President Xi Jinping is hosting a two day event with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The summit highlights China’s growing influence in the region as it makes big investments with it’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Russia is at war in Ukraine.
China’s General Administration of Customs published data on Wednesday showing that China’s import and export volume with Central Asian countries amounted to 173.05 billion yuan ($24.8bn) in the first four months of 2023, an increase of 37.3 percent compared with the same period last year.
For more information on the “Great Game” in the region, our analysis: