By Marcin Kaczmarski
The Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road represent two very different approaches in Central Asia.
The Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road are two major foreign policy projects which Russia and China, respectively, have been pursuing since the early 2010s. The initiatives are the pet projects of the two states’ leaders.
Vladimir Putin proposed the Eurasian integration in October 2011, while running for his third presidential term. In an article published in Izvestia, Putin sketched out his ambitious vision of a Russian-led political-economic bloc in the post-Soviet space. Russia convinced Belarus and Kazakhstan to sign up to the project the following month but it took another three years to sign the treaty establishing the Eurasian Economic Union. 2015 marked the official inauguration of the union, which was almost immediately enlarged to include Armenia.
Xi Jinping put forward the idea of renewing the Silk Road two years after Putin’s initial declaration of Eurasian integration. During a visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013, the Chinese leader vowed to create a “Silk Road Economic Belt” as the first step in the process of connecting China to Europe via Central Asia. Several weeks later, during his trip to Indonesia, Xi presented a parallel initiative, the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The idea of reviving the ancient Silk Road quickly became popular in the Chinese media and expert circles. “One Belt, One Road” became a popular slogan describing the project.
Read the full story at The Diplomat