China’s initiative to build a Silk Road Economic Belt took a step forward Saturday when Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Tajikistan’s Prime Minister Qohir Rasulzoda and President Emomalii Rahmon in Dushanbe to hammer out the details of a five-year plan to strengthen economic and trade relations. The meeting, which took place in the mountainous Central Asian country of 8 million people following the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s annual summit, laid the ground for a deepening strategic partnership between the world’s second largest economy and the poorest former Soviet republic.
The two countries plan to increase bilateral trade to US$3 billion over the next five years, a significant jump from US$1.96 billion in 2013. They also discussed infrastructure projects in oil and gas, electricity, and transportation to better link Tajikistan with China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In 2011 Tajikistan settled a century-old border dispute with China, its biggest foreign investor after Russia, by ceding 680 square miles along the Pamir mountain range.
Xi, who was paying his first state visit to Tajikistan, said: “We should carry on the ancient Silk Road spirit, pass on our friendship, deepen cooperation, and jointly build a brighter future for the relations of our two nations.”
Xi and Rahmon signed a joint agreement to prioritize construction of the 250-mile Tajikistan stretch of Line D in the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline (CCAGP). Line D will run 620 miles from Turkmenistan, a country with the world’s sixth-largest gas reserves, through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan to China. It will deliver an estimated 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year by 2020, bringing import capacity from Central Asia to 80 billion cubic meters, or 40 percent of China’s total gas imports.
China and Tajikistan also signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation in law enforcement, security, and defense to combat drug trafficking and what Beijing calls the “three evils” of “terrorism, separatism, and extremism” threatening regional stability. Cooperation will be conducted under the anti-terrorist framework established by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
“Facing a complex and grave regional security situation, our two countries should deepen cooperation in border control and the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking, and transnational organized crime,” Xi said.
Both sides also expressed a desire to see peace and stability quickly restored to Afghanistan as NATO forces prepare their final withdrawal later this year. Fearing a resurgent militancy in the region that could jeopardize the Silk Road Economic Belt and spill over into China’s restive Xinjiang region, Beijing has indicated that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could play a future role in supporting Afghan-led reconstruction.
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China’s New Silk Road Moves Forward
September 15, 2014
China’s initiative to build a Silk Road Economic Belt took a step forward Saturday when Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Tajikistan’s Prime Minister Qohir Rasulzoda and President Emomalii Rahmon in Dushanbe to hammer out the details of a five-year plan to strengthen economic and trade relations. The meeting, which took place in the mountainous Central Asian country of 8 million people following the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s annual summit, laid the ground for a deepening strategic partnership between the world’s second largest economy and the poorest former Soviet republic.
The two countries plan to increase bilateral trade to US$3 billion over the next five years, a significant jump from US$1.96 billion in 2013. They also discussed infrastructure projects in oil and gas, electricity, and transportation to better link Tajikistan with China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In 2011 Tajikistan settled a century-old border dispute with China, its biggest foreign investor after Russia, by ceding 680 square miles along the Pamir mountain range.
Xi, who was paying his first state visit to Tajikistan, said: “We should carry on the ancient Silk Road spirit, pass on our friendship, deepen cooperation, and jointly build a brighter future for the relations of our two nations.”
Xi and Rahmon signed a joint agreement to prioritize construction of the 250-mile Tajikistan stretch of Line D in the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline (CCAGP). Line D will run 620 miles from Turkmenistan, a country with the world’s sixth-largest gas reserves, through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan to China. It will deliver an estimated 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year by 2020, bringing import capacity from Central Asia to 80 billion cubic meters, or 40 percent of China’s total gas imports.
China and Tajikistan also signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation in law enforcement, security, and defense to combat drug trafficking and what Beijing calls the “three evils” of “terrorism, separatism, and extremism” threatening regional stability. Cooperation will be conducted under the anti-terrorist framework established by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
“Facing a complex and grave regional security situation, our two countries should deepen cooperation in border control and the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking, and transnational organized crime,” Xi said.
Both sides also expressed a desire to see peace and stability quickly restored to Afghanistan as NATO forces prepare their final withdrawal later this year. Fearing a resurgent militancy in the region that could jeopardize the Silk Road Economic Belt and spill over into China’s restive Xinjiang region, Beijing has indicated that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could play a future role in supporting Afghan-led reconstruction.
