China in Central Asia and cooperation as a geopolitical code.
political geography; geopolitics; infrastructure projects; defense.
The political and economic events of the last thirty years have significantly altered the organization of the world space. Associated with this change in territorial planning and world borders, the rise of countries hitherto classified as "Third World" or "developing" established a new pattern of relationship among state actors. If, previously, these links were verticalized from the North to the Global South, with the North defining the references of a social-economic model to be followed by the South, between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, this paradigm is broken with a new model of collaboration between countries in progressive growth at that time, such as Brazil, China and Russia. It is precisely this partnership between the Global South that marks the contemporary geopolitical approach of the Chinese towards their numerous partners. In this research, we seek to interpret as the cooperation agreements, in the area of defense and infrastructure (or regional integration), that Beijing signs with the countries of Central Asia, proclaimed independent in 1991, demonstrate the different phases and faces of Chinese geopolitics for this region, which has a strategic geographical position, being situated between the easternmost part of the Asian continent and the European continent, as well as having connections with the Middle East. To this end, we seek to highlight the agreements between these state actors in the last twenty years, made through both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road Iniative. from international institutions' databases, news at state and/or civil news agencies and projects available on the website of Chinese development banks, we have been able to map projects that exemplify the strategies of contemporary Chinese geopolitics.