Minister highlights extremist threat in Central Asia
Defence Minister Dong Jun has pledged to deepen military cooperation with Kazakhstan – Beijing’s key Central Asian partner – while also highlighting regional extremist threats.
Speaking to Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Astana, Dong said the region was facing a “complex” security situation as the “three forces” – Beijing’s term for terrorism, separatism and extremism – were “becoming more active”.
Dong arrived in Kazakhstan on Wednesday for the annual defence chiefs’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian security bloc initiated in 2001 by China and Russia.
Since 2021, when the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, Beijing has repeatedly warned against a revival of terrorist forces in the region. In a 2023 position paper on Afghanistan, China warned that the “three forces” still posed a “major security threat to the region and the world”.
During their meeting, Dong and Tokayev agreed to strengthen “strategic coordination”, according to the defence ministry.
“The Chinese military is willing to continue to expand areas of cooperation with Kazakhstan and promote the in-depth development of relations between the two militaries,” Dong said.
As part of his second overseas visit since taking on the role, the defence minister met his Kazakh counterpart Ruslan Jaqsylyqov for an exchange on “pragmatic military cooperation and the regional security situation”. Dong was in Vietnam earlier this month to set up a naval hotline.
According to Kazakh state news agency Kazinform, Jaqsylyqov said the ministries “have the possibility to hold joint drills as well as the potential to train personnel [and] expand ties in the field of culture and sport”.
Dong was expected to return to China yesterday, after wrapping up SCO meetings with his counterparts from fellow members India, Pakistan, and other Central Asian states like Kyrgyzstan.
Beijing regards stability in the landlocked, resource-rich states in Central Asia as key to China’s energy supply chain and trade flows and has regularly referred to the “three forces” in relation to the region and unrest in Xinjiang.
In recent years, Beijing has improved its security and economic cooperation with Astana, describing the two countries’ ties as a “permanent comprehensive strategic partnership”.
When violent anti-government unrest spread across Kazakhstan in January 2022, China slammed the protests as driven by “external forces” and pledged to deepen its law enforcement cooperation with Astana.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the unrest as terrorism and, after a phone call with his Kazakh counterpart, said the two countries had agreed to work together to fight the “three forces”.
President Xi Jinping visited Kazakhstan eight months after the unrest, on his first trip outside China since the pandemic, and secured a joint statement calling for mutual support on issues of sovereignty, national security, and territorial integrity.