Matthew Erie (University of Oxford) in conversation with Raffaello Pantucci, author (with Alexandros Petersen) of Sinostan, China’s Inadvertent Empire (OUP: April 2022).

Seeking to gain a better understanding of what’s happening on the ground, Raffaello Pantucci and his late co-author, academic, writer and geopolitical energy expert, Alexandros Peterson, set out to track China’s footprint and growing influence across the Central Asian steppe. What they discovered was signs of China everywhere, even in the most remote outpost. Through conversations with Chinese traders in latter day Silk Road bazaars, Afghan archaeologists charged with saving centuries-old Buddhist ruins before being swept away by mining projects, young Central Asians learning Mandarin, and officials in all five Central Asian capitals, they bear witness to a region increasingly transformed by Beijing’s presence. Based on over a decade’s writing, research, and travel, Pantucci and Peterson offer a rare glimpse into China’s expanding economic, cultural and political power in the Eurasian heartland and an illustration of what it means for those living both within and beyond the boundaries of its ‘inadvertent empire’.

Raffaello Pantucci is an internationally acclaimed foreign and security policy expert. He is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore and a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.