For much of the post–Cold War era, Central Asia functioned as a “managed condominium”: Russia provided the hard-security umbrella while China was the dominant economic partner. The war in Ukraine has not collapsed that arrangement, but it has shifted its internal balance. The condominium has become an asymmetric interdependence in which China’s economic networks increasingly set the terms of regional order and Russia’s capacity to veto outcomes has waned.
China is not forcing its way into Eurasia so much as wiring it. By controlling key nodes across logistics, energy, finance and digital governance, Beijing is deploying a form of “weaponized interdependence.” It is shaping the infrastructure and norms within which governments and businesses operate, expanding its freedom of action as Russia’s relative influence declines.
The asymmetry is measurable. Chinese customs data show bilateral trade reached a record 1.74 trillion yuan (US$252.3 billion) in 2024. Two-way trade eased 6.5% to 1.63 trillion yuan in 2025 amid lower crude prices and softer Russian demand for Chinese vehicles, but flows remain strongly in China’s favor. That imbalance limits Moscow’s ability to counter Chinese initiatives in what Russia calls its “near abroad.” Beijing has used that leverage to institutionalize multilateral mechanisms in Central Asia that sidestep Russian-led formats.
The 2023 Xi’an China–Central Asia Summit launched a standing mechanism with plans for a permanent secretariat in China; the 2025 Astana summit produced cooperation packages and a Treaty on Good-Neighborliness, deepening routine coordination outside Moscow’s orbit. By creating “default” pathways for policy and leader-level interaction, China exercises structural power that is hard to displace.
Infrastructure and standards are a second conduit of Chinese primacy. Belt and Road Initiative projects create path dependence: once corridors, pipelines or customs regimes are built around Chinese technical and financial models, trade patterns and regulatory choices tend to lock in. The Central Asia–China gas pipeline system, with roughly 55 billion cubic meters per year of capacity, ties upstream producers to Chinese demand and pipeline governance. Logistics hubs like Khorgos on the Kazakhstan–China border re-map economic geography, privileging supplier networks and specifications aligned with Chinese firms.
Digital infrastructure goes beyond cables and servers. Telecommunications equipment, surveillance platforms and fintech rails are governance architectures. As Central Asian regimes expand internal security capacities, Chinese systems embed interoperability with Chinese data practices and training ecosystems. For governments focused on controlling dissent, Beijing supplies effective tools of contemporary state control.
Russia still has influence through shared language, elite networks and coercive economic levers. Millions of Central Asians work in Russia and remittances matter: in Tajikistan they were roughly 47.9% of GDP in 2024, and Kyrgyzstan remains highly sensitive to Russian labor markets. But these levers produce episodic pressure rather than reversing long-term economic reorientation, and heavy-handed enforcement can create counterproductive security risks.
More important is Russia’s reputational problem. Effective spheres of influence require credible deterrence; Moscow’s military engagement in Ukraine has undercut perceptions of it as a dependable security guarantor. Central Asian elites increasingly view Russia as a provider of baseline stability and hedge by avoiding rigid commitments and diversifying ties.
Financial connectivity shows how the shift proceeds below the threshold of open confrontation. After the invasion of Ukraine, yuan settlement surged in Russia’s trade—rising from under 2% to nearly 40% by early 2024. By offering alternative financial rails that keep commerce flowing when Western systems are constrained, China reinforces structural power in the monetary realm.
The Iran war adds a new accelerant. Escalating conflict has disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil and LNG flows. By March 5, Brent crude topped $84 per barrel as traders priced in disruption risk. For China this is a stress test of a core vulnerability: dependence on seaborne energy routes that can be disrupted or politically taxed during wartime.
In the near term, that shock can elevate Russia’s importance as an energy backstop—discounted Russian crude, pipeline gas and other non-Gulf sources can help offset maritime risk. China already has been the dominant buyer of Iran’s shipped crude, taking over 90% of Iran’s seaborne exports—about 1.38 million barrels per day on average in 2025—so disruptions around Iran hit China’s marginal barrels. But such tactical hedges do not restore a Russian veto in Central Asia because Russia depends on Chinese demand far more than China relies on any single supplier, and because Beijing’s leverage rests on network control, not transient commodity scarcity.
Over the medium term, an Iran-driven chokepoint strengthens China’s incentive to build a Eurasian architecture that reduces maritime exposure, making Central Asia more central to Beijing’s strategy rather than less.
Central Asian states are not passive. They practice “multi-vector” diplomacy, arbitraging security and development ties. As Russia’s economic pull softens and Western engagement remains limited, Beijing offers the most credible package of capital and connectivity. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan continue to court the “Middle Corridor” and investment from Turkey, the Gulf and Europe where feasible, but a layered order has emerged: China is the default economic platform, while other partners supply niche diplomatic optionality.
This layered order is reinforced by Sino-Russian alignment on regime stability and anti-Western signaling, the “glue” that keeps the condominium intact. Moscow tolerates China’s expanding footprint because contesting it would jeopardize a broader alignment that helps resist the United States.
If Central Asia is consolidating into a China-led sphere, evidence will show up in three domains: institutional autonomy (permanent secretariats and treaties that bypass Russia), network embeddedness (infrastructure and standards organized around Chinese protocols), and monetary integration (expanded use of the yuan). None of this means Russia will vanish from the region. Instead, a new Eurasian equilibrium is emerging: Russia will continue to cast a security shadow and supply historical legitimacy, while China acts as the architect. In contemporary geopolitics, the actor that builds infrastructure increasingly writes the rules.
Md Obaidullah is a visiting scholar at Daffodil International University, Dhaka, and a graduate assistant in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published with Routledge, Springer Nature and SAGE, and in outlets including The Diplomat, Asia Times, East Asia Forum, The Business Standard and Dhaka Tribune.
