Why does China have interests in Central Asia?

1) To promote cultural exchange
2) To establish military bases
3) Due to the region's oil resources
4) To develop tourism

Choose the correct answer from the given options:

3

China has interests in Central Asia because of the region's oil resources.

The Central Asian Republics are areas with vast hydrocarbon resources, which have brought them economic benefits. Central Asia has also become a zone of competition between outside powers and oil companies. The region is next to Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and close to West Asia. After 11 September 2001, the US wanted military bases in the region and paid the governments of all Central Asian states to hire bases and to allow aeroplanes to fly over their territory during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, Russia perceives these states as its ‘Near Abroad’ and believes that they should be under Russian influence. China has interests here because of the oil resources, and the Chinese have begun to settle around the borders and conduct trade. In Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into two, with the Czechs and the Slovaks forming independent countries. But the most severe conflict took place in the Balkan republics of Yugoslavia. After 1991, it broke apart with several provinces like Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina declaring independence. Ethnic Serbs opposed this and a massacre of non-Serb Bosnians followed. The NATO intervention and the bombing of Yugoslavia followed the inter-ethnic civil war.