Road to nowhere: kidnappings and broken promises on China’s …
Asqar Azatbek was in Kazakhstan near the border with China, ringed by soaring mountains and desert plains, when a car screeched to a halt beside him.
A group of men climbed out, ordering him to lie face down on the ground and hand over his passport. Within minutes, they bundled the 56-year-old Kazakh into the car and sped away into China.
“He was kidnapped violently by the Chinese,” said Gaukhar Kurmanaliyeva, Asqar’s cousin. “This is a major violation, as they didn’t have any right to take away a Kazakh citizen from Kazakh territory.”
Gaukhar Kurmanaliyeva’s cousin Asqar was kidnapped on the border
Credit: Jack Leather
Asqar was in Khorgos, a special trade zone backed by Beijing, when he was snatched off the streets by suspected Chinese agents.
The small Kazakh town happens to be the gateway to China’s Belt and Road Initiative – a $1 trillion network of railroads, ports and other infrastructure spanning across the world.
It is, by some measures, the biggest construction project in the world, conceived by President Xi Jinping to drive trade and spread Beijing’s influence from the Andes to Angola.
But 10 years on from its birth, the vast investment programme seems to be crumbling, halted by bankruptcy and corruption.
China’s overreach and paranoia is no more blatant than in Khorgos, which has come to represent the dark side of increased cooperation with Beijing.
For Asqar, visiting the town would be his last moment of freedom. The following year, he was sentenced in China to 20 years in prison for alleged espionage.
Setting foot inside the special trade zone in Khorgos means going into no man’s land.
Uniformed officers in Kazakhstan press red exit stamps into the passports of traders and tourists entering the area, similar to border checkpoints at airports.
But instead of flying through international airspace to a second country, people step into a “bilateral corridor” – a strip of land shared between Kazakhstan and China.
Within the zone, people are meant to roam freely between the Chinese and Kazakh sides, browsing and buying all sorts of goods – clothing, kitchenware, car parts.
Signs abound that things may not be as free and open as proclaimed.
Chinese police cars dot the area around a pair of stone towers – the portal between the two countries, connected with a narrow road.
Entering the Chinese side of the zone requires passing through a security checkpoint with scanners and facial recognition cameras, though the Kazakhs don’t operate a check for those going the other way.
This is the first link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and is an ominous reflection of how Mr Xi’s main foreign policy initiative has panned out since its launch in September 2013.
The idea was to build a network of trade and transport routes, by land and sea, connecting China’s factories with the rest of the world. Over time, it expanded to include a wide range of infrastructure connectivity projects, such as highways and pipelines – all funded by China’s deep coffers.
China’s planned rail link to London[1]
Mr Xi inaugurated his plan in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, highlighting the central Asian nation’s key role in China’s westward expansion – the “buckle” in the BRI.
It was a symbolic choice, given Kazakhstan’s history as a main node of global trade. Even today, reminders pop up across the country, with restaurants, gas stations and streets named “Jibek Joly” – which means“Silk Road” – and bronze camels decorate parks and malls.
But greater cooperation under the guise of BRI has allowed China to export its human rights abuses abroad, infringing on the sovereignty of partner nations – one of many ways the programme has not been as beneficial as originally touted.
Worse, China has used BRI as a way to lock people up in prison or “re-education” camps, at times reaching into Kazakhstan to grab foreign citizens for detention.
It’s unclear why China wants to detain Uyghurs and Kazakhs living in Kazakhstan, though it’s likely a way to silence them as part of a wider crackdown. Reasons given can be spurious – having too many history books or joining prayer meetings.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s face is a looming presence in China’s Xinjiang province, which borders Kazakhstan
Credit: Bloomberg
Chinese authorities have even told people to figure out which crime they’ve supposedly committed based on a list of 72 reasons: travelling to certain blacklisted countries like Kazakhstan or Turkey, for instance, according to interviews with former detainees.
When Asqar was nabbed, he was visiting the special trade zone in Khorgos to explore the possibility of getting into the import-export business, drawn by the promise of booming trade, thanks to BRI.
“If he had known that there would be a risk of being kidnapped by the Chinese, he never would have gone there,” said Gaukhar, 56, who lives in the city of Almaty and works at a retail shop.
She, too, was chased by Chinese agents in the Khorgos zone a few years ago.
Like Asqar, she was standing at the base of a soaring eagle statue on the Kazakh side – a symbol for independence, freedom and flight to the future, also stamped on the Kazakhstan flag – when she spotted cars speeding toward her from the Chinese side.
