While our policies from the 1990s were to get all the central Asian energy resources flowing toward the west, China did it much more efficiently. All of Turkmenistan's and much of Uzbekistan's gas is flowing to China.
I do think there are frictions already in the relationship. When you speak to senior officials there is friction over whether things are going to be done bilaterally between the states of central Asia and China, or whether everything is supposed to go the way Russia wants through the Eurasian Union. This is a region where the leaders are very good at playing various global powers off one another. They will tell Russia, yes, we will do it through the Eurasian Union but instead they will go ahead and cut deals directly with the Chinese. I think this is building up Russian resentment. The problem is that the two countries right now almost have a condominium relationship whereby China is becoming the economic player and Russia is continuing its security. So far that seems to be working but the long-term question is whether China will feel a need to develop its own security infrastructure.
I think they might because when we had the problems in Kyrgyzstan and the Kyrgyz government asked the CSTO to come in to help put down the ethnic violence in 2010, Russia stood on the sidelines.
The biggest question and the concern China has is whether Russia is the reliable security partner. If it isn't, is China going to do something about that? If China ever takes that role of trying to have a greater security role in the region that's when you have the friction between the two countries. China invests billions and billions of dollars so they'll need to protect that at some point.