On September 13, the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak paid an official visit to Kazakhstan. It was his seventh visit to this Central Asian republic during the last four years. The last time South Korea’s leader met with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev was in... MORE

Russian and Kazakhstani leaders have reiterated plans to further develop bilateral commerce, relying on the free trade arrangements of their Customs Union. Two-way trade, however, has appeared to advance slower than previously expected. Attended by presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev and Vladimir Putin, the Inter-Regional Cooperation Forum,... MORE

Recent Chinese diplomatic maneuvers in Central Asia, both bilateral and multilateral, show that Beijing’s strategy treats the region as a corridor for reaching resource bases in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Central Asia is thus part of China’s broader blueprint of securing strategic resources... MORE

During the first six months of 2012, the export of refined oil products from Belarus has grown by $2.4 billion compared with the same period in 2011, and the export of solvents has grown by $1.8 billion (to the total of $2.5 billion)—thus reversing the... MORE

On August 9, China launched the world’s first rare earth exchange in an apparent bid to formalize its global leadership in the production of rare earth elements (REE). This move comes almost two years after the Chinese Ministry of Commerce introduced export quotas for REE,... MORE

China seems to call out for dramatization. In part this may be the result of its tumultuous history from the First Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion through to the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. In part it is a... MORE

On August 22–25, 2012, Dai Bingguo, Chinese State Councilor and top national security advisor to President Hu Jintao, went to Ulaanbaatar to meet newly installed Mongolian government and parliamentary leaders. This visit may in part have been a reaction to US Secretary of State Hillary... MORE

For several years, Russia has been telling the world about how it will build up its commercial, energy and military position in the Arctic. Recently, it appears to have begun the actual implementation of those linked projects. Thus, President Putin has nominated Federation Council member... MORE

Russia’s Primorie region in the country’s Far East moved to finalize the construction of high-profile projects, designed to prepare for the upcoming APEC summit meeting next month in Vladivostok. However, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s recent visit there has only served to underline the continued problems... MORE

Much of the July 24 hearing of the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (for Part One of this article, detailing security issues, see EDM, August 1) focused on how to promote US economic goals in Central Asia, as well... MORE