The Logic of Transforming the Regional Model of Political and Economic Interaction in Central Asia (China and Kazakhstan)

Abstract

In 2013–2026, Chinese initiatives in Central Asia expanded beyond bilateral projects, yet they did not result in the establishment of a new international organization. Drawing on documents from the China–Central Asia summits, Kazakhstan’s land and migration legislation, and official statistics on trade, investment, and employ-ment, the study traces the emergence of an intermediate, multilevel order. To explain this process, approaches from historical institutionalism and the theory of political legitimacy are compared. The analysis demonstrates that summits, treaty norms, and sector-specific platforms have not replaced bilateral committees and national procedures but have instead been layered on top of them. Kazakhstan does not merely receive Chinese pro-jects: it selects acceptable instruments, enshrines the conditions for their implementation in national legislation, and elevates certain priorities to the regional level. To describe this mechanism, the author proposes the con-cept of selective institutionalization. It denotes a sequential transition from an external initiative to political prin-ciples and rules of national selection, followed by legal formalization and subsequent adjustment of the re-gional cooperation model.