The upcoming second China-Central Asia Summit is expected to establish a practical action plan for strengthening cooperation among Central Asian countries, said former Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Djoomart Otorbaev.
The second China-Central Asia Summit will be staged in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, from June 16 to 18.
The summit aims to take China and the five central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on a new journey toward building a closer China-Central Asia community with a shared future.
"The second summit will be taking place in Kazakhstan. What is important is that it's not only discussions or exchange of opinion. All those summits have a goal to establish a very practical action plan on what each one has to do in order to strengthen cooperation. And we expect a similar good result of the summit and Kazakhstan through the second summit," said Djoomart.
Two years ago, the inaugural China-Central Asia Summit was held in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Since then, cooperation between China and Central Asian countries has yielded even more tangible and fruitful outcomes.
"Every year, the trades investments (and) all other parameters between our countries (are) increasing. Last year was another year of record trade, reached 94.8 billion dollars and growing very quickly already. In five months of this year, trade increased again. We have a lot of investments between our countries, and we have a lot of transport connectivity projects as well as energy cooperation, including traditional hydrocarbon trade as well as green trade, green investments. We have humanitarian cooperation between our countries. So there is really great potential to move forward even with higher speed," he said.
Djoomart pointed out that the Central Asian countries are gradually strengthening coordination mechanisms and collective action capabilities.
"We in Central Asia, on the one hand side, are in a big geopolitical area compared with Europe. At the same time the population in Central Asia is growing very quickly, is only 82 million people, so we have to be more in terms of our economic power. And of course we have not to be five different entities, but we must make regional cooperation to demonstrate to the outside world and to our own population that we are a united economic region," the former prime minister said.
"Every year we have more and more integration, more and more and discussion mechanism on how to get closer to each other and present ourselves with one face to other places in the world, including China. So we have our internal mechanism of consultations. But we also have so many different forms in the format of five-plus-one, where five we are Central Asian countries and one are some other big powers around the world. And these discussion platforms exist for many, many countries around the world, from east to west, from north to south, including China. And we expect a meeting in the form of five plus one, which is China leadership in the city of Astana in Kazakhstan. And we expect a lot of good results as outcomes of this summit," he added.
China-Central Asia Summit aims to formulate action plan for enhanced cooperation: former Kyrgyzstan PM
