Between the "De-Extremification Policy" and the "Belt and Road Initiative": Central Asian resistance to the rise of China

本研究在中国提出的宏大地缘政治“一带一路”的背景下，考察哈萨克和吉尔吉斯斯坦对中国新疆维吾尔自治区“去极端化政策”的反应，以及该政策对中哈吉关系的伴生影响。本研究超越了对“一带一路”忽视中亚国家作用或完全关注国家行为者的描述，而将从理论上借鉴关键的安全研究和关键的地缘政治，将新疆维吾尔自治区的新疆维吾尔自治区安全政策和“一带一路”同时置于哈萨克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦的国内民族主义政治中。本研究将探讨有争议的国家/大众民族主义叙事如何被用来构建对国家认同的理解和对中哈/吉尔吉斯斯坦关系的地缘政治想象。这项研究使用了两种主要的研究方法：文献分析和对当地国家和非国家行为者的半结构化访谈。解释政策将对政府、媒体和民粹主义来源进行分析，以确定关于中国环保部的哈萨克语和吉尔吉斯语话语的主要主题。对主要参与者的进一步采访将有助于对这些数据进行三角分析。这项研究将有助于理解中亚的民族主义和民众抗议如何有可能破坏中国的宏伟地缘政治计划，或者中国的一带一路是否将成为进一步巩固该地区威权统治的载体。这一及时的、多层次的、扎实的研究将为我们这个时代最紧迫的人权问题和地缘政治(中国的时代)之间的关系提供最全面和最具原创性的理解。

This research investigates Kazakh and Kyrgyz responses to China's "deextremificationpolicy" (DEP) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region(XUAR), and the concomitant effects of the DEP on Sino-Kazakh/Kyrgyzrelations in the context of China's grand geopolitical 'Belt and Road Initiative'(BRI).Moving beyond accounts of BRI that ignore the agency of Central Asianstates or those that focus entirely on state-actors, this study will instead drawtheoretically on critical security studies and critical geopolitics to locate boththe DEP and the BRI in the domestic nationalist politics of Kazakhstan andKyrgyzstan. It will explore how contested state/popular nationalist narrativesare used to construct understandings of national identities and geopoliticalimaginations about Sino-Kazakh/Kyrgyz relations.The study uses two main research methods; document analysis and semistructuredinterviews with local state and non-state actors. Interpretive PolicyAnalysis will be undertaken on government, media and populist sources todraw out the major themes of Kazakh and Kyrgyz discourses regardingChina's DEP. Further interviews with key actors will help to triangulate thisdata.This study will be a major contribution to understanding how nationalism andpopular protest in Central Asia has the potential to derail China's grandgeopolitical projects, or whether China's BRI will be a vector to further cementauthoritarian rule in the region.This timely multi-level and grounded research will provide the mostcomprehensive and original understanding to date of the relationship betweenamongst the most pressing human rights (DEP) and geopolitical (BRI and therise of China) issues of our age.