{"id":152838,"date":"2026-06-12T08:30:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=152838"},"modified":"2026-06-12T08:30:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:30:06","slug":"with-central-asia-rising-john-lees-visit-was-well-timed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=152838","title":{"rendered":"With Central Asia rising, John Lee\u2019s visit was well timed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: China &#8211; South China Morning PostIn their 2022 book Sinostan, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen saw Central Asia as China\u2019s \u201cinadvertent empire\u201d. If that is true \u2013 and the five-country region embracing Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (informally called the C5) certainly sits at the heart of China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative \u2013 then Beijing could not have chosen a less noticed corner of the world atlas.<br \/>\nUnnoticed, perhaps, by almost everyone except Halford Mackinder, who in 1904 described&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/opinion\/asia-opinion\/article\/3356793\/central-asia-rising-john-lees-visit-was-well-timed?utm_source=rss_feed\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"feedzy-rss-link-icon\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: China &#8211; South China Morning PostIn their 2022 book Sinostan, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen saw Central Asia as China\u2019s \u201cinadvertent empire\u201d. If that is true \u2013 and the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152838"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}