was in Nur-Sultan (then Astana), the capital of Kazakhstan, that Xi first launched the BRI in 2013. Since then, the Kazak government has described their country as the “buckle on the belt” of what Xi describes as the “project of the century.” Central Asia is a significant source of energy and raw materials for China—hence the decision to fund and construct a twenty-five-hundred-kilometer oil pipeline from the Kazak oilfields on the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang. As with many other parts of the BRI, China sees central Asia as a useful new market for the Chinese construction industry as demand within
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