New Silk Roads

Beijing’s push into Central Asia signals a redrawing of the region’s future along Chinese lines.

In a spectacle rich with ceremony and geopolitical symbolism, Xi Jinping touched down in Kazakhstan this week to attend the second China–Central Asia Summit. His hosts, led by Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev - a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat in Beijing - rolled out the red carpet. Held in the very heart of Eurasia, the gathering marks the first time all five Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - have assembled on their own turf for a summit with a foreign power. That the guest of honour was China’s strongman president speaks volumes.

The optics and the timing are significant. Amid growing tensions in neighbouring Iran, a distracted United States, and a Russia preoccupied in Ukraine, China sees a golden window to cement its long-gestating ambitions in the region.

Central Asia, a vast land of deserts and steppes, has always been more than a geographical curiosity. In the 19th century, it was the central theatre of the ‘Great Game’ - the strategic tug-of-war between Tsarist Russia and imperial Britain. Following the Soviet collapse in 1991, the five newly independent republics remained in Moscow’s strategic backyard, their politics entangled with Russian interests. But China, slowly and methodically, has changed that script.

The latest summit in Astana is the second in just over a year. The first, held in May 2023 in Xi’an (historic terminus of the ancient Silk Road) was designed with imperial nostalgia and modern ambition in equal measure. The fact that the current conclave unfolds under a “C5+1” format (first floated by Washington under Barack Obama but never truly embraced) shows how China is appropriating and accelerating a model others merely sketched.

Beijing’s overtures come dressed in the language of mutual gain. China offers roads, rails, markets and loans; Central Asia, in turn, offers oil, gas, uranium and rare earths. A planned $8bn railway connecting Xinjiang to Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan is expected to begin construction next month. The railway will bypass Russia, cutting freight time and cementing Chinese logistical dominance. China is the top trading partner for each of the five Central Asian nations, accounting for over half of Tajikistan’s imports and nearly two-thirds of Turkmenistan’s exports.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has naturally been central to this transformation. First launched in 2013 in Kazakhstan, it treats the Central Asian heartland not as a periphery but as a pivot. The routes crisscrossing the region form the spine of China’s overland access to Europe. Railways, pipelines, customs zones and digital infrastructure are already altering the region’s economic geography. Meanwhile, China’s rhetoric, which frames the relationship as one of equals and free from the coercive instincts of Western diplomacy, is finding a receptive audience among post-Soviet elites wary of both Moscow’s imperial muscle and Washington’s moralising.

Yet geopolitics casts a long shadow. Russia, though bloodied by its misadventure in Ukraine, is not out of the game. Nor is the United States, which held its first presidential-level summit with the C5 leaders in September 2023. But the West’s footprint remains tentative. President Trump’s flat 10 percent tariffs on imports from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and an earlier 27 percent slapped on Kazakhstan have alienated potential partners.

For Xi, the Astana summit is a staging ground for China’s deeper Eurasian entrenchment. That Tokayev, fluent in Mandarin and vocally pro-China, is at the helm in Kazakhstan only smooths the road ahead. Xi’s presence, his first in the region since 2024 and third since 2020, is both a signal of continuity and a message of intent.

China’s ambitions are vast. But they are not uncontested. India has tried to forge its own ties with the region, with Modi hosting C5 leaders virtually in 2022 and in-person in 2025. Yet it lacks the economic muscle and infrastructural clout of China.

The original Silk Road, stretching from Chang’an to the Mediterranean, was a conduit for empires, religions and revolutions. Today’s ‘New Silk Roads’ are no different. With each summit and railway spike, China is not only redrawing trade routes but redrawing influence itself.