Afghanistan Backdrop to Xi's Central Asia Visit The Chinese president visits Central Asia this week amid concerns that a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan could mean a destabilizing exodus of foreign radical fighters from the war zone to homelands closer to China's borders. With the pullout deadline just 16 months away, China's leaders share widespread concerns that Kabul's own forces won't be able to maintain security or that foreign fighters who were focused on fighting U.S. troops will now head elsewhere, including other fragile Central Asian nations or even northwestern China. Xi Jinping's trip, starting Tuesday, also is seen as an attempt to shore up China's trade and relationships with governments in the region, extending Beijing's influence in an area traditionally dominated by Russia. "It's vitally important for China's development to have prosperity, peace and stability in Central Asia," said Li Xin, a Russia and Central Asia specialist at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies. The worry is the withdrawal of U.S. troops will have a spillover effect. Xi's visits to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are his first to the region since taking office as president in March. He'll end the trip in Kyrgyzstan where he will attend the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Russian- and Chinese-dominated grouping that Beijing hopes will boost its diplomatic influence in the region to better match its already considerable economic clout. China surged past the EU as Central Asia's biggest trading partner in 2010, and did $40 billion in commerce with the five-nation bloc in 2011. Much of that comes in the form of oil and gas, with two pipelines carrying supplies to China from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. China, for its part, provides economic assistance and much-needed investment to meet the desperate infrastructure needs of the region and its 66 million people, helming projects such as the 2.3-kilometer (1.4-mile) Shar-Shar Tunnel linking Tajikistan to China. Ensuring energy supplies and protecting its investment rank high among China's reasons for wanting to ensure Central Asian stability. Even more important is its desire to block support for anti-government radicals among the Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group that is native to China's vast northwestern region of Xinjiang and whose members share religious, cultural and linguistic ties to the people of Central Asia. Uighurs have been fighting a low-level insurgency in China, fired by resentment of ethnic Han Chinese dominance and a form of imported radical Islam that cuts against the grain of their region's traditional moderate sufi beliefs. Their hardline Islamic sentiments are shared by Central Asian groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, some of which preach violent overthrow of their governments. This year has been particularly bloody in Xinjiang, with scores killed and hundreds arrested in raids, attacks and riots. It isn't clear what is fueling the spike in bloodshed, but authorities have shown their unease by boosting security in the region. "Beijing is consumed by insecurity," said Andrew Scobell, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation in Arlington, Virginia. China's greatest fear is linkups between internal challenges and external threats, notably the Uighur diaspora that spills across national borders.