Among the great powers vying for influence in post-Soviet Central Asia, China has been the quietest, most systematic, and most dangerous. With its booming economy, growing population, and relentless need for energy, China needs Central Asia for its future energy security, as well as for expanded trade and for securing its restive Xinjiang Province.

ASTANA (Reuters) - More than half of Kazakhstan's 9 million voters have backed a referendum to extend veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev's rule of the oil-rich Central Asian state for a third decade, organisers of the plan said on Wednesday.

Pro-democracy protesters have been seized in Kazakhstan, as a campaign to keep Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president, in power for another decade without elections claimed the support of more than half the country's voters.

Kazakhstan's president is preparing to back a move to cancel elections in the oil-rich former Soviet Republic until 2020, his chief spokesperson said on Tuesday, confirming that the self-styled citizen's initiative has the full support of the country's leadership.

THE workings of Kazakhstan's political machine are regrettably now rather familiar. An obscure group of concerned citizens gathers in a distant corner of the country and there, for the good of the nation, makes a ground-breaking proposal. Ever receptive to the people's will, the authorities in the capital rush to make this new idea their own and forward it to the president. The wise and caring leader must then decide whether to stick to the letter of the constitution or bend it to do the good people's bidding.

ALMATY (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday condemned Kazakhstan's move to extend the rule of veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to 2020, bypassing a 2012 election, and said this would be a blow to democracy.