The leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are in Xian for a two-day meeting.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the central city of Xian, where he is hosting his first summit with the leaders of five Central Asian nations, underscoring Beijing’s growing influence in a region Russia has long considered time your own yard.
The two-day event brings together leaders from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, whose countries are crucial to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
It is celebrated in Xian, the historic city that marked the beginning of the legendary Silk Road.
Yu Jun, deputy director-general of the European and Central Asian Affairs Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a press conference on Tuesday that the leaders will exchange their views on establishing a cooperation mechanism and on international and regional issues of interest. Several agreements are expected to be signed, he said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Although the summit coincides with the high-profile G7 summit in Japan, analysts said the significance of China’s Central Asia summit was that it underscored the changing patterns of influence in former Soviet states where Russia has long been influential.
“I would argue that the Ukraine conflict is more of an accelerator of pre-existing trends in the region, the biggest of which is China displacing Russia as the largest hegemon in the region,” Bradley Jardine, managing director of the Oxus Society for Central. Asian Affairs in Washington, DC told Al Jazeera.
“Many of the regional governments are increasingly skeptical about Russia’s goals in the region and China has made attempts to reassure them about its sovereignty.”
China’s General Administration of Customs released data on Wednesday showing China’s import and export volume with Central Asian countries totaled 173.05 billion yuan ($24.8 billion) in the first four months of 2023, an increase of 37.3 percent compared to the same period last year.
About 55 percent of China’s imports were energy products such as coal, crude oil and natural gas, according to state media.
Still, some analysts said China’s influence in the region did not mean Moscow was any less important.
China and Russia agreed to a “borderless” partnership last February, less than three weeks before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Xi Jinping was in Moscow in March where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and signed an agreement to take their ties into a “new era” of cooperation.
Li Yongquan, director of Eurasian research at the State Council’s China Development Research Center, told the state-run Global Times on Thursday that “for 30 years, Central Asia has been in a complicated geopolitical atmosphere. One of the reasons why regional countries can prosper despite multiple unstable factors is because China and Russia have cooperated to maintain security and stability in the region. China and Russia have a shared interest in this matter.”
