Underpinning China’s Approach in Institutionalizing Interdependence and Regional Order in Central Asia

Under the administration of XI Jinping, China has significantly reshaped its extended patterns of interaction in Central Asia across security, institutional governance and development. This increased engagement has already observed in existing scholarly literature under economic perspective, whereas shaping regional order through institutional mechanism remains rather unresearched. By using the lens of complex interdependence theory, the study examines Beijing’s approach towards the Central Asia, particularly, focusing on how issue linkage, policy coordination and institutional interaction influence governance mechanism and outcomes in the region. It further analyzes how Chinese engagement intersects with governance outcomes related to stability, peace and strong institution in relations to the targets of SDG-16. This research utilizes qualitative document analysis and process tracing of official policy papers and secondary literature, dealing Central Asia as a regional case with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and institutions under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as embedded units of analysis. The results show that Chinese institutional mechanism supports patterns of asymmetric interdependence which is contributory to an evolving regional order in the region pigeonholed by institution-based governance, cooperation and infrastructural development or connectivity. An extensive debate is provided under this research on institutional mechanism and governance, regional order and Chinese foreign course of action by emphasizing on the role of institution in linking development and security.