The new great game

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Today as the world continues its search for petroleum reserves, Central Asia once again is set to play a major role in international politics. As China's economy continues to grow it also continues to secure strategic oil reserves and has sought fields throughout Kazakhstan but particularly in the Northern Caspian Sea. Besides China, Russia hopes to still retain influence in the region but is continually being countered by US military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan as well as Persian defiance to rid its northern neighbors of foreign influence. In 2001 Colin Powell visited Astana, the newly founded capital of Kazakhstan, and while speaking at a conference before Nursaltan Nazarbayev (President), and petroleum executives of the state oil company, decided that a long disputed pipeline could be built without exclusion from US investments (which originally stalled the construction).

China

Xinjiang, the largest and most northwestern province in China, is home to the Uyghur people. Related to other Turkic peoples in Central Asia, they have in the past been associated with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as well as their own terrorist group the EITM. Today Beijing quells the population and discriminates heavily against the ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Beijing has also provided billions in tax breaks and investments to encourage Han Chinese migration to Western China so that they could outnumber the "radical muslims"(Uyghurs). Despite quelling ethnic Muslims, Beijing is attempting to secure strategic petroleum reserves throughout Central Asia. In the past China has done most of its oil business with Sudan and other Middle Eastern nations but has now begun purchasing fields mostly in Kazakhstan, where the largest oil bubble has been discovered in over a decade. For China however this is only the beginning of a much larger confrontation with the US, Russia, and Iran as those four renew The Great Game that once stifled colonial expansion during the 19th century.