Construction has begun on a new railway linking China to Central Asian countries Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov announced at the Dec. 27 groundbreaking ceremony.
The new route, part of China's economic expansion efforts, aims to expand Chinese commercial influence in Central Asia and Europe while bypassing Russian territory.
"This route will ensure the supply of goods from China to Kyrgyzstan and then to Central Asia" and other countries, including Turkey and the European Union, Japarov said in a press briefing, as quoted by the Kyrgyz Presidential Press Office.
The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is "not just a transport corridor" but "an important strategic bridge that will connect the countries of the East and the West," Japarov added.
Japarov also said the project would "strengthen regional ties" and "diversify transport routes," increasing the region's competitiveness as a transit hub.
The railway will run nearly 523 kilometers (325 miles) west from the Chinese city of Kashgar in the northwestern region of Xinjiang through the Kyrgyz border city of Jalal-Abad to Andijan in Uzbekistan.
The $8 billion project has been in talks since the 1990s, but economic and political pressure, particularly from Russia, which the road would bypass, had stalled it until now.
The Kremlin's growing dependence on China in the wake of Western sanctions has apparently eased tensions, as hinted by Putin's participation in China's Belt and Road Forum in Oct. 2023, where this railway was highlighted as one of its projects.
China officially declares itself a neutral party to Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine, but Washington has continued to sound the alarm on Beijing's support of Moscow's defense industry.
Simon Johnson
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