Sinophobia, sausage, and freedom: Making sense of protests in Kazakhstan

China and Kazakhstan on a map. The picture is taken from Public Domain

Waiting in line for a job interview in one of the largest Chinese companies in Atyrau, Kazakhstan, Aibanu Kuntuarova couldn’t help but feel intimidated. Out of seven hopeful office managers, she was the only one without a college diploma. On top of that, some of the other candidates spoke both Chinese and English fluently. Despite the competition, Aibanu landed the job, to her own surprise.

It didn’t take long for the young girl to realize that diplomas, languages, and skills didn’t matter in her new job. Her main responsibility was to sit at the desk and look pretty.

‘Even though salary and benefits were very good, I couldn’t stay there any longer,’ says Aibanu who is now a popular blogger and journalist in Kazakhstan. Her articles about the inside world of large Chinese companies in Atyrau, businessmen and their mistresses, hotel rooms and one night stands, have gained a big following. She argues against gender equality, calls for implementation of ‘closed door’ policies, talks about preserving the ‘national gene’ and ‘pure blood’, and likes to reiterate that she is ‘not a racist.’ Aibanu believes that seducing and marrying young Kazakh girls is part of the larger Chinese policy of expansion in Central Asia.

You know who they are

If reality is constructed by individuals and groups in society, then Chinese threat is indeed a very real thing in Kazakhstan. In April and May of 2016 the former Soviet state has seen the largest wave of protests in its 25 years history. Thousands of people gathered on streets demanding cancellation of the new legal reform that allowed foreigners to rent land in Kazakhstan for up to 25 years. More specifically, people were demanding that government didn’t rent or sell the land to Chinese investors.

The first large protest against the land reform happened on April 24 in Atyrau. The videos of the demonstration are now available on Youtube. On one of them, the leader of the political opposition, chairman of Nationwide Social Democratic Party, Jarmakhan Tuyakbay warns the crowd about an imminent threat of Chinese expansion. He points to the growing number of Chinese companies in Kazakhstan as a proof.

‘Who owns the land? Who owns our riches? Is it in the hands of one mighty person?’ asks Tuyakbay hinting at Kazakhstan’s longtime president Nursultan Nazarbayev, and continues, ‘Or, is it in the hands of some foreigners, I will not say their names or their ethnicity, you know who they are.’

‘Save our riches for future generations, save them for the times when everyone will be able to benefit from them, not the few who live in palaces,’ says Tyakbay and as he ends his speech the crowd erupts in applause.

On another video, an elderly Kazakh woman, one of the protesters, delivers a speech of her own in the midst of the crowd. Shouts of approval answer her every proclamation: ‘The land belongs to people!’ ‘The deputies only do what those in power tell them to!’ ‘I would rather die!’ ‘Let them shoot me!’

‘Let them shoot me!’ she repeats much louder and opens her jacket wide to demonstrate where the bullet would go. What she says next is impossible to discern over the chants of ‘Ka-zakh-stan! Ka-zakh-stan!’

Handling the miscommunication

Over the next several weeks similar protests were held all across the country – an unprecedented scale for Kazakhstan. The previous largest demonstration in the young country’s history happened in December of 2011 in the city of Zhanaozen when workers from Ozenmunaigas oil field went on strike demanding higher wages and safer conditions. That time, however, the protests didn’t spread to other cities.

This time, in an even more unexpected turn of events, the government actually listened to people’s demands. On May 5, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced a moratorium on controversial Land Code amendments. ‘If our people, ordinary Kazakhstanis, do not understand and do not trust in these decisions, it means they are [the decisions] wrong,’ he said addressing officials during a specially convened high-level meeting.

Minister of National Economy Yerbolat Dosayev, who was responsible for designing the law amendments, resigned during the meeting. His deputy Kairbek Uskenbayev, it was decided, was also to be dismissed.

Nazarbayev explained to the former minister that the reform itself was not the problem. The real problem he said, was the way it was miscommunicated to the public. ‘You had to bring [information] to the people who do not understand that there is no sale of agricultural lands. It was complete speculation, which means that we did not properly explain it to the concrete target groups,’ he said.

It was clear for the president that miscommunications with the public can have dire consequences. And so it was announced during the meeting that a special government body, ministry of information and communication will be created. The new minister started his job next day. On the same day, opposition website ‘Radio Azattyq,’ funded by the US government, published a story titled ‘Ministry of information or ministry of truth?’

Political analyst Aydos Sarym offered his view on the new ministry in an interview to ‘Radio Azattyq’. According to him, nothing will really change, the new institution will mainly monitor social media, which the government was already doing anyway.

No freedom, no sausage

‘When people choose sausage over freedom they end up without either.’ The phrase coined by Soviet-Russian satirist Mihail Zhvanetski reflects main postulates of the Soviet regime. In this metaphor sausage represents everything material, while freedom stands for ephemeral, spiritual values.

According to Soviet propaganda, people in western states chose sausage over freedom, they ripped the benefits of the capitalist system, but they gave up the power to authorities. Soviet citizens, on the other hand, didn’t have too many luxuries, but they were set on the path to true freedom, communism. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the hopes and aspirations of communism collapsed with it. The freedom was gone, so the new governments needed to provide sausage.

In Kazakhstan, the ‘sausage over freedom’ logic was adopted and used as an excuse for country’s lackluster democratic development for 25 years. President Nazarbayev put it more leniently in an interview with Euronews in 2010: ‘Economy first, politics later.’

