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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.
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.
China gives Central Asia eyes in the sky for its disasters. The data lands in Xinjiang
China and three Central Asian states agreed last week to build a shared constellation of satellites to watch for earthquakes, landslides and the floods that come off melting glaciers. The region needs the warning. The satellites’ data will be processed at a computing centre in Xinjiang.
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.
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.
The scramble for the Caucasus, from Washington’s bill to a Chinese-built port
In one week Washington moved against Chinese and Russian sway in Georgia, the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Georgia signed a declaration in Istanbul, and a Chinese consortium kept its grip on Georgia’s flagship port. The Caucasus is being contested in real time.