Along with financing hard infrastructure projects, Beijing also promotes soft power projects in the form of peopleto-people initiatives. However, such projects are low priority within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. The Confucius Institutes, which appear to be an important...

Has the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by China in 2013, changed the perception of China among local actors in Central Asia? There are numerous internal problems and contradictions among the Central Asian countries and the region remains one of the least integrated in the world. This...

In Kazakhstan, civil society is held back and has had a limited role in the management of the petroleum sector. As this chapter notes, civil society has had little experience of promoting its own interests vis-à-vis the state, and public discussion of natural resource issues has been mainly...

This data article summarizes the analysis of 261 Chinese projects in Central Asia. The findings indicate that trade promotion and industrial development are the sectors where there is most BRI-related activity in Central Asia. The total number of projects in these areas approximates the number...

China's investment in the industrial sectors of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has been on the rise since the 1990s. However, this data article shows the recent expansion of Chinese investment also in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Thus, China has expanded its engagement in the development of local...