As Central Asian capitals accelerate their “smart city” ambitions with Chinese technology and investment, questions are growing about whether the region is gradually shifting away from Moscow’s orbit. In an article for South China Morning Post, Cao Jiaxuan examines how Beijing’s expanding role in digital infrastructure - from surveillance systems to data platforms and urban management tools - is reshaping regional partnerships.

Central Asian governments are forging ahead with ambitious “smart city” mega-projects to tackle rapid population growth and ageing Soviet-era infrastructure, The Caspian Post republishes the article.

They are also pulling in much-needed foreign investment, and China’s strong visibility in these projects - while Russia is notably absent - is fuelling debate over whether the region is trying to reduce its economic dependence on Moscow.

It comes as competition among major powers in Central Asia is intensifying, with the US-led C5+1 framework - dormant for years - regaining momentum amid renewed interest in critical minerals, supply chains and the strategic implications of the Ukraine war. In recent years, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have all made progress on large-scale urban developments designed to house hundreds of thousands of residents.

These include Asman in Kyrgyzstan, Alatau in Kazakhstan, New Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Arkadag in Turkmenistan - each with an initial planned population of about 250,000.

The prominence of Chinese companies in several of these projects has drawn attention.

China State Construction Engineering Corporation is a major partner in Alatau.

CAMC Engineering, a Chinese state-owned contractor, last year completed the Olympic Stadium as part of the broader New Tashkent urban expansion.

In Kyrgyzstan, Chinese construction firms have signed cooperation memorandums with the national investment agency, while in Turkmenistan, Chinese delegations have been involved in discussions on smart city and artificial intelligence cooperation linked to the Belt and Road Initiative.

The push for new urban hubs gained fresh momentum in January when Asman held an investment roadshow in Nanjing, in eastern Jiangsu province, seeking Chinese partners for digitalisation, green energy grids, and hi-tech urban management systems.

By contrast, Russia - long regarded as Central Asia’s main economic and security provider - has been largely absent from these high-profile developments.

This reflects a broader structural shift, according to Liu Xu, deputy director of the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at Renmin University of China.

He said the wave of future city projects showed Central Asian states were increasingly coordinating their development paths and strengthening regional integration, while recalibrating their external economic ties.

“From an economic perspective, this does not mean Central Asia is moving closer to China, but rather closer to the world,” Liu said.

“In that sense, you could describe it as a form of economic ‘de-Russification’, reducing over-reliance on Russia.”

He said Russia’s influence in the region had weakened since the Ukraine war, which had heightened Central Asian concerns about overdependence on Moscow. And while Russia hopes to rebuild ties, it lacks the capital, technology and long-term investment capacity that the region is seeking.

“Russia itself is struggling, and what Central Asia needs now is sustained future-oriented investment,” Liu said.

The strategic value of Central Asia has increased at a time of intense great power rivalry, and with Beijing using critical minerals as leverage against Washington, the US is looking to the region.

Central Asia has at least 25 of the 54 critical minerals, including 39 per cent of the world’s manganese, 30 per cent of its chromium, 20 per cent of its lead, 13 per cent of its zinc, and 9 per cent of its titanium, Washington‑based political news outlet The Hill reported last year. Kazakhstan alone produces 43 per cent of the world’s uranium.

In November, US President Donald Trump hosted leaders from all five Central Asian states in Washington - the first such summit at that level in the decade since the C5+1 framework was set up. Analysts note that while Washington frames its engagement around security and supply chain diversification, China and Russia already have deep footprints in mining, processing and logistics across the region.

This has given Central Asian governments more leverage to balance competing interests.

“Central Asian states themselves are far from passive players,” Kemel Toktomushev, a senior research fellow at the University of Central Asia, wrote in an article published on the China-US Focus website in January.

“The region’s leaders have become increasingly adept at leveraging great-power competition to advance their own agendas. They seek to attract investment, technology and political attention from all sides, while maintaining a careful balancing act to preserve autonomy.”

Zhu Yongbiao, a professor at Lanzhou University’s Centre for Afghanistan Studies, said the projects were mainly driven by internal pressures.

“Central Asian countries have fast-growing and very young populations, while capital cities are expanding rapidly,” he said.

“Old urban infrastructure simply cannot keep up.”

The population of the Central Asian region - comprising the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - is expected to grow from about 84 million to more than 114 million by 2050, according to a United Nations projection in 2024.

Zhu said governments were also learning from - and competing with - one another as they sought to modernise.

According to Liu from Renmin University, while the projects involving China and Central Asian nations might appear to be state-driven political cooperation, they increasingly reflected genuine market demand.

Economies in the region have been expanding rapidly, creating space for commercial partnerships governed by business rules rather than government fiat.

“Russia lacks this dimension,” Liu said. “Its market economy remains underdeveloped and heavily controlled by the state.”

But Zhu said the projects would not fundamentally alter Central Asia’s relations with Russia and noted they were consistent with the region’s long-standing multi-vector foreign policy.

“Central Asian countries welcome Chinese investment, but that does not mean they reject Russia or other partners,” Zhu said. “These projects are about development ambitions, not geopolitical alignment.”