For the most part, this simple strategy worked. Thanks to its vast oil and mineral resources Kazakhstan was able to outperform its neighbors and become the largest economy in Central Asia. In 1998 the capital was relocated from Almaty in the southern part of the country to a small town of Akmola in the north. The town got a new name, Astana, and a massive influx of budget investments. In less than a decade, a whole new megapolis rose from what used to be Akmola, complete with skyscrapers, business-centers, and modern shopping malls. Astana became more than a city, it was a symbol of Kazakhstan’s prosperity under Nazarbayev’s leadership.

The oil-fuelled fairytale ended abruptly in 2015. The decline in oil prices resulted in a heavy slowdown in Kazakh economy, with GDP growth plummeting from 4.1 percent to 1.2 percent in 12 months. National currency Tenge was labeled ‘world’s most volatile’ by Bloomberg, as it fell 33 percent in a year.

Two years earlier the US-funded NGO Freedom House published a report on Kazakhstan’s ‘cunning democracy.’ According to the report, the situation in the country ‘has worsened with regards to freedom of speech, including peaceful assembly, civil and political rights, the right to freedom of religion or belief and many others.’

The sausage was gone, and the freedom wasn’t there to begin with.

A little context

Despite the economic and political failures, protests in Atyrau in 2016 caught the government by surprise and raised eyebrows outside the country too. Kazakhs, like other post-Soviet nations, are not really big on protesting. During the 70 years long socialist period, dictators ruled with iron hands and people could not get their hands on most basic products. Still, protests were rare.

What finally caused Kazakhs to riot in 1986 was the dismissal of an ethnic Kazakh Dinmukhammed Kunayev from the position of the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and appointment of outsider Gennady Kolbin. Protests lasted from December 16 to December 19 and were later dubbed ‘Jeltoqsan’ (Kazakh for ‘December’). Even though the independence came five years later, Kazakh history books depict Jeltoqsan as a historic turning point that led to it.

In 2011 thousands of protesters took to the streets in the city of Zhanaozen clashing violently with police. In an academic paper published in Journal of Eurasian Studies Dossym Satpayev and Тolganay Umbetaliyeva argue that unequal pay was the source of the tensions. The population of the small predominantly ethnically Kazakh city had almost doubled in a decade. Many of the new arrivals were foreign specialists attracted by the booming oil industry and the employment opportunities it created. From a perspective of Zhanaozen citizens, foreigners came to their city, took better jobs, and got paid better. The cost of living in Zhanaozen rose significantly thanks to higher demand and purchasing power, all the while most of the locals were still making significantly less than foreigners.

Just like in Almaty in 1991 and in Zhanaozen in 2011, the general mood in Atyrau in 2016 was that of discontent with the economic and political situation. All that was needed for discontent to become a riot was a catalyst.

[endif]--Enter sinophobia

Soviet propaganda cartoon depicting China (on the right) and NATO (on the left) playing piano together. The play is called ‘Antisovetism.’ The picture is taken from Public Domain

The roots of sinophobia in Kazakhstan go back to late 60s and 70s when China started challenging the Soviet Union to become the leading socialist country in the world.

The relationship between the two countries was at its worst in 1969 during the seven months long border conflict. Soviet propaganda machine started rolling. Anti Maoist posters were published and distributed in the country letting everyone know that there is a new enemy. China was perceived to be even worse than the US, it was a country that betrayed Soviets and socialist ideas. The propaganda stopped eventually, as the relationship between the countries gradually improved. Still, Soviet Union was in decline and China was on the rise.

In the 90s, the newly independent Kazakhstan was flooded by cheap products from neighboring China. The quality of ‘Made in China’ products was infamously low. Clothing items that will lose their color after the first wash, electronics that will break in a month, packaged food that will give you poisoning. The gossip was that China is deliberately trying to destroy Kazakhstan with affordable but harmful goods.

In the meantime, China kept producing double-digit GDP growth and improving its military capabilities. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data, between 2000 and 2015 Chinese military expenditure increased tenfold making it second only to the US. In 2016 World Bank reported that ‘China recently became the second largest economy and is increasingly playing an important and influential role in the global economy.’’

The rise of China coincided with the rise of nationalism in Kazakhstan. After the communist dream collapsed, the government in Kazakhstan started actively rebuilding the nation. History books were rewritten, the works of writers and poets prosecuted and killed during the Soviet era were published for the first time, national arts, traditions, sports were rediscovered. Kazakh culture was out in the open for the first time in more than 100 years, no longer tied by the chains of forced russification. As a result, Kazakhs developed a national unity, a strong sense of ‘us’, and with it, a strong sense of ‘others.’

After the demonstration in Atyrau series of spontaneous protests swept across the country. Dozens of arrested activists and several viral videos later new date was announced for a countrywide demonstration, May 21. An invitation to join the ‘Day of Justice’ was distributed through the popular messenger app WhatsApp.

The day came and people took to the streets. No violence and bloodshed occurred, although more than thousand activists were detained.

Meanwhile, soon after the protest in Atyrau business people and officials met in Astana for the Kazakhstani-Chinese business forum. During the meeting, Ji Rui, CEO of Chinese Xinjiang Ji Ruixiang Investment Co. Ltd, announced plans to plant grains and oilseeds on 66 thousand hectares in Kazakhstan. The project is to be implemented jointly with Kazakh company.

Kazakh mainstream media ignored the forum.

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