A Chinese expert on Central Asia said China’s neighbors bordering northwestern China’s Xinjiang pose no imminent threat to the Belt and Road Initiative, hitting back at Western comments that play down China’s ambitious plan.

Speaking at a seminar in Beijing on July 1, Zhu Yongbiao, an associate professor at the Institute for Central Asia Studies at Lanzhou University, said Central Asia’s terrorism situation hasn’t worsened, even though the number of terrorist attacks saw a slight increase.

In 2016, when several major world powers were shaken by multiple attacks, Central Asia only reported a total of four terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. From 1992 to 2016, there were some 250 attacks, dozens of which occurred between 1994 and 1997 when Tajikistan was fighting a civil war, Zhu’s data showed.

Central Asian countries were given a relatively low ranking on the 2016 Global Terrorism Index, issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace of Australia, which shows that their security situation is controllable. Specifically, China ranked 23rd on the index and Afghanistan, 2nd. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan sat at 94th, 56th, and 84th, respectively, while Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan ranked at the bottom of list, 114th and 130th, respectively.

“Compared with neighboring regions, the risk of terrorism is low,” Zhu said. “The threat actually comes from peripheral areas, such as Afghanistan. In general, the security situation is not worsening, as some Western scholars argue.”

But the threat of attacks in the region is real, and Chinese companies or personnel could become targets.

“The Belt and Road Initiative can actually help speed up economic growth in Central Asia with expanded investment in the region,” Zhu said.