Russia wary of China's advance into Central Asia

Shymkent, Kazakhstan

SLOWLY but surely, a four-lane highway is beginning to take shape on the sparsely populated Central Asian steppe. Soviet-era cars, trucks and ageing long-distance buses weave past modern yellow bulldozers, cranes and towering construction drills, labouring under Chinese supervision to build a road that could one day stretch from eastern Asia to Western Europe.

This small stretch of blacktop, running past potato fields, bare dun-coloured rolling hills and fields of grazing cattle, is a symbol of China's march westward, an advance into Central Asia that is steadily wresting the region from Russia's embrace.