China’s deepening ties with Central Asia highlight a growing strategic partnership that blends security, economic integration, and multilateral diplomacy within a shifting multipolar world.
While developing relations with China has become one of the key foreign policy priorities for the Central Asian countries, in contrast, China has paid attention to relations with the region in several institutional and structural dimensions.
In 2022, officials and leaders of China and Central Asia met at the “Central Asia and China” online summit and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Samarkand.
The China-Central Asia Summit in 2023 and the activation of the China-Central Asia Permanent Secretariat were milestones in multilateral cooperation.
China has placed Central Asia at the forefront of its neighborhood diplomacy, and in the past year, all five Central Asian presidents have held bilateral and multilateral meetings with senior Chinese leaders in Kazakhstan and China.
The second China-Central Asia Summit in June 2025, with the signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Eternal Cooperation, demonstrated trust, elevated dialogue, and strengthened China-Central Asia’s beneficial cooperation.
Xi Jinping spoke of the China-Central Asia spirit and mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual benefit, and mutual assistance to jointly pursue modernization, win-win cooperation, and strive for common development, helping each other in times of need.
In this approach, Beijing also seeks to increase mutual support and mutual assistance in maintaining independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity with the countries of the region. Also, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, and Iran), Beijing pays attention to the importance of Central Asia in geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions.
China, in the form of SCO, also considers Central Asia as the core area of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The recent Tianjin Declaration’s attention to “profound historical changes” in the international arena the evolution of the international system towards a “multipolar world” also expresses China’s geopolitical goals in Central Asia in order to confront the West.
Given the growing willingness of Central Asian countries to cooperate with BRICS and the presence of China, Russia, and Iran in BRICS, China can use BRICS as a format for multilateral and beneficial cooperation in the region.
Knowing about the important variables, such as being adjacent to the Central Asian region and border influence, Chinese leaders have made this region one of the main priorities of their foreign policy. Beijing supports the efforts of countries in the region to maintain peace, security, and stability and to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
Beijing is also pursuing a security framework for peace and tranquility, strengthening regional security management, countering approaches such as separatist movements in Xinjiang, countering terrorism, separatism, and extremism, and assisting Central Asian countries in combating terrorism. In this regard, in addition to expanding security interactions, China is the second-largest arms supplier in the region after Russia.
Economy and Geoeconomics
Part of China’s ongoing engagement with the region is within the framework of the “Look to Eurasia” strategy and reducing dependence on US-dominated sea routes in Asia.
In line with its independent economic and foreign policy and economic goals, China, by using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), seeks to expand transportation and logistics infrastructure, trade links, prosperity, new opportunities for stability and growth, investment, technology, and new markets, exports, industries, industrial promotion, green and digital economy, reduce electricity shortage, and increase exchanges. The BRI routes are supposed to pass through the region and connect China to Russia, Iran, the Caucasus, and West Asia faster than ever before.
The start of construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is also part of the commitment to build China-assisted dry logistics centers and new corridors between East Asia, Central Asia, and Eurasia.
China is also pursuing the alignment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization projects with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the integration of Eurasia. China and Central Asia’s C+C5 format called on countries to work together to deepen multi-dimensional economic cooperation and win-win cooperation in BRI and other areas.
As China has become the world’s largest energy consumer, the role of Central Asia in China’s energy security through projects such as Line D of the China-Central Asia gas pipeline has become more prominent.
There is also new and diverse win-win cooperation in the fields of energy, green energy transition, grid integration, efficiency, innovation, and win-win energy security.
Apart from the $100 billion trade relationship, the total volume of Chinese investment in Central Asian countries has exceeded $40 billion. The most important recipients are Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. By the end of 2024, more than 9,000 Chinese enterprises were present in Central Asia, including in sectors such as mineral resources.
In the soft power dimension, China is also taking further steps in soft interaction by investing in people-to-people relations, language, culture, technical standards, and Chinese administrative practices, cultivating networks of experts, cultural centers, university branches, and training workshops.
Outlook
China and Central Asian countries have designated 2025 and 2026 as years of high-quality development of cooperation.
New economic agreements, a roadmap to double trade volume in the next decade, the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the China-Central Asia (C+C5) mechanism, increasing direct flights, further visa facilitation, and exploring the feasibility of opening consular offices and increasing tourism are brightening the prospects for multi-dimensional bilateral financial, security, and diplomatic relations.
Therefore, we will probably see greater synergy between China’s plan and the national plans of Central Asian countries and stronger multilateral coordination on global platforms and Structures.
In the geopolitical dimension, despite Western concerns, China’s influence in Central Asia does not pose challenges to the interests of Russia and Iran. Therefore, in the short and medium term, China-Central Asia relations are within the framework of a multipolar world.
Also, the China-Central Asia mechanism, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the BRICS can expand cooperation in areas such as countering trade wars and unilateralism.
Samyar Rostami, а political observer and senior researcher in international relations
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