China-Kyrgyzstan cooperation sees tangible benefits
Development of relations strengthens mutual trust, boosts shared prosperity
Former Kyrgyz foreign minister Alikbek Dzhekshenkulov highlighted digital transformation as another promising area for cooperation.
China's advances in artificial intelligence and digital technologies offer new opportunities for Kyrgyzstan's modernization, he said. The two countries can expand the use of digital technologies across the fields of industry, agriculture, education and public services, while training more professionals in digital management and high-tech fields.
Such cooperation, he said, would enable Kyrgyzstan not merely to adopt digital technologies, but also to shape and advance its own digital transformation.
For former Kyrgyz president Roza Otunbayeva, closer links in the area of transportation also carry deeper historical meaning.
Noting that towering mountains lie between China and Kyrgyzstan, she said that for centuries they have served not only as natural boundaries, but also as meeting places for peoples, cultures and ideas. She described the BRI as a continuation of the ancient Silk Road, along which goods, knowledge and cultures once moved through Kyrgyz lands.
Projects including the railway, road upgrades and new border crossings are reviving that legacy and helping reposition Kyrgyzstan within Eurasian transportation networks.
"Kyrgyzstan is gradually transforming from a country on the periphery of transportation networks into an important connectivity hub on the Eurasian continent," Otunbayeva said.
But physical links alone are insufficient, she said, as trust and friendship between the peoples do not grow automatically with every new road. This makes people-to-people exchanges all the more important as bilateral cooperation deepens.
"Roads themselves do not create trust. They only open up possibilities for cooperation," Otunbayeva said. "Real trust emerges when people begin to understand each other better."
She therefore called for a "road of trust" to be built through books, education, culture and academic exchanges, and broader people-to-people engagement, to provide an enduring foundation for bilateral relations.
