CHINA GOES TO THE WEST

CHINA EXPANDS ENERGY TIES IN CENTRAL ASIA

Robert M Cutler

Asia Times, September 29, 2011

MONTREAL - China has been implementing deeper and deeper energy cooperation with Central Asia, for over a decade, beginning with Beijing's acquisition of energy infrastructure in western Kazakhstan not far from the Caspian Sea, which they operated for years at a loss in order to have and maintain a foothold there.

The strategy first bore fruit with the 1998 signature on the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline. The pipeline is now operating despite the fact that four years were required before construction began on its first phase, due to Kazakhstani discomfort over the prospect that Chinese workers sent to build it might not go home after the job was done.

The pipeline has been extended gradually westward across Kazakhstan and will probably reach Chinese-owned infrastructure Beijing, Obama met the Dalai Lama. In May and July, People's Liberation Army (PLA) chief of the General Staff General Chen Bingde and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen exchanged visits. In August, Joe Biden made his first visit to China as vice president.

South China Sea is high on the agenda
The South China Sea featured prominently in US-Chinese interactions in this four-month period. Tensions flared in May and June in a spate of incidents that involved Chinese intimidation and harassment of other claimants. Chinese forces shot at Filipino fisherman, deployed navy patrol boats to chase off an oil exploration vessel, and unloaded building materials and erected posts on an uninhabited reef 230 km from the Philippines' southwestern Palawan province.

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