Thank you. Welcome to the 21st century version of the “Great Game”.
You've put your finger on a hugely important dynamic in the region. I might start my response with the very end of your question: I don't know. How it will play out, how it will resolve, is very difficult to say.
There's an article—and I'd be happy to share it with Mr. Lee afterwards—by a very good analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Martha Brill Olcott, based in Washington. She is one of the few people who's really studied central Asia a lot. Back in the fall of 2013, she wrote a very short policy paper for Carnegie in which she argued very persuasively—and one would have to take a close look at developments since then—that the China-Russia great game in central Asia was over, and that China has won.
That points to developments then that were more of a gleam in the eye, but that, as you've just described, have since been playing out to fruition. It seems to me that in this case one has to be careful. I, too, don't have specific notes in front of me, but it seems to be that in one fell swoop, a year or two ago, China became the number one investor in Tajikistan with one $500 million investment.
What's interesting, though, is that two enduring assets that Russia has in the region that shouldn't be dismissed are the legacy of history and soft power, so to speak. It is still the case, I think for the most part. Again, the committee members might have had personal exposure to this if and when you were handed the CVs of any of the senior officials you met in Kazakhstan. I would be curious as to the number who had a master's degree from the former Leningrad State University or an undergraduate degree from Moscow State University. These days that might have then been followed by an MBA at Harvard. But still, Moscow as the metropole would be where the current elites cut their teeth in the Soviet period, and even in the post-Soviet period.
Again, I don't have the figures in front of me, but many native Russians did return to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They did not want to remain in the likes of Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. Still, Russian absolutely remains very widely spoken in all of these countries, which gives Russia a certain enduring hold on influence in the region.
The second is in terms of security. They still have the 201st Motorized Rifle Division. There are about 5,000 Russian troops permanently stationed in Tajikistan helping to support security.