Weekly News Roundup: Dispatches from the Silk Road Economic Belt

How a Serbian town shows China’s global expansion, US retreat

A giant Chinese red flag flutters on a pole where an American flag used to fly at a steel mill in this dusty industrial Serbian town. The company logos of US Steel are faded on the huge chimneys stacks, replaced by those of a Chinese company.“It seems to me that everything China has been doing in the past several years in the field of its investments abroad also has a political background and connotation,” said Mijat Lakicevic, a Serbian political and economy analyst. (Scmp)

Chinese company contracted to build Pakistan’s largest airport

China Construction Third Engineering Bureau won a 41-billion ruble (about 2.6 billion RMB) contract to engineer, procure, and construct the Allama Iqbal International Airport. It will be Pakistan’s largest airport after reconstruction, and local infrastructure will be improved too. It is the largest project that the Third Engineering Bureau has undertaken overseas, marking another important achievement in Belt and Road construction. .(Peoples' Daily)

Sweeping counter-terrorism measures in China’s Xinjiang ‘creating huge police state’
Worshippers quietly passed through metal detectors as they entered the central mosque in China’s far western city of Kashgar under the stern gaze of stone-faced police officers. For years, the square outside the mosque in Kashgar was packed with teeming crowds as worshippers jostled for space to unroll their prayer rugs and celebrate the end of Ramadan. But no longer. The authorities declined to comment on the numbers, but local businessmen said the government had used the multiple checkpoints encircling the city to prevent travellers to Kashgar from joining Eid prayers(scmp)

China Focus: 20 years of transformation in Xinjiang under assistance program

Twenty years have passed since the first officials from the central government and other provinces were dispatched to Xinjiang to assist local development.More than 19,000 officials have worked in Xinjiang since the program was started by the Chinese government in 1997, which requires central ministries and 19 provinces and municipalities to support Xinjiang in building new infrastructure and boosting local development. According to the development and reform commission of Xinjiang, a total of 5,161 projects with a combined investment volume of over 58 billion yuan (8.5 billion U.S. dollars) were launched from 2011 to 2015. Of the investment, 74 percent were used to improve people's livelihood, and 85 percent went to counties and lower levels.(Xinhua)

China-Syria Silk Road? 

China and Syria have begun discussing post-war infrastructure investment and a “Matchmaking Fair for Syria Reconstruction” was held in Beijing last week. Pepe Escobar reports that the fair, organised by the China-Arab Exchange Association and the Syrian Embassy and crammed with hundreds of Chinese infrastructure investment specialists, is the precursor to a series of even larger scale China-Arab trade expos that will be held in the coming months. (Asia Times)

Can Mongolia’s brash new president navigate between China and Russia? Just moments after he was sworn in as Mongolia’s fifth democratically elected president earlier this week, Khaltmaa Battulga turned his attention to international affairs. Having just won the second-round runoff, the business tycoon-turned-president met with Russian, Chinese and Japanese delegations in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. Diplomacy is one of the most important responsibilities assigned to the Mongolian president by the country’s constitution. Managing foreign relations with Mongolia’s immediate neighbours, while also building on his predecessor’s legacy of heightened visibility beyond Northeast Asia, will be a central challenge for Battulga. (WorldPoliticReview)

The Real Role Of The AIIB In China's New Silk Road

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) at first glance appear to be two hands connected to the same body. But this has been far from the case. However, this misconception can be easily forgiven. As Remy Stuart-Haentjens recently pointed out on Frontera News, both the BRI and AIIB were started up by the same leadership of the same government in the same year for a similar purpose: to improve infrastructure and, by extension, economic connectivity throughout Asia. (Forbes)

Tales from the new Silk Road

China calls it the project of the century - a massive roll-out of Chinese-built infrastructure to remake the map of the global economy with China at its heart.Some see this new Silk Road as an opportunity, others as a power grab. I travelled from China to Europe to hear the stories of the people in its path. (BBC)


China flexes its military muscle in Tibet, close to border dispute with India

Chinese troops have taken part in a military exercise using live ammunition in Tibet, as the country remains locked in a stand-off with India in a disputed border area close by, state media reported.A fully staffed and equipped brigade engaged in various drills involving the rapid movement of troops, use of digital devices and combined attacks by multiple forces on the 5,000m high plateau, China Central Television said over the weekend. (Scmp)

Catalogue of attacks shadows China’s CPEC hopes in Pakistan

As the security situation in Baluchistan deteriorates fast, agencies remain in the dark with regard to who has been targeting police officials and law enforcers in the province.The worsening law and order situation is a serious challenge to the safety of Chinese personnel working on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects. With a view to averting any incident, the Gwadar seaport – a lynchpin of CPEC – has been given top security cover by Pakistan’s military establishment. Army units and paramilitary forces patrol the area round-the-clock in order to protect Chinese engineers and contractors. (Asia Times)

China’s railway diplomacy hits the buffers
Beijing is ‘sharing’ train technology worldwide, but are the schemes coming at too high a price? (Financial Times)

Egypt's Sisi met a coalition of Chinese firms Tuesday over building a light rail transit around Cairo (Xinhua)

CENTRAL ASIA


Majlis Podcast: Is This The 'Uzbek Spring'?
This week’s podcast looks at recent moves in Uzbekistan. Hopeful signs continue to come from Tashkent, most recently statements from Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov about possibly revoking the exit-visa requirement for Uzbek citizens and raising the possibility of the return of Human Rights Watch and BBC to the country. (Rferl)


Mongolia's New President Is a Huge Putin Fan
He likes Putin so much he went to the trouble of photoshopping images of himself with the Russian president to use in the campaign (Russia Insider)

Kyrgyzstan, Czech Company Sign Deal to Kick-Start Stalled Hydropower Project

Kyrgyzstan has signed a deal with a Czech company specializing in renewable energy to take over a hydropower project that the government sees as key to ambitious plans to export electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan.President Almazbek Atambayev’s office said in a statement on July 10 that the Kyrgyz government has reached an agreement with Železný Brod-based Liglass Trading to construct and operate Akbulun HPP and Naryn HPP-1 in the Upper Naryn cascade. The company would under the same arrangement be responsible for implementing the “Construction of Small Hydropower Stations in Kyrgyzstan” project, a string of 10 smaller electricity-generating units. (Eurasianet)

Tajik senators approve spying on citizens on the Internet

The upper house of the parliament of Tajikistan approved on 12 July the initiative of the members of the lower house on authorising law enforcement bodies to receive information about which Internet sites citizens visit, Asia Plus agency informs.This became possible after a member of the lower house of the parliament of Tajikistan Jurakhon Majidzoda stated on 7 June that more than 80 percent of the citizens having access to the Internet “visit the so-called undesirable sites belonging to extremist and terrorist organisations.” According to him, over three million Tajik citizens have access to the World Wide Web. (FerganaNews)

Killing of four relatives of defected officer by Tajik authorities officially confirmed

Four close relatives of the ex-commander of special police squad turned ISIS militant (as Islamic State, ISIL or Daesh is banned in Russia as a terrorist organisation) Gulmurod Khalimov were shot and killed in Tajikistan on the night of 4 July. Two brothers and two nephews of Khalimov were killed by the Tajik police in the village of Ibrati Vosei district of the republic and buried on 10 July in the village of Darai Foni. Three more people were detained. (Fergana News)

Tajikistan and Central Asia's Culture Wars

There’s no unweaving history’s tapestry in Central Asia. (Diplomat)