China Increasing Its Military Presence in Tajikistan

Executive Summary:

• Reports show that China is building a “secret” military base in Tajikistan. Both Dushanbe and Beijing deny the reports, though China has been covertly expanding its military footprint in Tajikistan for over a decade.
• Some of the expansion has occurred in coordination with Russia, France, and the United States, but China has gone far beyond what these countries hoped for with its military presence in Tajikistan.
• Beijing’s role in Tajikistan means that China is rapidly moving toward becoming the dominant power in a country that neighbors restive Afghanistan. Denials about a base should not mislead anyone into thinking there is not one.

On July 10, citing satellite imagery, the London-based Telegraph newspaper reported that China is building a “secret military base” in Tajikistan. The base is likely being established both to prevent the Taliban in Afghanistan from spreading its influence into Central Asia and China and project Chinese influence in Central Asia (The Telegraph; YouTube.com, July 10). The story attracted significant attention in the region, though some noted that it was hardly a secret. A few commentators in the West treated the story as a brand new development (Sputnik, October 28, 2021; Eurasia Today, July 11). The  report was promptly denied by Dushanbe and Beijing (Eurasia Today, July 13). Those denials, while perhaps true in a narrow sense, risk distracting attention from the real story: China already has had at least two military facilities in Tajikistan for some time. Last fall, Beijing reached an agreement with Dushanbe to expand their program of bilateral military cooperation over the next five years and is thus set to become the paramount foreign power in Tajikistan despite the continuing presence of a Russian base there (see EDM, December 7, 2021; Window on Eurasia, October 22, 2023).  

China set up a radio monitoring site in Tajikistan more than a decade ago to track Western involvement in Afghanistan. Beijing has been organizing a facility in Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badakhshan province ostensibly to help Dushanbe calm the situation there lest the Taliban exploit it (Vzglyad, December 1, 2021; Window on Eurasia, January 20, 2022). In both cases, Beijing and Dushanbe placed these facilities under the nominal control of Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry rather than its Defense Ministry. Thus, the two sides have been able to claim that these facilities are not military bases. Dushanbe is quite happy to go along with this position, even though it is quite obvious that these are military facilities and ones subordinate to Beijing rather than Dushanbe (Carnegie Politika, December 28, 2021; Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 17, 2023).

China has three compelling reasons for promoting this narrative. First, formally establishing a military base in Tajikistan would exacerbate Beijing’s relations with the Tajiks, whose population and elites are worried about Chinese claims on the eastern portion of the country (see EDM, July 30, 2020). Second, such a step would compromise Beijing’s efforts to promote trade corridors across Central Asia, given that anti-Chinese attitudes are already widespread in many of the countries in the region (Global Affairs, September 7, 2020; IA-Centr.ru, November 11, 2020; Carnegie Politika, January 29, 2021). Third, it would raise questions not only in Moscow but in Western capitals that the Chinese would prefer, at least for the time being, to not have to address lest they provoke harsh reactions in the region (see EDM, December 7, 2021, June 22, 2022). Beijing thus prefers to continue the policy it has followed for two decades and present its military involvement in Tajikistan as episodic rather than permanent—something any open acknowledgment of bases would make much more difficult (Carnegie Politika, December 28, 2021).

The number of Chinese military personnel stationed at these two facilities remains relatively small, a few dozen in the case of the monitoring site and perhaps a few hundred in the Gorno-Badakhshan location. Even together, however, these personnel constitute only a tiny portion of Chinese military involvement in and around Tajikistan. Three other parts of the Chinese effort there are far more important. First, in the name of protecting Chinese facilities and transportation infrastructure, Beijing has deployed—sometimes openly and sometimes under other names—its own “private military companies” in Tajikistan just as it has done in other parts of Central Asia (see EDM, July 20, 2021, January 11; for more information about Chinese private military companies securing China’s foreign interests in Central Asia, see Guardians of the Belt and Road, 2023,). The number of Chinese soldiers in these units is not publicly known, but they constitute a force that Beijing can use to put pressure on Dushanbe even more effectively than any “base.” Second, China has begun to build as many as 30 airports just east of the Chinese-Tajik border, facilities that have no other apparent purpose than to give Beijing the option of deploying forces into Tajikistan at a moment’s notice (Central Asian Analytical Network, May 7, 2020; Window on Eurasia, May 13, 2020). Third, China has been conducting a growing number of joint maneuvers with the Tajik military itself and has launched a program to train increasingly more Tajik officers in China (Tajik Committee on Architecture and Construction, February 23, 2021; Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 17, 2023).

Beijing has launched a two-track program to keep the Tajik population and elites on its side as a preventative measure should anyone in Tajikistan try to block its moves. On the one hand, Beijing has launched a major soft power effort to convince Tajiks that China, a fellow Asian country, is its friend and that Tajikistan has no reason to fear a Chinese presence but should welcome it. On the other hand, Chinese officials have sought to buy off Tajik elites by giving them shares in Chinese firms now operating in Tajikistan, thus enriching them beyond their wildest dreams. As a result, few Tajiks object to what China is doing militarily in their country, and many observers now classify Tajikistan as the most Chinese-friendly country in Central Asia (Carnegie Politika, January 29, 2021).

Distracted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, Moscow has remained largely unfazed by China’s actions in Tajikistan. The Kremlin will likely remain unbothered so long as Beijing and Dushanbe insist that China does not have a military base there while acknowledging that Russia does (Carnegie Politika, December 28, 2021; Window on Eurasia, February 15, 2022). That may change, however, given that Moscow has pulled manpower and equipment from its base in Tajikistan, thus reducing its relative importance to anything the Chinese do (see EDM, May 2). Meanwhile, Western governments have been unruffled so far by Chinese moves not only because of their past willingness to cooperate with China against the Taliban but also because of a propensity to view Beijing’s actions solely based on a metric involving the presence or non-presence of an officially acknowledged Chinese military base (see EDM, June 22, 2022).

That would be an enormous mistake on the part of the West, as China has demonstrated that it is quite capable of taking actions that fly under the radar screens of others. This puts Beijing in a position to dominate this situation far more quickly and completely than most have thought. Tajikistan, which has long been on the brink of becoming a failed state, represents the kind of low-hanging fruit that Beijing now seems ready to exploit.