BEIJING, June 6 (Kyodo) - By: Simon Pollock The nation foremost in Chinese President Jiang Zemin's mind during Friday's summit in St. Petersburg bringing together China, Russia and four Central Asian states is notable in its absence -- the United States.
China wants to use the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit to resist the increase of the U.S. military presence in Central Asia that has accompanied the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, and to bolster its ties with Russia amid worries that Moscow is also moving closer to Washington, analysts said.
Noting that there have been some ''changes'' in Central Asia in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S., Jiang called Wednesday on the region's states to handle Central Asian affairs themselves.
Jiang was speaking in Kazakstan, one of the members of the SCO, which also includes Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,
China is concerned about what the U.S. plans to do with its troops in Central Asia, consisting of 1,000 soldiers in Uzbekistan and those deployed within a 3,000-strong foreign force in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asian studies scholar Sun Zhuangzhi said.
''There will be no conflict in Central Asia as long as the aim of the U.S. presence there is only to strike against terrorists and is not aimed against China or Russia,'' said Sun, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which advises China's leadership.
But Sun said he worries that the U.S. wants to boost its influence in Central Asia as part a strategy aimed at curbing the power of China and Russia.
It would be easy for the U.S. to use activists in Central Asian countries to influence Muslim separatists in China's western province of Xinjiang since some of these people share the same ethnicity, he said.
China is also wary that a continued U.S. presence in Central Asia may affect its access to oil and natural gas reserves in the region, said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist with the City University of Hong Kong.
China's fears that Russia is moving further within Washington's sphere on influence have been accentuated by a landmark agreement late last month between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin allowing Russia to join North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meetings, although not as a full member.
China is particularly worried about the prospect of losing Russian support in opposing U.S. plans to construct a national missile defense system, Cheng said.
Unlike Russia, which possesses a large arsenal of nuclear missiles capable of reaching the U.S., the efficacy of the 20 or so Chinese ballistic missiles that can hit the U.S. could be nullified by the U.S. system, designed to knock down enemy missiles in mid-flight, he said.
China wants to enhance the legitimacy of the SCO grouping, founded in Shanghai in 1966 to broker border disputes, by pushing for expanded economic ties between its members.
Ironically, while China can play the economic card, trumping the potential of its vast market, to woo the U.S. and help smooth over bumps in the two countries' sometimes awkward ties, this is not the case in its ties with its fellow SCO members.
China and Russia have not experienced a large growth of trade and investment with their Central Asian SOC partners. Chinese investment in its Central Asian SCO partners stood at $1.6 billion in 2000, but fell below that last year, according to Sun.