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FSUOGM POLICY FSUOGM

of Siberia pipeline. Other projected future deals People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s
envision gas being pumped through a yet-to- official organ, Berdimuhamedov thanked China
Chinese President Xi be-built strand of the Power of Siberia running for its help developing the Turkmen space indus-
Jinping and Turkmen through Mongolia and landing in northern try, which he said would, among other things,
President Serdar provinces of China. bolster his country’s national security. He did not
Berdimuhamedov, Since the added gas deliveries from Turk- spell out what he meant by this.
Beijing, January 2023 menistan to China will be focused on supplying As for honest-to-God commercial deals
more southerly customers, there should be little reached as a result of Berdimuhamedov’s trip,
or no sense of competition with Russia. there was little of that. Chinese company CRRC
When Berdimuhamedov talks so point- Ziyang revealed on its Twitter account on Janu-
edly about “security of energy supplies” and ary 9 that it had reached a $30mn deal to supply
the importance of this for the preservation of Turkmenistan with locomotive spare parts. It
international stability, it feels like he is seeking was a noteworthy bit of business mainly because
to nudge China into getting directly involved in back in 2017, Turkmenistan stiffed the very same
implementation of the trans-Afghanistan Turk- company over the payment of $2.4mn due for
menistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) the delivery of a pair of locomotives. It took legal
pipeline, which could play a big role in improv- action to resolve the whole impasse.
ing the well-being of Turkmenistan’s war-torn In one heartening development, Amster-
eastern neighbour. It does not look like China is dam-based website Turkmen.news reported
taking the bait, though. on January 3 that the beneficiaries of a mass
Beijing’s contribution to geopolitical order amnesty declared in December included the
is in chivvying vassal state-lite petitioners like imprisoned doctor Khursanai Ismatullaeva.
Turkmenistan into signing up to grandiloquent Ismatullaeva was arrested in July 2021 after
initiatives like the Global Security Initiative, she went public with claims that she had
which Xi proposed at a conference in April 2022. been unfairly dismissed from a position at
In very crude summary, the GSI, as it is known in a neonatal clinic in Ashgabat in 2017. What
its abbreviated form, repackages familiar Beijing really got the doctor into trouble was that she
mantras about respect for sovereignty and terri- spoke about her situation at an event organ-
torial integrity. Berdimuhamedov duly pledged ised by members of the European Parliament,
his determination to promote implementation which the Turkmen police state evidently
of the GSI and then reasserted his government’s deemed to be an unseemly act of airing dirty
opposition to Taiwanese independence for good linen in public. Ismatullaeva was sentenced
measure. to nine years in prison on almost certainly
Yet one more area in which China and Turk- trumped-up charges of embezzlement in
menistan intend to deepen cooperation, appar- September 2021, but will now be allowed to
ently, is space. In an article published in The go free. ™

Week 02 11•January•2023 www. NEWSBASE .com P13