When it comes to Central Asia, one of the hottest topics among Western policymakers and scholars alike is China’s engagement in the region, especially since the 2013 launch of the Belt and Road Initiative. In a recent quantitative analysis of Chinese scholarship on Central Asia, Frank Maracchione and Bradley Jardine tackled some prominent assumptions in Western literature regarding Chinese understanding of Central Asia, namely that China’s research institutes are preoccupied with economics and that, broadly speaking, Chinese thinking on Central Asia lacks local context. The data,…
