Peoples Republic of China and Uzbekistan: trade cooperation in 1990s and early 2000s

The People's Republic of China and the Republic of Uzbekistan established traderelations in early 1990s. It was necessary for China to sign as many different kinds of agreements as possible. Economy and trade werenot at high priority level - Chinese Government only had started to understand the current regional situation in Central Asia and to formulatenew initiatives for it after the Soviet Union collapse. PRC focused on several factors that could be crucial to develop economiccooperation with this newly independent country, these were: Uzbekistan's geopolitical position at the centre of Central Asia, economicpotential and huge population. Uzbekistan diplomacy on the other hand decided to use a variant of competition for influence on CentralAsia between major countries, China in this case was one of the main actors. At the very beginning Chinese policymakers pointed out,that only one or two of the five Central Asian countries could be a regional leader in the nearest future, so it started to boost trade relations- to persuade these countries, namely Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, that China is a great chance to strengthen national economy andto find new secure trade routes through the territory of China to the East and West. Sharing a common border with Kazakhstan, Chinahas no direct connection with Uzbekistan, but for the concept of the New Silk Road. Despite the solemn opening of the China - Uzbekistantrade commission (Sino-Uzbekistan Joint Economic and Trade Commission), working in various delegation formats, high-levelvisits, the volume of trade had dropped dramatically in the late 1990s. But in terms of Chinese bank credits the total volume had raised.The conflict situation was detected by several researchers - China and Uzbekistan both continued industrialization policy, so in manyspheres of economy they produced and purchased nearly the same goods. So both sides could not buy of sell these goods to each other.From the beginning of 2000s Chinese government decided to widespread influence by establishing of Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO). Uzbekistan, alongside with China, Russia and three countries of Central Asia, was one of the founders. Since then Sino-Uzbekistantrade and cooperation raised - not only in stable 2000s, but in late-2000s recession as well. The main achievement in recent years of cooperationwas the pipeline Central Asia-China, which was built across the territory of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Since late 1990s PRC havedoubled financial support to the countries of Central Asia in almost all spheres, including traditional (textile, consumers goods) and newlyformed ones (mine working in uranium, gold reserves, joint ventures, informational technology, biotechnology and so on).

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