Presence without Encounters: Pending Futures and the Chinese Non(engagement) in the Tajik Pamirs

Abstract

China’s presence in the Tajik Pamirs is a paradox. While Chinese capital, geopolitical interests, and grandiose plans for new Silk Roads shape ambitions and fears, actual encounters with Chinese business people, engineers, or tourists remain rare and brief. In this context, people in the Pamirs find themselves waiting for pending futures conjured up in relation to China. Considering a future free economic zone, China trade across the Kulma Pass, and an old silver mine recently bought by a Chinese company, I analyze the paralyzing limbo Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region is facing at this particular historical conjuncture.