Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — Joint modernisation offers new opportunities for China and Central Asian countries, Eldor Aripov, director of Uzbekistan’s Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President (ISMI), said in a video address to the sixth China-Central Asia Think Tank Forum in Bishkek on 22 October 2026.
The forum, held under the theme “High-Quality Development and Joint Modernisation”, brought together representatives of leading think tanks, government bodies and expert communities from China and Central Asia to discuss regional cooperation and practical approaches to joint modernisation.
Aripov outlined key achievements and current priorities in cooperation between China and the Central Asian states, focusing on prospects for further strengthening the partnership.
He highlighted the forum’s growing role in regional cooperation, noting that its inclusion twice in the outcomes of China-Central Asia summits demonstrated that the countries’ leaders viewed expert dialogue as an effective instrument of cooperation rather than a mere protocol exercise.
According to Aripov, the Astana Declaration and the Treaty on Eternal Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation had established a solid political foundation for the partnership and set its direction for decades to come.
Turning to economic ties, Aripov said China’s trade with Central Asian countries exceeded US$106 billion for the first time in 2025, increasing by 12% year on year. China remains the leading trading partner of all five countries in the region.
Uzbekistan-China economic cooperation has also expanded steadily. Over the past five years, bilateral trade has tripled to nearly US$18 billion, while Chinese investment has increased fivefold to US$17 billion.
However, Aripov stressed that these achievements did not mean all established goals had been reached. The current structure of trade, he said, did not yet fully reflect the interests and potential of both sides.
He highlighted transport infrastructure development, particularly construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, as an important priority. In his view, new routes should serve not only as transit links but also develop into full-fledged economic corridors.
Aripov also called for deeper industrial and digital cooperation, including the harmonisation of standards, approaches to implementing joint projects and security protocols. These measures, he said, were necessary to build sustainable economic links between China and the countries of Central Asia.
He argued that the next stage of the partnership should focus on improving the quality of cooperation rather than simply expanding its scale. This would mean moving from trade in goods towards industrial collaboration and from exchanging project proposals towards sharing management expertise.
Aripov emphasised that modernisation was effective only when partners learned from one another rather than copied external models. He said think tanks had a growing responsibility to compare approaches, identify risks in advance and propose solutions before problems emerged.
In this context, he recalled that Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev had repeatedly stressed the important role of expert communities in addressing long-term planning challenges.
Concluding his address, Aripov expressed confidence that substantive and open dialogue would generate new ideas that could eventually inform concrete policy decisions and give further impetus to cooperation between China and Central Asian countries.
