China
Mongolia's ask at the summit it is paying to host is Gobi water
The national committee for COP17 met for the nineteenth time in Ulaanbaatar on Thursday morning, four days before the desertification conference opens. Mongolia has put 250 billion tugrik of state money into hosting it, about $70 million at the rate the desk logged on 5 August. What it wants out of the fortnight is financing to extend water supply in the Gobi.
Mongolia asks PetroChina for 12,000 tonnes a month
China agreed 6,000 tonnes of petrol for August. The prime minister wants that doubled and made standing, and he wants it cheaper.
Uzbekistan’s satellite reaches orbit with its own AI on board
Samarkand-2028 went up from a sea platform off China’s Shandong coast on Wednesday morning, carrying a hyperspectral camera and an AI module Uzcosmos says its own engineers built.
Kazakhstan’s tungsten leaves before it matters
A metal the world has started to fight over, a pit that needs a slice of a national park to reach it, and a plant built to ship the ore out as concentrate.
A tungsten mine for a million tonnes of ore a year
Patokh Shodiev and Mukadaskhan Ibragimova, with a Chinese partner, will develop the Bayan tungsten deposit in North Kazakhstan region. Peak output is put at 1 million tonnes of ore a year, and the first year at 2,820 tonnes.
Dushanbe opens two Chinese generation tracks in one day
Tajikistan’s energy minister met China Energy about a 200 MW solar plant in the north and China Gezhouba about two hydropower plants on the Zarafshan, both on Tuesday.
Xi Jinping comes to Bishkek for the summit days
China’s president will make a state visit to Kyrgyzstan on 31 August and 1 September, the days of the SCO summit. The file named first is the railway.
Kazakhstan asks to host the founding of China's AI order
In Shanghai on 16 July, 29 states signed the agreement establishing the World AI Cooperation Organization. On the 17th, speaking at the WAIC opening, President Tokayev offered Astana for the body’s inaugural meeting and asked for its Central Asia office. Three weeks after joining the US-led Pax Silica bloc, Kazakhstan holds founding papers in both AI systems.
The AI conference opens with Kazakhstan in the hall
The World Artificial Intelligence Conference opened in Shanghai on Friday, four days, more than 140 forums, over 1,100 companies, with Xi Jinping billed to deliver the opening keynote and a high-level forum on global AI governance as the first day’s main event. Tokayev is attending; what he says there is the day’s watch item.
Shanghai hands Kazakhstan a $15 billion signing day
Tokayev’s administration says his working visit to China has produced more than 70 commercial agreements worth over $15 billion, signed in the course of a visit built around Thursday’s talks with Xi Jinping and a round table with the heads of Chinese companies. On Friday the president moves to the World AI Conference. The week now reads as a single Chinese arc: a legal convention on Monday, an order book on Thursday, algorithm governance to close.
The railway the premier called weak signs $400 million with China
A day after Bektenov’s "remains weak" landed on the cabinet record, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy announced a package of agreements signed with Chinese partners in Shanghai, worth about $400 million, part of it denominated in yuan. In the same days, Tokayev flew to Shanghai to meet Xi Jinping.
Kazakhstan joins the mediation body China built in Hong Kong
Foreign minister Kosherbayev signed the convention of the International Organization for Mediation in Beijing on Monday, making Kazakhstan a member of the first intergovernmental body dedicated to mediating international disputes. It is headquartered in Hong Kong, it was launched by China in 2025, and its membership list is the point.
China builds Tajikistan’s answer to its $600 million rebar bill
On 9 July, Emomali Rahmon toured the site of Tajikistan’s largest new metals project, a plant on the Shohkadam iron-ore deposit meant to end the country’s reliance on imported steel. The company on paper is Tajik. The firms building it, supplying its core technology and wiring its power are Chinese, Indian and Austrian.
At China’s Eurasia expo, Kazakhstan is guest of honour and the trade runs one way
Kazakhstan was the guest of honour last week at the China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi, where Astana and Beijing set a target of $100 billion in annual trade. China’s trade with Central Asia passed $100 billion for the first time in 2025. The flows, and the advantage, point mostly one way.
At Summer Davos, China shifts from selling to Kazakhstan to building inside it
Kazakhstan’s prime minister spent Summer Davos working a line of Chinese firms, from carmakers to battery giants. The thread running through the meetings is localisation: China moving from exporting goods to Kazakhstan toward manufacturing them there.
As SCO chair, Kyrgyzstan is building the bloc’s money machine in Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan opened an SCO project-support centre in Bishkek on 24 June, one more piece of the financial architecture it is assembling during its turn chairing the bloc. The summit in August is the deadline. A development bank is the prize.
Uzbekistan offers Beijing the value-chain deal Kazakhstan offered Brussels
As Tokayev pressed Brussels to process Kazakh minerals inside Kazakhstan, Tashkent was making the same case to Chinese state firms. Two rival buyers are hearing one regional pitch: build the value chain here. Uranium runs through both.
Tajikistan ordered 14 Boeing jets. The question is what pays for them
A fleet order worth billions sits on an economy that runs on migrant wages, owes its debt partly in gold mines, and routes its hard-currency earnings through offshore shells tied to the president's family. The aircraft are real. The questions the Washington ceremony left out are the ones worth asking.
Mongolia’s two-neighbor squeeze, and the third neighbor that cannot reach it
China’s foreign minister spent three days in Ulaanbaatar this week promising railways and a shared future. The warmth is real, and so are its limits: nearly everything that should give Mongolia bargaining power, from gas transit to rare earths, is worth only what Beijing or Moscow agrees to pay for it.