With Russia mired in a long war in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on China for supplies, Beijing is moving quickly to expand its sway in Central Asia, a region that was once in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.

随着俄罗斯在乌克兰陷入长期战争，并越来越依赖中国的供应，北京正在迅速扩大其在中亚的影响力，该地区一度属于克里姆林宫的势力范围。

Russia, for its part, is pushing back hard.

而俄罗斯正在奋力反击。

As the leaders of Central Asian countries meet with the presidents of China and Russia this week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, China’s rising presence is visible in the region. New rail lines and other infrastructure are being built, while trade and investment are rising.

本周，中亚国家领导人在哈萨克斯坦首都阿斯塔纳与中国和俄罗斯国家主席会晤，中国在该地区的崛起显而易见。新的铁路线和其他基础设施正在建设中，贸易和投资也在增长。

Flag-waving Kazakh children who sang in Chinese greeted Xi Jinping, China’s leader, upon his arrival in Astana on Tuesday. He praised ties with Kazakhstan as a friendship that has “endured for generations.”

周二，中国领导人习近平抵达阿斯塔纳时，哈萨克斯坦的孩子们挥舞着旗帜，唱着中文歌迎接他。他称赞中国与哈萨克斯坦的关系“世代友好”。

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is expected to arrive Wednesday for the start of the meeting in Astana, an annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional grouping dominated by Beijing. The forum was for years focused largely on security issues. But as the group has expanded its membership, China and Russia have used it as a platform to showcase their ambitions of reshaping a global order dominated by the United States.

俄罗斯总统普京预计将于周三抵达阿斯塔纳，参加上海合作组织的年度峰会。上海合作组织是一个由北京主导的地区组织。多年来，该论坛主要关注安全问题。但随着该组织成员的扩大，中国和俄罗斯已将其作为一个平台，用来展示重塑美国主导全球秩序的宏愿。

The group, which was established by China and Russia in 2001 with the Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has expanded in recent years to include Pakistan, India and Iran.

Even as China has expanded its economic influence across Central Asia, it still faces challenges to its diplomacy, as Russia seeks to tilt the balance of members in the Shanghai forum in its favor.

尽管中国扩大了在中亚的经济影响力，但在外交方面仍面临挑战，因为俄罗斯试图使上合组织成员国的平衡向着有利于自己的方向倾斜。

The leader of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is expected to attend the summit this year. He is Mr. Putin’s closest foreign ally, who relies heavily on Russia’s economic and political support to stay in power. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia has said that Belarus would be named a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at this year’s summit. That would be a minor diplomatic victory for the Kremlin.

A bigger setback for Beijing is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is skipping the summit this year. Mr. Modi plans to visit Moscow next week to hold his own discussions with Mr. Putin and is instead sending his minister of external affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to the summit in Astana.

对北京来说，更大的挫折是印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪将不参加今年的峰会。莫迪计划下周访问莫斯科与普京会谈，但他将派外交部长苏杰生参加在阿斯塔纳举行的峰会。

Coming after Mr. Putin’s recent trip to two of China’s other neighbors, North Korea and Vietnam, that upcoming trip by Mr. Modi to Moscow indicates that Mr. Putin is still able to weave his own diplomatic relationships separate from Beijing, said Theresa Fallon, the director of the Center for Russia, Europe, Asia Studies in Brussels.

“He’s saying, ‘I’ve got other options,’” Ms. Fallon said.

“他是在说，‘我还有其他选择，’”法伦说。

India had joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at Russia’s behest in 2017, when Pakistan also joined at the encouragement of China. But India’s relations with China have become chilly since then, after border skirmishes between their troops in 2020 and 2022.

While Mr. Modi had favored closer relations when he took office a decade ago, the two countries no longer even allow nonstop commercial flights between them.

尽管莫迪在10年前上任时曾表示希望两国建立更密切的关系，但现在两国之间甚至不再允许直飞航班。

India is becoming more concerned about the region’s geopolitical balance of power as China’s clout rises and Russia’s wanes, said Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London. China and Russia have also forged increasingly friendly relations with the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which has run the country since the departure of American forces in 2021 and has long sided with Pakistan against India.

伦敦国王学院国际关系教授哈什·潘特说，随着中国影响力的上升和俄罗斯影响力的减弱，印度越来越关注该地区的地缘政治力量平衡。中国和俄罗斯也与阿富汗塔利班政府建立了日益友好的关系。自2021年美军撤离以来，塔利班政府一直统治着阿富汗，长期以来一直站在巴基斯坦一边对抗印度。

“So far as Russia was the dominant player, India was fine with it,” Mr. Pant said. “But as China becomes more important economically and more potent in Central Asia, and Russia becomes the junior partner, India’s concerns would be rising.”

“只要俄罗斯还占据主导地位，印度就没有意见，”潘特说。“但随着中国在中亚的经济地位越来越重要，影响力越来越大，而俄罗斯成为次要合作伙伴，印度的担忧将会增加。”

In broader terms, however, Russia’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is largely a rear-guard action to counterbalance the region’s seemingly inexorable shift toward China. Mr. Putin relies heavily on China to keep his economy and military production afloat amid Western sanctions, and over the years his government has come to accept Beijing’s growing ties to Central Asia’s former Soviet Republics. The massive gap between Russia’s and Beijing’s economic muscle makes direct competition in Central Asia futile for the Kremlin.

