On 19-20 October, UH Chinese Studies successfully organized an international conference “The Rising Soft and Hard Power of China in Central Asia” at the University of Helsinki. Our keynote speaker was Prof. Robert Hamilton from the US Army War College. His speech concerned the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of the former Soviet Central Asian states, a de facto division of labor has emerged between Russia and China in this region. Under this arrangement, Russia has focused on security – acting as a de facto “sheriff” – while China has been the “banker”, focusing on economic and infrastructure development. But the factors which incentivized this “compartmentalized cooperation” are vanishing fast. American involvement in the region, which both Moscow and Beijing resisted, has declined precipitously. At the global level and in Central Asia, a power transition is underway, with Russian military and economic power eroding, accelerated by the war in Ukraine, as China’s power rises. Can Moscow and Beijing manage this power transition and continue to cooperate in Central Asia, or is the region destined to become a zone of geopolitical competition once again? You may watch Prof. Hamilton’s speech on our Youtube.