ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the convergence, possible overlapping and/or competition of interests between China, the US, Russia and the European regional integration projects and initiatives in Central Asia. In all of these projects, economics plays a key role. The main postulate is that the New Silk Road is in itself an ambiguous concept that encompasses different views on Central Asian regionalism according to the interests of each country. Among the various projects that coexist in post-Soviet space, it is China that seems to offer the most promising proposal for regional integration. Judging by the failure of the previous EurAsEC, the Russian project of the Eurasian Economic Union seems not to have learned the lesson. The US project is mere rhetoric, with a discourse of vague achievements. Overall, China's march to the West may be complementary to the efforts of an EU seeking the Eastern way. The Belt and Road Initiative has a lot to offer to Europe, and the latter very much to gain by revisiting Mackinder’s heartland. The study proposed here is based on a hermeneutical analysis, supported by the conceptual lenses of the Copenhagen School.
