A notable phone conversation between Xi and Tajikistan's President Rahmon. Dependency of Dushanbe on its giant neighbor is accelerated by COVID, as Tajikistan is becoming Cambodia of Central Asia in terms of 🇨🇳 influence. Some details that caught my eye👇 xinhuanet.com/english/2020-0…
2/ According to @XHNews, Rahmon told Xi that Dushanbe wants to "further align Tajikistan's national development strategy for the period up to 2030 with the joint construction of the Belt and Road."
3/ Rahmon: "Tajikistan is willing to expand cooperation with China in such areas as economy and trade, health, science and technology"
4/ Xi: "The two countries should plan for their cooperation in the "post COVID-19 era" as early as possible in key areas such as economy and trade, investment, energy, interconnectivity and agriculture."
5/ Xi: "Chinese medical experts visited many places across Tajikistan to actively carry out their work, which demonstrated an integral part of the notion of China-Tajikistan development community and security community (中塔发展共同体和安全共同)" xinhuanet.com/politics/leade…
6/ A reminder that Tajikistan has become the first Central Asian state to set up a security arrangement with China (also includes Pakistan & Afghanistan), and the first to host 🇨🇳 troops, as reported by @gerryshih in @washingtonpost back in 2019 washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
7/ One of the likely current drivers for growing importance of China for Tajikistan is economic downturn in Russia brought by COVID-19, that has resulted in dwindled remittances from migrant Tajik workers
8/ As my colleague @TUmarov argues in his excellent piece, Tajikistan is a country where prospects of being embedded into a #PaxSinica, a Beijing-centered regional order in Eurasia, are the highest among all 5 Central Asian states. Watch this space. carnegie.ru/commentary/814…
