China cuts Putin off from Asian trade — Russia loses turnover

In 2024, the trade volumes between China and Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan more than doubled those of these countries with Russia, as Beijing captured key markets in Central Asia that Russia had traded with for decades.

This is reported in an analytical piece by the British newspaper The Telegraph.

How much China’s trade has grown in these markets

The publication notes that last year Russia’s trade with the Central Asian states exceeded $45 billion (according to Putin himself). Meanwhile, according to Chinese agency Xinhua, China’s trade with the region reached $94.8 billion last year.

Interestingly, a quarter of a century ago, the situation was the exact opposite. In the early 2000s, Russia’s trade with Central Asian countries was more than five times higher than China’s trade with the region, The Telegraph reports.

In 2000, Russia’s trade with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan amounted to $9 billion, while China’s totaled $1.7 billion. By 2010, Russia’s trade with Central Asia was still 1.5 times higher than its trade with China—$15 billion versus $10 billion.

How China managed to capture these markets

China’s trade in Central Asia grew rapidly following the launch of Beijing’s "Belt and Road" initiative in 2013, The Telegraph notes. By 2015, China’s trade with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan reached $30 billion, while Russia’s trade amounted to $18.6 billion.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, trade with Russia began to decline dramatically. Over the past three years, China’s role in the foreign trade of Central Asian countries has accelerated even further, The Telegraph reports.

While Moscow’s attention was diverted from the region, Beijing filled the resulting vacuum—not only by signing an increasing number of resource supply agreements with Central Asian countries, but also by launching extensive infrastructure projects across the region.

The goal is clear: to ensure that China can maintain uninterrupted transit of goods to Europe and other global markets regardless of the geopolitical situation, The Telegraph writes.

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