Инициатива «Один пояс — один путь» трансформирует экономику Узбекистана и укрепляет его роль в Центральной Азии

The rapidly evolving geopolitical and geostrategic landscape has catalyzed a renewed appreciation for the transformative role of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. Within the theoretical frameworks of complex interdependence and geo-economics the BRI operates not merely as an infrastructure program but as a structural reconfiguration of transnational economic space. International scholarship has increasingly characterised Uzbekistan as a “bridge country” between East and West a framing that resonates with several theoretical traditions. Uzbekistan’s spatial position endows centrality within the historic Silk Road, adjacency to the largest consumer markets in Eurasia, and nodal positioning astride multiple BRI corridors. In international relations theory, Uzbekistan exemplifies the strategy of multi-vector foreign policy and strategic hedging maintaining balanced diplomatic relations with China, Russia, the West, and regional powers while maximising developmental returns. This is not passive neutrality but an active agency-based approach to structural constraints, wherein a middle power leverages its geographic indispensability to shape the terms of great-power engagement. The BRI represents a transformative institutional framework for Central Asia, operating through mechanisms: it addresses infrastructural deficits as binding constraints on growth, facilitates structural transformation from resource-dependent to diversified economies, and catalyses global value chain (GVC) integration. Through concessional and blended finance, technical assistance, and infrastructure development, the BRI generates positive externalities and spillover effects that transcend national boundaries. The China-Uzbekistan strategic partnership thus embodies a developmental state model adapted to contemporary geo-economic conditions. Uzbekistan under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev the architect of the “New Uzbekistan” has pursued modernisation with performance-based legitimation: economic growth, improved living standards, and connectivity. The BRI’s impact on Uzbekistan’s transport networks offers compelling evidence for theories of trade creation and connectivity economics. The nearly 15 percent reduction in delivery times the most significant among BRI participants generates trade cost elasticities that translate into projected export increases of 13-23 percent. These gains are consistent with gravity model predictions in international economics: reduced transport costs expand the effective size of accessible markets, with disproportionate benefits for landlocked developing countries. From the perspective of comparative advantage theory already invoked in Chinese-Uzbek economic discourse the partnership exhibits a classic endowment-based specialisation. Uzbekistan supplies natural resources (natural gas, minerals, agricultural products), while China provides capital goods, industrial equipment, and technology. However, the dynamic dimension is more significant: Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) is generating knowledge spillovers, technology transfer, and industrial upgrading effects that move Uzbekistan toward higher value-added activities a process theorised as flying geese pattern industrial relocation. Chinese investment in Uzbekistan has increased fivefold in recent years, reaching approximately $10 billion in 2025 nearly 40 percent of Uzbekistan’s total foreign investment and external financing of $25 billion. This reflects what economic geographers identify as investment clustering and path creation: initial investments reduce information asymmetries and perceived risks, creating demonstration effects that attract follow-on capital. The registration of over 4,800 Chinese-invested enterprises in 2025-2026 more than a quarter of all foreign-invested companies in Uzbekistan represents a form of institutional thickness in the bilateral economic relationship. In 2025 alone, Chinese investors established over 1,500 new enterprises, surpassing the combined total of all other foreign partners a statistic that signals first-mover advantage and network effects in investment decisions. Sectorally, Chinese FDI maps onto Uzbekistan’s structural transformation trajectory: combined-cycle gas power plants, wind energy facilities (including a 500 MW project in Bukhara), battery storage systems, grid modernisation, hydropower, automotive manufacturing, and ceramics. These investments advance green industrial policy objectives, contribute to energy transition, and foster technological upgrading. The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway formalised through the June 2024 intergovernmental agreement in Beijing represents a flagship connectivity project that exemplifies corridor development theory. It is expected to reduce delivery costs, accelerate trade velocity, and significantly expand Uzbekistan’s export capacity. The CKU railway embodies what strategic studies scholars’ term infrastructure statecraft the deliberate use of connectivity projects to reshape geopolitical space and contributes to supply-chain resilience through route diversification away from over-concentrated chokepoints. Uzbekistan’s strategic importance within the BRI is structural rather than contingent. In the China-Central Asia-West Asia BRI Corridor, two primary routes traverse Uzbek territory, connecting the country to China and Iran. Uzbekistan also occupies a critical node in the Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan (Tashkent, Samarkand, Navoi)-Turkmenistan Corridor and the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (Andijan, Pap, Tashkent, Samarkand, Navoi)-Turkmenistan-Iran Corridor. This network centrality a concept derived from social network analysis applied to transport geography confers disproportionate bargaining power and gateway state status. Moreover, all four corridors of the China-Central Asia gas pipeline system transit Uzbekistan, with serious consideration being given to a fifth route for Turkmen gas trans-shipment. Beyond the 25-year bilateral natural gas contract, this energy architecture positions Uzbekistan as a regional energy hub a role consistent with energy security theory and pipeline politics scholarship. With the largest population in Central Asia, Uzbekistan constitutes the region’s largest consumer market and a major agricultural and manufacturing exporter. Rising living standards are expected to drive domestic consumption a trajectory consistent with Kuznets curve dynamics and middle-income country structural shifts generating increased demand for imported goods, including Chinese products. The BRI-Uzbekistan nexus represents an ideal geographical axis connecting China, South Eurasia, South Asia, the Middle East, the Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf ports, and the Black Sea. This vision aligns with connectivity grand strategy and Eurasian integration discourse, wherein infrastructure corridors generate network externalities that compound over time. The completion of BRI projects is projected to substantially increase Uzbekistan’s trade volumes, investment inflows, and GDP, while enhancing the competitiveness of its exports outcomes consistent with endogenous growth theory and the New Trade Theory emphasis on scale economies and market access. Uzbekistan’s political stability, its balanced diplomacy across great-power fault lines, and its status as a stable and promising emerging market within the region collectively enhance its attractiveness for sustained Chinese economic engagement. Beijing’s target of $10 billion in bilateral trade volume reflects a strategic calculus grounded in rationalist institutionalism: Uzbekistan offers not merely transactional value but structural complementarity with China’s long-term vision for Central Asian integration. Ultimately, the Sino-Uzbek partnership under the BRI transcends bilateralism to represent a model of South-South cooperation confirming that middle powers can leverage geo-economic initiatives to reshape their developmental trajectories within an increasingly multipolar order.