Amir Timur in Shanghai: locating agency in Uzbekistan-China normative encounters

This PhD was inspired by the observation that a Eurocentric ‘Russia bias’ has led scholars to overlook the role of alternative foreign actors such as the People’s Republic of China in Central Asia. Specifically, many tenets of the literature on Uzbekistan’s international behaviour, for example its proneness to fluctuations in relations with foreign powers, can be disproved by looking at its relations with China. Hence, this thesis investigates the reasons why Uzbekistan’s relations with China have remained stable – progressing to ever-more successful cooperation – in contrast to the increasing fragility of relations with other powers.

I found that the PRC developed a multi/bilateral framework of relations with Uzbekistan that allowed ample spaces for normative agency, which in turn contributed to building a set of flexible normative frameworks, whose locally embedded nature proved resilient to change. I also maintain that Uzbekistan’s identity-building rests on pre-colonial imaginaries of power and resistance that downsizes Chinese structural power.