Kazakh Land, China Capital: Exporting China’s Project System to External Geographies

Abstract

China’s Belt and Road geoindustrial policy is dependent on upgrading transport logistics throughout the Middle East and the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. However, the key International Capacity Cooperation policy also aims to move industrial plants abroad in support of China’s wider import strategy. Planning this industrial offshoring not only requires significant domestic industrial policy governance coordination, with policy being formed at the center and transmitted to lower levels of China’s administrative hierarchy, but also involves traversing largely unmapped policy territory, namely international multilevel governance cooperation with host countries in Central Asia. Taking the International Capacity Cooperation policy as its focus, this paper examines China’s geoeconomic industrial policy in Kazakhstan, arguing that greater public administration interdependence is needed to develop China’s foreign policy into genuine regional economic cooperation.