarted a violent incident, which is clearly an act of sabotage of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway by an external force (most likely the United States).
As the first stop for China to open a new strategic channel, China needs a stable Kyrgyzstan, not a three-day, two-headed Kyrgyzstan. Of course, Kyrgyzstan wants to solve the problem between the north and the south, and no one wants to hold a bomb in their own house every day. In the joint declaration issued by China and Kyrgyzstan in 2023, the word "agriculture" appears eight times, including one sentence: "China is willing to expand the import of high-quality and green agricultural products from Kyrgyzstan, accelerate the promotion of quarantine access for high-quality agricultural products exported to China, and welcome Kyrgyzstan agricultural enterprises to participate in large-scale exhibitions and trade promotion activities in China." "The common strategic goals of China and Kyrgyzstan are clear – to eradicate poverty and close the window for external forces to undermine China-Kyrgyzstan relations.
This is not the era of the United States more than 20 years ago, and the United States is no longer able to help Kyrgyzstan, not to mention that the United States has always only asked others to pay, not to pay itself. As for Russia, the Soviet era has long ended, and the current Russia has nothing to help Kyrgyzstan. The facts are very clear, and now the only one who can help Kyrgyzstan is this neighbor in the east.