Cooperation at heart of modern Silk Road: China Daily editorial

The success of the bilateral meetings President Xi Jinping held respectively with the leaders of the five Central Asian countries in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, on Wednesday and Thursday, undoubtedly lays a solid foundation for the China-Central Asia Summit to be held in the city on Friday realizing its objectives of promoting common development and deepening mutual trust.

The summit will be the first in-person meeting of the six leaders, underscoring the two sides' shared desire to join hands and support each other in the face of common challenges. Tasked with lifting reciprocal cooperation between China and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to a higher level, the China-Central Asia Summit will promote closer interaction and stronger solidarity among the six nations.

The leaders of the six countries are holding multiple meetings in which they will not only exchange views on bilateral, multilateral, and major international and regional issues, but also sign an array of cooperation documents covering areas including economy, trade, investment and connectivity.

President Xi proposed to build the Silk Road Economic Belt during his visit to Kazakhstan in 2013. Central Asian countries were among the first group of countries to publicly support what subsequently became the Belt and Road Initiative.

Having visited the region seven times in the past decade, Xi has personally championed upgraded China-Central Asia cooperation. And thanks to that, the two sides have steadily strengthened their economic and security cooperation, thus laying a solid foundation for further deepening their trade, economic and investment cooperation.

Since unveiling the Global Development Initiative at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021, President Xi has also put forward the Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative as facilitators for the realization of a community with a shared future for mankind. In light of this, the China-Central Asia Summit is a natural event warranting no raised eyebrows.

The bid to strengthen cooperation and coordination in the region is not intended to form a clique, nor is it targeted at any third party. It is an outcome of the six countries' shared recognition that to achieve the development they are striving for, there needs to be greater economic interdependence among them and effective regional security governance; these require the establishment of effective multilateral mechanisms.

No doubt the United States and its allies will try to cast this in a different light, because to them the Central Asian countries are just pawns to play in their zero-sum games against China and Russia. But the summit shows that the Central Asian countries have no desire to play that allotted role.