The Importance of Security in China's Central Asia

When we look at Central Asia I think the first thing that comes to mind is essentially a security dimension in terms of China's interests. The nightmare scenario for Beijing would be if activists and separatist movements in Xinjiang would find support in newly appeared Central Asian political regimes. Back then it was only five countries, three countries of Central Asia that border China, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, China itself and Russia. That's why they decided to create this Shanghai five organization which is right now became Shanghai Corporation Organization. And here we see that China was investing a lot into energy sector of Central Asia building pipelines from Kazakhstan oil pipeline in the middle of 2000s. A bit later between Turkmenistan and