DUSHANBE, May 3, 2016, Asia-Plus – An article “Central Asian Land and China” that as posted on Radio Liberty’s website on May 2 notes that one topic guaranteed to inflame passions in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan is land and China.

China has taken land from Central Asia and farmers from China are already working rented fields in Central Asia and that has not sat well with locals.

In late April 1996, the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan met in Shanghai to sign an agreement to pull back military forces from the former Sino-Soviet, now Sino-CIS border. It was a confidence-building gesture.  The deal was cemented with a decision to form the Shanghai Five, which five years later and with the addition of Uzbekistan, became the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The article says that many Central Asian analysts have noted the SCO became China''s vehicle for entering Central Asia economically and now China is at least a, if not the, leading trade partner of all five Central Asian states.

The Shanghai Five agreement also opened the door for China to make claims on land along its borders with Central Asia.  The 1996 deal essentially scrapped the line that was the Sino-Soviet border and necessitated new demarcations.  Then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in July 1996 to discuss the delimitation.  Jiang skipped Tajikistan, which was three years into its civil war at the time.

By early 1999, Kazakhstan was prepared to cede nearly half of the 34,000 square kilometers of what China claimed was disputed territory.

The Sino-Kyrgyz border agreement was more complicated.  The deal for Kyrgyzstan to hand over 1,250 square kilometers of its land to China was signed in 1999.

Tajikistan and China also signed a border-demarcation agreement in 1999, but it was not until 2002 that Tajikistan acknowledged it was prepared to cede some 1,122 square kilometers of disputed territory to China.  As was the case in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, there were many opponents to the agreement in Tajikistan, including people in Tajikistan''s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region.  The land to be given to China was in Gorno-Badakhshan and the region''s autonomous status technically demanded local approval of the deal.

Tajikistan''s parliament did not finally approve the deal until January 2011 amid renewed criticism.  Local authorities in Gorno-Badakhshan were not consulted.

The issue resurfaced in April 2013, when the leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, Rahmatullo Zoirov, gave an interview to Iran''s Radio Khorasan and said the Tajik government had given up more land than it admitted.

The Tajik government rejected Zoirov''s statements, but then canceled the accreditation of three Radio Khorasan correspondents.

Less than one week after Tajikistan''s parliament approved the controversial demarcation agreement with China, the Tajik government had other news.  Some 2,000 hectares of land in the Khatlon region, vacated by migrant laborers who headed to Russia, was to be leased to Chinese farmers.

China has already acquired 16,000 square kilometers of what was once Central Asian land in just the last 15 years, according to the article.