An article has come out of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University that should make all those who follow the Kings of the East sit up and take notice:
“The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great Euphrates River. Its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the east.” (Revelation 16:12, ISV)
In early September Chinese President Xi Jinping went on a trade mission to several Central Asian countries to offer billions in investment. The trip could signal the opening of a new silk road connecting the Europe with the East Asia through the Levant (The region consisting of Modern Day Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Israel, and southern Turkey.) — ushering in a new economic and political era.
In the past decade, Central Asia has gone from China’s diplomatic backwater to center stage, mainly because of its large, untapped energy and mineral resources. China needs a lot of what Central Asia has to offer and Chia is looking to lock down concessions before other players, particularly Russia can.
China’s new focus in the region has been on cultivating good relations with the newly independent republics that bordered its restive western province of Xinjiang, home to several Turkic groups such as the Uighur, Uzbeks and Kazaks. Uighur nationalists and separatists, or “splitists” as Beijing calls them, have on occasion used the neighboring countries to organize anti-China activity.
Over the last decade, China began to exert its influence in the region by providing development aid and entered into security cooperation treaties.
As China’s economy grew, it soon realized that its African concessions were not enough and it needed to find other sources of energy and material to fuel its economic engine.
China also recognized that the Middle East was a very volatile region, one that may not hold a long-term, secure, energy supply, particularly oil. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) China has overtaken the United States as theworld’s largest importer of oil.
Not only is China concerned about Middle East volatility, but Beijing is also increasingly concerned about possible disruptions in Southeast Asia. China worries that tensions with Japan and security threats like piracy could lead to disruptions in the Straits of Malacca where the bulk of Chinese energy imports must transit.
To reduce its vulnerability to possible disruption of supplies, China has begun to look to Central Asia as an alternative source of energy. Close proximity and shared borders with the Middle Kingdom reduce transportation costs and dependence on seaborne supplies. No other region offers such logistical access to China.
China has been slowly working on increasing that access to its own advantage. In 2006, China and Kazakhstan signed a deal to build a 2000 mile pipeline to transport Kazakh oil and gas to the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Since that time, it is estimated that China 50 percent of the Kazakh energy sector is now owned by Chinese state-owned companies.
In July the two countries signed an agreement to expand the pipeline and double production.
This expansion could also transport Russian oil to China by mid next year, linking China to one of its main oil suppliers. It is understood that Russian oil company Rosneft earlier this year negotiated a US$35 billion loan from China. Rosneft intended to use the loan to buy off several of its rivals. In exchange the Russians would double oil supplies to China. (Russia is the world’s third largest oil exporter with the United States and Saudi Arabia being #1 & #2 respectively.)
In 2009 China concluded the construction of the multi-billion dollar Turkmenistan-China pipeline. The 1200 mile pipeline crosses neighboring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and will take oil and natural gas to Xinjiang.
In 2012 Turkmenistan became China’s main source of natural gas providing over 50 percent of China’s gas imports. Iran, the world’s third largest oil producer, already has a pipeline to Turkmenistan, which could be further extended to link up with the Turkmenistan-China pipeline.
A New Silk Road?
On another front, according to Loro Horta of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, China and Pakistan are in the initial stages of developing the Xinjiang Gwadar development corridor.
Beijing has funded the construction of the port of Gwadar in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan at a cost of $1.2 billion. The port is strategically located at the eastern approach of the Persian Gulf in close proximity to Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The Gwadar development corridor will see the construction of an extensive network of roads, rail links and pipelines connecting the Persian Gulf to western China, thus shortening the distance to transport supplies vital to the Chinese economy.
During Xi’s September visit to the Central Asian region, a staggering array of deals worth billions of dollars were signed. This growing investment has the potential to integrate the economies of Russia, Central Asia and China to a degree not seen since the days of the ancient Silk Road.
These new deals link the countries of Eastern Asia (the “Kings of the East”) with the Middle East closer than they have ever been in millennia.
For many reasons, Eastern Asia is one area of the world that should be watched with great interest.
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