Leaders say greater understanding needed

Zhang Deguang, the first Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, might never figure out why a Kazak police officer stopped his car in the early 1990s.

"As the Soviet Union has dissolved, why did you put its national flag on your car?" Zhang said the police officer asked him, apparently mistaking the red Chinese flag for the flag of the former Soviet Union.

His story reflected that fact that people in Central Asian countries had a very limited knowledge of China at the time. Twenty years later, the knowledge gap still remains.

Edil Baislov, leader of the Kyrgyz party Aikolel, made an emotional plea to China and Central Asian countries at a regional forum to boost youths' understanding of each other .

"The Kyrgyz youth and Chinese youth, for example, have zero understanding about each other's country. Some even have an incorrect knowledge of the history of each nation," he said.

"We must foster their knowledge on the commonness of our ethic traditions that are normally forgotten."

Acknowledging the knowledge gap - which starkly contrasts with the closeness in energy cooperation between China and Central Asia - the two sides vowed at a high-level forum in Eastern China's Zhejiang province to boost social and cultural communications on Monday.

"We can't merely understand the geographic importance of Central Asia, and the history of the silk road linking the sites," said Li Xiaolin, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

The association - the largest folk diplomatic organization in China - hosted the China-Central Asia Cooperation Forum in Tongxiang city, Zhejiang province.

"We, and especially the youth, also have to update ourselves on how Central Asian countries have been doing after gaining independence," Li said.

"Only through enhanced people-to-people exchanges, mutual understanding and trust, can our bilateral and multilateral relations develop in a healthy manner."