Staunton, July 11 – Eight out of ten
firms involved in the mining sector in Kyrgyzstan are in fact Chinese
enterprises even though they have Kyrgyz names and in nominal positions of
authority, according to Kanat Ermatov, director of Kyrgyzstan’s agency for geology
and minimal resources.
On the one hand, this is part of the
rapidly expanding Chinese role in the economies of Kyrgyzstan and other Central
Asian countries. But on the other, it reflects both local hostility to such
Chinese penetration and an effort by Beijing to operate below the radar screen
of the local populations and governments.
Ermatov told a Bishkek roundtable
yesterday that if one looks at firms in gold mining and other forms of mineral
prospecting, one finds that “behind the back of the Kyrgyz” owner are Chinese
in 80 percent of the cases. The Kyrgyz “signs the papers and bears
responsibility,” but the Chinese have control (kyrtag.kg/news/detail.php?ID=275975&sphrase_id=6724).
One Kyrgyz company official called for a
ban on this practice, an appeal that was supported by Kyrgyzstan’s economics
minister Adilet Akmataliyev. But Ermatov said he was opposed because such a ban
would almost certainly prove “ineffective,” a suggestion that the Chinese would
just find another workaround.
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