Monitoring Desk: The last week of December 2024 brought tangible development for Central Asian states, as the ceremony for the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project was held in Jalalabad, Kyrgyzstan. Chinese development analysts called this railway networking the “Road of the New Century.” The project will kick off in July 2025, and the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. will complete it in six years.
US Think Tanks believe that China needs to complete it within the scheduled time because it is a very important project as it would serve Chinese interests of reaching Europe via the ‘Middle Corridor” which refers to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route that starts in Turkey and passes through the Caucasus region, the Caspian Sea, Central Asia, and Western China. It is the shortest route between western China and Europe a route that does not include Russia and is subject to several US sanctions due to the Ukraine conflict.
Spanning more than 400 kilometers, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project, or CKU, starts in Kashgar City (China’s northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region), passes through the Torugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan, continues west through the Kyrgyz border city of Jalalabad, and end in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan. This project was shelved due to funding issues although it was planned to start around 20 years ago. CKU dates to 1997 when the three countries signed a memorandum on the construction of a railroad to link China’s Xinjiang province with the Andijan province of Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan’s Naryn and Osh provinces. Kyrgyzstan-designed map offers two different routes –Southern and Northern.
In September 2022, during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, the three countries reached a deal to conduct a new feasibility study on the railway. The 2023 study estimated that roughly $4.5 billion would be needed to complete the 454-kilometer (282.1 miles) railway by following the Southern route although Kyrgyzstan wanted the Northern route, which is lengthier, more technically complicated, and costly, but this route offers an opportunity to connect the country’s Northern and Southern regions.”
