Nations facing chronic water shortages might look to Chinese investment to upgrade their creaking Soviet-era infrastructure, observers say
5-MIN READ5-MIN ListenLaura ZhouPublished: 6:00am, 28 May 2026Central Asia is tilting more decisively towards China as geopolitical uncertainty deepens, with Beijing’s expanding influence recasting the former Soviet states’ strategic orientation. In the first of a three-part series, Laura Zhou looks at how vulnerabilities laid bare by the Iran war might make the region look to China for water security.
It has also exposed the vulnerability of the world’s most indispensable resource: water.
These risks could also resonate in neighbouring Central Asia, where governments grappling with worsening water shortages might look to China for help in modernising their irrigation systems and managing shared rivers, observers said.
Unlike Persian Gulf countries, which rely on desalination, landlocked Central Asia depends largely on glacier-fed rivers originating in the Tian Shan mountains shared with China.
Central Asia’s water supplies are chronically strained due to “the same factors that have plagued Iran’s water supply long before the onset of hostilities”, according to Oleg Abdurashitov, chief policy adviser at Dubai-based independent public affairs consultancy Outpost Eurasia. These include climate change, population growth and increasing urbanisation.
