Central Asia Chessboard: India and China’s Diverging Strategies in Contest for Influence in the Post Russia Vacuum
By Rahul Karan Reddy | 08 July 2025
This commentary for the SOAS China Institute Blog examines the evolving competitive dynamic between India and China in Central Asia, set against the backdrop of Russia’s reduced regional engagement due to the war in Ukraine. The author zooms in on how the two emerging powers pursue influence through differing degrees of institutionalisation, economic engagement, and regional cooperation; while China emphasises connectivity and institutional frameworks, India’s approach is more issue-specific and bottom-up. These divergent strategies reflect not only bilateral interests in Central Asia but also broader ambitions in the Global South.
Introduction
Hot on the heels of India’s Central Asia Dialogue in early June, the China-Central Asia Summit in Astana provided a compelling illustration of the intensifying competition between New Delhi and Beijing in Central Asia. With Russia’s traditional dominance in the region weakened by its ongoing war in Ukraine, a strategic void has emerged—one that both India and China are eager to fill. Both states are deploying summitry and broad-spectrum engagement to advance strategic objectives, albeit through divergent approaches.
Divergent Paths
India and China’s recent summits underscore varying levels and models of institutional engagement with Central Asia. China has notably accelerated institutionalisation, establishing the China-Central Asia Secretariat in 2024 to coordinate initiatives and sustain high-level diplomatic momentum. More significantly, the 2024 Treaty on Eternal Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation marked a formal shift toward treaty-level commitments between China and Central Asian states.
By contrast, India’s institutionalisation remains less formalised. Although New Delhi has committed to regular summits—the second India-Central Asia Summit is scheduled for late 2025—the proposed India-Central Asia Centre, announced in 2022, has yet to materialise. Rather than pursuing comprehensive institutional frameworks, India favours issue-specific mechanisms of cooperation and community-based development. Its emphasis on High Impact Community Development Projects (HICDPs) reflects a bottom-up engagement strategy, in contrast to China’s top-down, state-led model. Furthermore, India’s lack of contiguous land borders with Central Asia presents an additional logistical barrier to deeper integration.
Infrastructure vs Issue-Based Development
Both India and China seek to expand economic influence in Central Asia, but they do so with contrasting priorities and instruments.
China’s approach is connectivity-driven. Strategic infrastructure initiatives like the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway, the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline, and the Zhetysu container terminal form the backbone of its engagement. These projects aim to deepen trade dependency, diversify energy routes, and create strategic corridors linking China to Europe. By 2024, China had become Central Asia’s largest trading partner, accounting for $64.2 billion in trade—over 66% of the region’s total.
Under the recalibrated “small and beautiful” Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has also pivoted toward community-centric projects. At the 2024 Summit, it announced cooperation centres for poverty alleviation, education exchange, and desertification control, backed by a grant of $206 million for livelihood-related initiatives. These efforts show growing convergence with India’s own development-oriented model.
India, while lagging in infrastructure scale, is making strategic strides to overcome geographic constraints. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the Chabahar Port in Iran—developed to bypass Pakistan—are central to its ‘Connect Central Asia’ policy. A key milestone was the March 2025 launch of India’s first container train to Kazakhstan, demonstrating intent to solidify long-term economic ties.
Complementing connectivity, India promotes thematic partnerships such as the India-Central Asia Rare Earth Forum and the India-Central Asia Digital Partnership Forum. New Delhi also advocates for trade diversification, as External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar highlighted at a 2024 Business Council meeting, emphasising the need to expand trade baskets for mutual resilience.
Competing for Influence
India and China’s strategic divergence is further evident in their regional security and diplomatic approaches. Central Asia’s significance has grown as both powers seek to project regional leadership and build Global South coalitions.
China leverages Central Asia’s support for its major foreign policy platforms—the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and the Community of Shared Future for Mankind. Meanwhile, India seeks buy-in for its own issue-based global coalitions, including the International Solar Alliance, the Global Biofuels Alliance, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. These initiatives reflect both countries’ aspirations to shape global governance from the perspective of emerging powers.
Security cooperation is also intensifying. India’s ability to secure unanimous condemnation from Central Asian states for the Pahalgam terrorist attack during the recent Dialogue marks a significant diplomatic win. China, in turn, remains focused on countering separatist and terrorist threats in Xinjiang, necessitating intelligence sharing and joint operations with its western neighbours.
Theatre of Great Power Engagement
As Russia’s role recedes, Central Asia is fast emerging as a strategic battleground for India and China’s competing visions of regional leadership. While China deploys capital-intensive, top-down infrastructure diplomacy, India opts for targeted, issue-driven engagement anchored in community development and trade diversification. These approaches are not just competing strategies—they are also reflective of broader models of international order that New Delhi and Beijing seek to project.
This nascent India-China contest in Central Asia is emblematic of wider Global South dynamics, where middle powers are increasingly shaping multilateral cooperation in the absence of hegemonic direction. Central Asian states, in turn, are recalibrating their foreign policy postures to adapt to this evolving competitive environment.
Rahul Karan Reddy is a Senior Research Associate at the Organisation for Research on China and Asia (ORCA), where he focuses on domestic Chinese politics and trade. His work involves producing data-driven research through reports, dashboards, and digital media.
He is the author of Islands on the Rocks, a monograph analysing the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between China and Japan. Rahul previously served as a Research Officer at the Chennai Centre for China Studies and is an alumnus of the Young Leaders Program at the Pacific Forum.
The views expressed on this blog are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of the SOAS China Institute.
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