"That last bit about the opportunism of ‘the Middle Kingdom’ rings untrue for me. China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, anyone? And what about Russia? Not concerned what they do with the oil and gas they pull in from the Central Asian Republics?
In that year [2009] alone, Beijing lavished $10 billion in financing on Kazakhstan, helping build roads, railways and telecommunications networks. This spring, China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, began work on a $1 billion expansion of the Atyrau oil refinery. Chinese firms now control roughly one-quarter of Kazakhstan’s oil production. Some of it flows to China via a pipeline that gives Beijing a crucial alternative to the Strait of Malacca choke point through which most of its oil imports must pass. The pipeline, which is expected to carry 20 million tons of oil a year by 2013, stretches from western Kazakhstan and tunnels through the Tian Shan Mountains to Xinjiang, the fractious, Muslim-majority autonomous region in northwestern China"..........READ MORE
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