然而，从更广泛的角度来看，俄罗斯加入上海合作组织在很大程度上是一种防卫行动，以制衡该地区似乎不可阻挡地向中国倾斜的趋势。在西方的制裁下，普京严重依赖中国来维持经济和军工生产，多年来，他的政府已经开始接受北京与中亚前苏联加盟共和国日益密切的联系。俄罗斯和中国经济实力之间的巨大差距使克里姆林宫无法在中亚地区展开直接竞争。

Instead, the Kremlin has sought to maintain a measure of leverage in its former satellites on issues that remain vital to its national interests, including by attending largely symbolic events like the Astana summit. On Wednesday, Mr. Putin will hold six separate meetings with Asian heads of state in Astana, according to Russian state media.

相反，克里姆林宫试图在对其国家利益至关重要的问题上，对俄罗斯的前卫星国保持一定程度的影响力，包括参加阿斯塔纳峰会等主要是象征性的活动。据俄罗斯官方媒体报道，周三，普京将在阿斯塔纳与亚洲各国元首分别举行六次会晤。

Russia wants to maintain access to Central Asian markets to circumvent Western sanctions. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has obtained billions of dollars’ worth of Western goods by using Central Asian intermediaries. These include consumer goods like luxury cars, as well as electronic components that have been used in military production.

俄罗斯希望继续利用中亚市场绕过西方的制裁。自入侵乌克兰以来，俄罗斯通过中亚的中间人获得了价值数十亿美元的西方商品。这些产品包括豪华汽车等消费品，以及用于军工生产的电子元件。

Russia also relies heavily on millions of Central Asian migrants to prop up its economy, as well as to rebuild the occupied parts of Ukraine.

俄罗斯还严重依赖数以百万计的中亚移民来支撑其经济，并重建其占领的乌克兰地区。

Finally, Russia wants to cooperate with the governments of the largely Muslim nations of Central Asia on security, and the threat of terrorism in particular. These threats were laid bare earlier this year, when a group of Tajik citizens killed 145 people at a Moscow concert hall in the deadliest terror attack in Russia in more than a decade. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

最后，俄罗斯希望与中亚以穆斯林为主的国家政府在安全问题上进行合作，尤其是在恐怖主义威胁方面。今年早些时候，一伙塔吉克人在莫斯科音乐厅杀害了145人，这是俄罗斯十多年来最致命的恐怖袭击，将威胁暴露无遗。伊斯兰国宣称对此次袭击负责。

Russia and China do not just compete in Central Asia. They often cooperate, because they perceive a shared interest in having stable regimes in the region that have little or no coordination with Western militaries, said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research group.

俄罗斯和中国在中亚不仅是竞争关系。研究机构卡内基俄罗斯欧亚中心主任亚历山大·加布耶夫说，它们经常合作，因为它们认为，在该地区保持与西方军队很少合作或从不合作的稳定政权，符合它们的共同利益。

“They see regional stability anchored in authoritarian regimes that are secular, non-Muslim and, to a degree, repressive at home,” he said.

“他们认为，地区稳定的基础是世俗的、非穆斯林的专制政权，而且在一定程度上在国内实行镇压，”他说。

William Fierman, a professor emeritus of Central Asian studies at Indiana University, said that Beijing also faces deep-seated public concern in Central Asia that China may use its huge population and migration to overwhelm the sparsely populated region. Soviet authorities fanned those suspicions for decades, and even a younger generation that did not grow up under Soviet rule now appears to share these concerns, he said.

印第安纳大学中亚研究荣休教授威廉·菲尔曼表示，中国也面临着中亚公众根深蒂固的担忧，他们担心即中国可能会利用其庞大的人口和移民来挤垮这个人口稀少的地区。他说，苏联当局曾持续数十年煽动这样的怀疑，甚至没有在苏联统治下长大的年轻一代现在似乎也有同样的担忧。

In Astana, the elephant in the room is likely to be the war in Ukraine. Few experts expect much public discussion of the war at a forum dominated by Beijing, given its indirect support for the Russian war effort.

在阿斯塔纳，房间里的大象很可能是乌克兰战争。鉴于中国间接支持俄罗斯的战争努力，很少有专家认为，在这个由中国主导的论坛上，会有很多关于这场战争的公开讨论。

Mr. Xi will also use his visit to push his vision of building better transportation links across the region, said Wu Xinbo, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. After the summit, Mr. Xi is scheduled to make a state visit to Tajikistan, where the U.S. State Department recently estimated that over 99 percent of foreign investment comes from China.

上海复旦大学国际问题研究所所长吴心伯说，习近平还将利用这次访问来推动他在整个地区建立更好的交通联系的愿景。峰会结束后，习近平将对塔吉克斯坦进行国事访问。美国国务院最近估计，塔吉克斯坦99%以上的外国投资来自中国。

Many of China’s investments in Central Asia are in infrastructure. China concluded an agreement with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan last month to build a new rail line across both countries. The rail line will give China a shortcut for overland trade with Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and beyond them to the Mideast and Europe. China has tried for the past 12 years to expand rail traffic across Russia to carry its exports to Europe, but now wants to add a southerly route.

中国在中亚的许多投资都是在基础设施方面。上个月，中国与吉尔吉斯斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦签署了一项协议，在两国之间修建一条新的铁路线。这条铁路将为中国与伊朗、阿富汗和土库曼斯坦的陆路贸易提供一条捷径，并通过这些国家进入中东和欧洲。过去12年里，中国一直试图扩大穿越俄罗斯的铁路交通，将其出口产品运往欧洲，但现在还想在南侧增加一条线路。

“From a long-term, strategic perspective, this railway is very important,” said Niva Yau, a nonresident fellow specializing in China’s relations with Central Asia at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research group.

“从长期战略角度来看，这条铁路非常重要，”华盛顿研究机构大西洋理事会专门研究中国与中亚关系的非常驻研究员邱芷恩说。