Terrified, she ran away as fast as possible, managing to escape.
“I am 100 per cent sure they would have detained me in a concentration camp and destroyed me,” she said. “I haven’t been back there since; I’m too frightened.”
Police regularly interrogate Gulpiya Qazybek’s siblings
Credit: Jack Leather
Chinese authorities have even encouraged people to meet their relatives inside Khorgos, which many believe is a trap.
Gulpiya Qazybek, 46, an ethnic Kazakh who fled China in May 2019 with her family, says Chinese police have regularly interrogated her siblings, suggesting that they arrange for a reunion in Khorgos.
“I think they are trying to trick me,” she said. “I’m still scared, because if I go [to Khorgos], they could detain me.”
Chinese authorities have tried to intimidate her in Kazakhstan, to get her to stop appealing for the release of her elderly mother – detained, then imprisoned since 2017.
“Several times they went to my relatives and said – ‘your sister is saying things abroad ’ – and that they will bind my hands and legs and take me to China.”
The only time she’s been to Khorgos is when she crossed the border, leaving China behind. That day, she left home with her husband and children at 4am while the sky was still dark.
Rakhima Senbai was detained in a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp
Credit: Jack Leather
“The whole way, I was in fear. I worried the police would come after me. What would I do then? I was terrified until I crossed the border.”
Rakhima Senbai, 35, a Chinese-Kazakh interpreter at a shop in Khorgos, was detained in a “re-education” camp after authorities accused her of “terrorist” tendencies, because she had seen other Muslims praying in Kazakhstan.
Authorities also said she was a criminal for using WhatsApp, an “illegal” programme banned in China.
“If they say that you’re breaking the law, you just have to agree,” she said.
She remembers being packed in with 80 women in a cell so small that they had to take turns sleeping. When she wasn’t behind bars, shackled, she had to submit to political indoctrination – forced to praise the ruling Communist Party.
Other former detainees interviewed by The Telegraph have described being beaten and raped, and required to chant: “Long live Xi Jinping!”
More than a million people were arbitrarily detained in “re-education” camps in China’s Xinjiang region, between 2017 and 2020, which the government deemed necessary for eradicating “terrorism”.
Hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned – some for life – for praying, fasting and other activities considered by the government to be “extremist” crimes. Even in recent weeks, people have been disappeared.
An alleged detention facility in northwestern Xinjiang region
Credit: PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Image
Many think the risk of Chinese surveillance and intimidation in Kazakhstan is increasing as a visa-free programme has begun, allowing Chinese citizens to enter Kazakhstan for 30 days.
“They receive phone calls [from Chinese police], asking who they are with; they are under surveillance here,” said Gaukhar. “The aim is to force them back, to scare and torture them.”
China’s crackdown in Xinjiang, a vast region that shares a long border with Kazakhstan, has been in part a way to ensure the success of BRI – trains chugging through Khorgos carrying goods must first pass through this area.
Chinese authorities have long been concerned that Xinjiang, inhabited by Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim groups – squeezed by discriminatory policies – would pose a challenge, particularly given past glimmers of independence.
At the same time, China “recognises in the longer-term that if you want the [Xinjiang] region to be stable, the people need to be prosperous and happy and not rebel against the state,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
“You need opportunities, wealth; and to pump money into Xinjiang, you need to expand it into the region next door,” he said. BRI “is ultimately part of China’s answer to stabilising Xinjiang”.
“In recent years, Xinjiang has continued to make substantial progress in economic and social development, and has become an important place for Belt and Road exchanges and cooperation,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
Khorgos was branded as the next Dubai – a new hub rising from barren desert that would revolutionise global trade, complete with a massive dry port for the transit of goods, duty free shopping malls and a special economic zone with warehouses and factories producing for export.
Further investment – in the shape of tourist attractions, restaurants, housing complexes, thereby boosting the economy and creating jobs – was expected as Khorgos grew into a key junction of the global economy.
An ambitious plan, considering that Khorgos is located literally in the middle of nowhere – roughly 80 miles from the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility, the single point farthest from a sea or ocean on the entire planet.
Even with a new highway that opened in 2016, the 200-mile drive from the nearest city, Almaty, still takes at least three hours.
A decade on, China is clearly the main winner of BRI, with Kazakhstan reaping far less than its share of the benefits.
Many nations were eager to join BRI – more than 150 countries signed up. China promised funding for development projects, supposedly without any strings attached, given Beijing’s claims that it wouldn’t entangle itself in other countries’ “internal affairs”.
