00:00Kobatbek Rakhimov is an economist and a former advisor to the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan.
00:07Chinese customs put trade with Kyrgyzstan just over 27 billion dollars last year.
00:18A record, really.
00:19But the more interesting story right now is in the trade number.
00:26It's where the investment is coming from.
00:31The new projects we're seeing in Kyrgyzstan are increasingly drawing in foreign direct investment.
00:41And growing share of that is private Chinese capital.
00:47Not just state banks and state companies the way it used to be.
00:52This healthy shift, it means Kyrgyzstan is becoming attractive to ordinary Chinese businesses making their own commercial decisions.
01:05Not just state-to-state lending.
01:10And so deeper cooperation and looking ahead, how important do you think China will be to Kyrgyzstan's economic future?
01:16How do you see the relationship panning out?
01:19I'd like to see Kyrgyzstan plug it in China's big Simzhan side projects.
01:28Not just energy, but the higher-tech layer too.
01:33Think like data center, investment type in new power generation.
01:39Second, deeper integration into China's food market.
01:43For example, Kyrgyzstan's agricultural exports are already growing fast and there is real room to formalize and expand further.
01:55And third, I think tourism.
01:58We just hosted the World Nomad Games, so the infrastructure for visitors is finally there.
02:07Now it needs to be made properly Chinese-friendly from payments to Signage to actually turn that into a steady
02:19flow of Chinese tourists.
02:22Now you mentioned the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the region.
02:28How transformative could that be for Kyrgyzstan?
02:34The Hormos crisis made the regional case clear for everyone too.
02:43When a sea choke point gets disrupted, overland rail suddenly matters a great deal more.
02:53This real target behind this gets overland routes up to around 10% of total Europe-Asia freight by 2050.
03:07And this railway sits right at the center of this shift.
