Moving Beyond Infrastructure: Key Outcomes from the Second China-Central Asia Summit

Amid intensifying geopolitical turbulence across China’s periphery—from the Israel-Iran conflict in the Middle East, to India-Pakistan tensions in South Asia, and the protracted Russia-Ukraine war in Eastern Europe—Beijing’s neighborhood diplomacy has become an imperative for safeguarding regional stability. 

In this shifting landscape, Central Asia stands out as a relatively stable and cooperative zone, offering China both geographic proximity and strategic opportunity. With regional governments eager to accelerate economic development and deepen ties with Beijing, last week’s China–Central Asia Summit marks a pivotal moment in China’s evolving engagement with the region.

The summit not only reaffirmed long-standing commitments under the Belt and Road Initiative but also unveiled a new dimension of cooperation through the announcement of three regional cooperation centers. These initiatives—centered on poverty reduction, educational exchange, and desertification control—mark a strategic pivot in China’s regional engagement: from a predominantly infrastructure-driven approach to a more holistic model grounded in soft power, technology, and grassroots collaboration. 

This shift underscores China’s growing ambition not just to build roads and railways, but to embed itself more deeply into the institutional, social, and environmental fabric of Central Asia. Over time, such people-centered cooperation could prove just as influential as physical connectivity, shaping the region’s future in ways that extend well beyond traditional trade corridors.

The establishment of these three centers carries far-reaching implications for both China and the Central Asian states, potentially transforming the dynamics of development, governance, and influence in the region.

China has long engaged in poverty alleviation cooperation with developing countries, particularly in Africa, drawing on its own domestic poverty alleviation experience. These efforts typically involve training agricultural personnel, sharing applicable technologies, and implementing joint development projects. The newly announced China–Central Asia Poverty Reduction Cooperation Center is poised to replicate this model across Central Asia.

This approach is evident in the agriculture-focused agreements signed at the summit, such as the construction of a deep corn processing plant in Kazakhstan’s Zhambyl Region and a high-tech wheat processing facility in the Akmola Region. These projects align with the poverty alleviation agenda by promoting rural employment, value-added agriculture, and food processing capacity.

For Central Asian countries, broader cooperation with China on poverty reduction offers opportunities to improve rural livelihoods, enhance human capital in agriculture, and stimulate job creation, particularly in underserved areas. It also supports efforts to boost agricultural exports, reduce social tensions, and increase resilience in remote or marginalized regions.

For China also, the cooperation brings multiple benefits: it opens up nearby agricultural markets for food imports, contributes to regional food security, and creates new consumer demand for Chinese agricultural technologies and equipment. It also supports infrastructure-for-access initiatives, integrating remote rural areas into Belt and Road corridors. China also frames poverty reduction and rural development in Central Asia as contributing to regional stability, particularly in areas bordering Xinjiang—a western region of China that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—where it has long emphasized the need to prevent insecurity, irregular migration, and extremism.

The new Desertification Control Cooperation Center with Central Asia builds on existing initiatives in other parts of the world, such as the China–Arab International Research Center on Drought and Desertification and the China–Mongolia Cooperation Center for Combating Desertification. The Central Asian iteration of this initiative aims to extend its expertise in reforestation, dryland agriculture, and land restoration to one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in its periphery.

Central Asian countries stand to benefit from China’s decades-long experience in large-scale ecological restoration, including the “Great Green Wall” initiative. The center is likely to facilitate training programs, technical exchanges, and joint research, equipping regional scientists, policymakers, and communities with practical tools to combat desertification. The center can be expected to organize training programs and technical exchanges, enabling Central Asian experts to learn from Chinese techniques like sand dune stabilization, afforestation in arid zones, and water-efficient agriculture. 

For China, the center will create demand for its green technologies, from drip irrigation systems and drought-tolerant seeds to remote sensing tools, in addition to opening new markets for its environmental engineering firms. It also supports broader foreign policy goals, such as reducing ecological drivers of displacement and social tension, strengthening green diplomacy, and reinforcing China’s image as a global environmental leader alongside its renewable energy push in Central Asia.

China already maintains active education cooperation with Central Asian countries, and the launch of the Education Exchange Cooperation Center will deepen these ties by providing a more institutionalized framework for long-term people-to-people engagement. At the summit, China also pledged 3,000 training opportunities over two years, reinforcing its commitment to vocational education and cultural exchange. The expansion of initiatives such as the Luban Workshops and broader academic and cultural activities through this center will create sustained and structured interactions.

For Central Asian countries, this cooperation offers access to higher-quality education and technical training, helping to build local human capital across a range of disciplines. Over time, it can contribute to economic development by fostering a more skilled and globally aware workforce.

For China, education exchange serves as a strategic soft power tool. It helps shape a more positive perception of China among the younger generation in Central Asia, countering anti-China sentiment. It also exposes students to China’s governance and development model, potentially fostering deeper alignment. Furthermore, it supports China’s broader economic goals by training a skilled labor force familiar with Chinese technologies, standards, and business practices—facilitating smoother technology transfer and industrial localization.

The establishment of the three cooperation centers carries important strategic implications for China’s evolving role in Central Asia.

First, the Second China–Central Asia Summit demonstrated that China’s regional agenda is no longer limited to energy, infrastructure, and industrial projects. By expanding into grassroots-focused development initiatives, Beijing aims to position itself as a benevolent, long-term development partner and enhance its soft power presence across Eurasia.

Second, while these centers address practical challenges, they also promote China’s governance model, especially in poverty reduction, environmental management, and vocational education. This opens a pathway for the diffusion of Chinese development norms and values, potentially reshaping perceptions among Central Asian societies—especially the youth—toward the China model as a viable alternative to Western frameworks.

Third, these initiatives are not purely altruistic. By supporting training, technology adoption, and access to Chinese services, the centers help cultivate new consumer bases for Chinese products, standards, and innovations. This contributes to the expansion of China’s economic influence and market integration across the region.Finally, the cooperation centers also align with China’s broader security interests. While China continues to engage in border management, counterterrorism, and intelligence cooperation with Central Asian governments, the centers offer a soft security dimension—tackling the root causes of instability such as poverty, environmental degradation, and youth unemployment. By improving livelihoods and addressing socioeconomic vulnerabilities, these initiatives support what Beijing sees as a means of stabilizing its western periphery and preventing potential spillover risks into Xinjiang and adjacent regions.

Yunis Sharifli is CGSP’s Non-Resident Fellow for Central Asia.