For some countries, it was a fresh and welcome approach in contrast to the West; loans from Western institutions and governments often came with stringent terms, from minimising environmental impact to cleaning up human rights records.
China’s offer was a breath of fresh air for countries tired of being lectured to by the West.
BRI “is not exclusive, but open and inclusive,” proclaims a Chinese propaganda video. “The initiative will not be a solo for China, but a chorus of all countries along the routes.”
Belt and Road Initiative 2013 – 2023[3]
But the initiative was perhaps already one-sided to begin with. China was, in essence, exporting its growth blueprint of infrastructure investment, which had transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy in under three decades.
By the time Mr Xi unleashed BRI in 2013, the economy had begun to wane; the days of breakneck growth were over, and has since slowed further.
BRI, thus, was a way to support China’s economy by making more countries dependent on its goods, machinery and technical expertise.
In Khorgos, Kazakh workers feed adhesives and materials through Chinese machines churning out diapers and sanitary pads in a small factory backed by investors from Afghanistan.
One by one, the nappies shoot out of the machine and workers slot them into packages for sale in Kazakhstan and export to Russia.
Chinese promotional videos for Belt and Road — and the reality in Kazakhstan
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“I was brought in to assemble the machines, and now oversee the workers operating them,” said Wang Hu, 38, who moved from central China to Kazakhstan. “They’re still learning to use them.”
State-owned enterprises with significant resources – factories, workers – underutilised at home, found a more receptive audience abroad. It also served China’s goal to internationalise use of the yuan by encouraging more transactions to be done with its currency.
But a decade on, China hasn’t delivered.
In Astana, looming concrete columns are a daily reminder of a China-funded light rail transit programme that stalled after local officials were sentenced for corruption.
Construction on Astana’s rapid transit system began in 2017, but it remains unfinished, the gigantic concrete pillars a blight on the city’s skyline
In Jordan, a shale oil power plant has come under fire as Amman will lose $280 million (£222.7 million) annually, and consumers will be forced to pay more for electricity.
In Kenya, a plan to connect the coastal city of Mombasa to the capital of Nairobi by rail hasn’t materialised, with tracks halting in a field a few hundred miles short of its destination.
Anti-Chinese sentiments are so high in Pakistan that there have been attacks against Chinese engineers working on BRI projects.
0909 Countries Most In Debt To China[4]
“It’s in such a terrible state compared to 10 years ago when it was announced,” said Niva Yau, who researches China-Central Asia relations as a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
“People were so excited when lots of projects were being signed,” she said. “But since then, there have been a lot of failures, [and] people are a little more skeptical; they no longer have the hope that they had before.”
One-third of BRI projects have been plagued by corruption scandals, labour violations, environmental hazards or public protests, according to AidData, a US research lab.
Recipient countries are saddled with at least $385 billion (£309 million) of hidden or under-reported debt as of 2021, kept off official balance sheets through China’s use of loans to non-government entities.
Opaque lending terms also make it tough to estimate the world’s total debt to China – a growing risk to the global economy as many nations are struggling post-pandemic.
China frequently retains the right to demand repayment anytime, which allows Beijing the opportunity to pressure nations to take its side over hot-button issues, such as its territorial claims over Taiwan or its crackdown in Xinjiang.
In some cases, China has seized foreign assets when countries are unable to repay loans. Sri Lanka was forced to hand over control of its Hambantota port and 15,000 acres of surrounding land, for 99 years, after being unable to repay $1.3 billion in Chinese loans.
Khorgos border – Kazakhstan China contrast[5]
On the Chinese side of Khorgos there are skyscrapers, conference halls, people and traffic – audible even miles away from Kazakhstan, where things are sleepier.
On the Kazakh side, in the special trade zone where Asqar was kidnapped, a handful of buildings bake under the sun while shoppers trickle in and out of stores stocked with perfumes and electronics, which can be bought using Chinese yuan, rather than Kazakhstani tenge.
A few minutes’ drive away is Nurkent, a settlement built for people working along the border, populated with a few thousand people – a far cry from the more than 50,000 expected by now.
Across the road – sometimes shared with donkey carts – a massive metal monument surrounded by yellow desert expanse and green, prickly shrubs soars into the sky marks the site of Nurkent’s continued expansion, which has yet to materialise.
Many residents prefer the small-town feel – a warm community where everyone knows each other, clustered around the city centre, a beige, two-story building with a handful of shops.
