Cash-Rich China Courts the Caspian

The global downturn is spreading to Central Asia. It may lead to a marked shift of fortune in the Great Game for control of Caspian energy reserves. On the surface, the intensity of the rivalries may appear to have subsided, as the principal protagonists - Russia and the West - brood over the precarious state of their own finances and prioritize fixing their domestic economies.

But the slowing down of the Great Game bears a deceptive appearance. China gains out of any changing equations. Of all the major economies of the world, it is in China that the government's 4 trillion yuan (US$585 billion) stimulus package may have begun