Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Informal exchanges and contending connectivity along the shadow silk roads
- 2 Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
- 3 In and out of the shadows: Pakistan-China trade across the Karakoram Mountains
- 4 Circulations in shadow corridors: Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal
- 5 Past and present: Shadows of the China-Ladakh-Pakistan routes
- 6 Formal versus informal practices: Trade of medicinal and aromatic plants via Trans- Himalayan Silk Road
- 7 Formal versus informal Chinese presence: The underbelly of hope in the Western Balkans
- 8 State approaches to non-state interactions: Cross-border flows in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan
- 9 Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
- 10 In the shadow of constructed borderlands: China’s One Belt One Road and European economic governance
- 11 High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
- Index
- Publications / Global Asia
9 - Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Informal exchanges and contending connectivity along the shadow silk roads
- 2 Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
- 3 In and out of the shadows: Pakistan-China trade across the Karakoram Mountains
- 4 Circulations in shadow corridors: Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal
- 5 Past and present: Shadows of the China-Ladakh-Pakistan routes
- 6 Formal versus informal practices: Trade of medicinal and aromatic plants via Trans- Himalayan Silk Road
- 7 Formal versus informal Chinese presence: The underbelly of hope in the Western Balkans
- 8 State approaches to non-state interactions: Cross-border flows in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan
- 9 Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
- 10 In the shadow of constructed borderlands: China’s One Belt One Road and European economic governance
- 11 High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
- Index
- Publications / Global Asia
Summary
Abstract
The 2010s became the time of active search for new forms of integration in the wide Eurasian space between Europe and East Asia. The most well-known is China's One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). A 7000-kilometre border between China and the EAEU was formed in 2015, which became a crucial factor in the cooperation of China and Post-Soviet Central Asia. Many regard the EAEU as just a Moscow geopolitical project and underestimated its real impacts on economic and political ties in Eurasia, particularly in post-Soviet Central Asia. This chapter examines the EAEU as a factor of international relations in the global discussion about the OBOR initiative.
Keywords: One Belt One Road, regional integration, shadow economy, cross-border exchanges, trans-continental transportation
Introduction
Multinational integration and globalization are major trends in world history today, and the beginning of the 21st century has become a time of conflicting movements. Just as globalization has become a globally accepted ideal, a strong momentum has emerged across societies worldwide for the ‘recovering of local identity, which was challenged by diminished national politics, culture and economic sovereignty in a globalized world’ (Baunov, 2017). This has resulted in the conservative, anti-globalist, and even nationalist agenda popular worldwide today, empowering leaders who appeal directly for national self-reliance without the intermediacy of globalized elites. Along with Brexit, this trend has become the most serious challenge to the neoliberal model of globalization since the previous Cold War dichotomy of a bipolar world. In the post-Soviet space (particularly in Russia), this trend is met with encouragement, as the neoliberal model of globalization is associated with US domination, while moving away from this model is seen as forming a ‘polycentric world’ with Russia as one of its centres. Paradoxically, ideas of multinational integration still dictate the foreign policy agenda in most countries, including post-Soviet nations.
There are several reasons for this. First, nostalgia for the Soviet Union is strong in parts of these societies (particularly in Russia), and elites seek to use this agenda to legitimize their ruling position (White, 2010). Second, the weakness of certain post-Soviet states, the difficulties of forming autonomous economies there, and the dependence of their economies on infrastructure networks inherited from the Soviet Union (Obydenkova, 2011: 88) all compel them to look for greater regional integration.
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- Information
- Shadow Exchanges along the New Silk Roads , pp. 213 - 234Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020