Speech spurs community with shared future in region

Summit's vision extends to fruitful cooperation for global development

President Xi Jinping and leaders of five Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — have championed regional peace, stability, harmony and greater regional connectivity during the first-ever China-Central Asia Summit that closed on Friday in Xi'an, Shaanxi province in Northwest China, experts said.

The main theme of Xi's speech at the summit was to further strengthen the concept of China-Central Asia community with a shared future, said Mehmood Ul Hassan Khan, executive director of the Center for South Asia & International Studies.

"To achieve this end goal, the Chinese president rightly pinpointed a simple but very effective recipe comprising deepening strategic mutual trust, and maintaining clear and strong support for each other on sovereignty, independence, national dignity and long-term development," Khan said.

He also said Xi has called for efforts to fully unleash cooperation potential in traditional areas like trade, industrial capacity, energy and transportation, and to foster new growth drivers in areas like finance, agriculture, poverty reduction, low-carbon economic activities, health and digital innovation.

"The building of a common community across China and Central Asia will more than just benefit the countries involved but will contribute to the world's development," said Professor Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability, which is part of the National University of Singapore.

President Xi's speech is "most timely as the world urgently needs peace and prosperity at this juncture of intense geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges", Loh said. Instead of preferring polarization and instigative diplomacy, countries have to be collaborative in leveraging common ideals and resources to advance collective progress.

Loh noted that Central Asia, as a linking node on the Silk Road, will require a coordinated approach to enhance trade and investments across the Asian, Middle Eastern and European regions.

Xi's speech "signifies the importance he attaches to the connectivity of China with Central Asia, and Central Asia's role in the Belt and Road Initiative put forward 10 years ago", said Mustafa Hyder Sayed, executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute in Islamabad.

After the BRI was launched, the unique infrastructure projects along the Caspian Sea have transformed the landlocked region. "We see that after 10 years of a successful BRI, the future vision of connectivity, or a part of it, is laid out by President Xi in his speech at the summit," he said.

Xi's speech is full of optimism and assurances, said Karori Singh, former director of the South Asia Study Centre at the University of Rajasthan in India. He said there is "a collective vow to stand together with solidarity for enduring friendship and share 'weal and woe' together in the interests of the people in the region".

The identification of a long list of areas for collaboration makes it clear that China's Central Asia policy is an important component of its larger global common development and security vision for a community with a shared future, said the professor.

"All the major countries around Central Asia thus may collaborate and cooperate by joining the community with a shared future and play their constructive role in contributing to the development that is not contrary to anyone in the region," he said.

Ina Stasevic, a journalist and medical expert from Croatia, said that the two-day summit certainly opened a new chapter in the cooperation between China and Central Asia.

"With the support of the other five presidents, President Xi gave us a vision of global development, a clear vision of the future, opening the door a step forward in the world," she said.