Nursapa Nurqadyr, 33, an ethnic Kazakh, who fled China in his teens with his parents and older sister, fears the consequences of greater Chinese influence and investment.
“I’m concerned because the Chinese do not invade by waging a war; they gradually enter the country, increase their population and assimilate,” said the father of four, who moved to Nurkent in 2018 for his engineering job at the last station in Kazakhstan before the rail lines enter China.
“They have the resources to buy many things and they are interested in Kazakhstani land,” he said.
Concerns that BRI could pave the way for China’s regional and military expansion aren’t unfounded.
In Tajikistan, China is behind the construction of a new presidential administration building and parliament complex – in addition to having built a secret military base near the border with China and Afghanistan, by the Wakhan corridor.
China secret military base in Tajikstan[7]
Others believe Khorgos has much potential to flourish.
“It’s a good chance to cooperate, to enlarge the cooperation between our countries,” said Asset Seisenbek, the deputy chief executive of the special economic zone.
“This is a huge strategy … I strongly believe that the ‘One Belt, One Road,’ will bring developing countries more and more chances to trigger the development of their economy,” he said. “China is the biggest, growing market.”
Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port is at the gateway to the Suez Canal and a critical strategic asset for the BRI
Credit: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
But growing bilateral ties – Mr Xi’s first official visit abroad after China dropped pandemic restrictions was to Kazakhstan in September 2022 – also means increasing pressure to silence some Kazakhs.
Akikat Kaliolla, 39, who has campaigned for the release of his parents and two brothers since they disappeared in 2018, was detained by Kazakh police for 15 days during Mr Xi’s visit.
“They had been monitoring us and waited through the night,” said Akikat, a musician, who later learned his father had died in prison. “When I left work at noon the next day, four policemen arrested me.”
He’s part of a small group of holdouts who have staged regular protests for 940 days at the Chinese embassy and consulate in Kazakhstan, despite being slapped with thousands of dollars in fines over the years.
“One of the protocols for the meeting of China and Kazakhstan’s presidents was probably to ensure nobody would be protesting at the Chinese embassy,” he said.
Still, he and others have vowed to continue until their relatives are freed.
Musician Akikat Kaliolla, pictured in 2019, holds photographs of his family, detained by Chinese authorities. His father later died in prison
Credit: Sam Tarling for the Telegraph
At a recent protest at the Chinese consulate in Almaty, there were four marked police cars, seven officers in uniform, and at least another three in plainclothes – all to monitor a group of just five protesters.
They’ve also appealed to the Kazakh government for help, though such cases strain Astana’s relationship with Beijing.
Still, the Kazakhstan foreign ministry should be “protecting the rights of their own citizens,” said Gaukhar. “They should be trying to find a way to resolve this issue diplomatically, and bring Kazakh citizens back to their country.”
“If you make noise, some changes may eventually happen,” she said. “But if you go quiet, nothing changes. I’m not going to stop until Asqar is sent back here.”
Nations are now re-thinking their involvement with China. Italy, which signed onto BRI in 2019 – the only G7 country to do so – is considering backing out.
China’s strict coronavirus restrictions also meant many projects ground to a halt, with some foreign and Chinese workers on BRI projects subject to China’s “zero-Covid” lockdowns – even though they were abroad.
For Kazakhstan, there may not be much choice – the war in Ukraine pushed Astana farther away from Russia and closer to China.
“Kazakhstan understands Russia is totally toxic,” said Nygmet Ibadildin, the chair of KIMEP University in Almaty, but “China is rising, as simple as that.”
But with the Chinese economy hitting new lows, it’s unclear how Beijing will salvage the initiative.
Ten years on, the dream Mr Xi promised to Kazakhstan and the world – a flourishing, positive relationship with China – has begun to wane.
Instead, his flagship road to the West is now plagued with fear, repression and resentment. But China has long shown its ability to adapt quickly to changing times – and that’s likely what Mr Xi will do going forward, particularly as he’s staked his claim on BRI.
“From a Chinese perspective, BRI is not going away, because it’s Xi Jinping’s flagship project,” said Ms Yau. “China will not be able to shy away from BRI forever, because it will be like admitting to its own failure.”
With reporting by Dinara Salieva
References
- ^ China’s planned rail link to London (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Dubai versus Nurkent (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Belt and Road Initiative 2013 – 2023 (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ 0909 Countries Most In Debt To China (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Khorgos border – Kazakhstan China contrast (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ The Khorgos gateway (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ China secret military base in Tajikstan (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Belt & Road onward journey (cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk)