To Secure Kazakhstan’s Uranium, Chinese Players Were Compelled to Accommodate Local Partners
April 19th, 2024
Via Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a report on Kazakhstan’s leverage its natural uranium resources to hold the reins in its nuclear fuel–related dealings with China: China has become a global power, but there is too little debate about how this has happened and what it means. Many argue that China exports its developmental model and […]
Read more »Central Asia’s Critical Raw Materials: The Next Frontier in Global Power Rivalry?
April 7th, 2024
Via Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting, a report on the strategic position of Central Asian nations within the rare earth metals’ geopolitical landscape: Eldaniz Gusseinov of the Ibn Khaldun University’s Heydar Aliyev Center for Eurasian Studies, alongside Abakhon Sultonazarov, IWPR Central Asia Regional Director, contend that the interplay between Central Asia’s ties with the […]
Read more »China’s Exports To Central Asia Are Booming
March 28th, 2024
Via Asia Times, a report on China’s growing commercial engagement with Central Asia: Central Asia is becoming one of Eurasia’s main trade and transit hubs, with Kazakhstan in the forefront. Sino-Central Asian trade turnover stood atUS$89.4 billion at the end of 2023, a 27% increase over the 2022 level of US$70.2 billion, according to China’s Customs Agency. Of that total, US$61.4 billion represented Chinese exports to the region. Trade between China and Kazakhstan alone clocked […]
Read more »Bitcoin Mining Was Booming in Kazakhstan. Then It Was Gone.
February 5th, 2024
Via MIT Technology Review, an article on how bitcoin miners initially flocked to Kazakhstan to take advantage of cheap energy and loose regulation. Now most of them have moved on, leaving little behind but moldering equipment and social tension. To reach Kazakhstan’s largest bitcoin mine, you need to travel deep into the country’s rust belt, […]
Read more »Kazakhstan: Crossroads of Eurasia
February 4th, 2024
Via Geopolitical Futures, a look at Kazakhstan’s growing importance as a key hub for east-west commerce: In light of the geopolitical shifts caused by Russia’s pivot to the east, alongside China’s push to forge overland trade paths to Europe and the quest for alternatives to Russian routes, Kazakhstan’s role as a transit hub is growing […]
Read more »Central Asia’s Middle Corridor Expansion: Opportunity for China and Iran
January 27th, 2024
Via Foreign Policy Research Institute, commentary on how the Central Asia’s Middle Corridor expansion presents an opportunity for China and Iran: The sustained attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea have given a fresh boost to a budding Central Asian trade network known as the Middle Corridor, whose participant countries recently met to discuss […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.