by Shohin Samadi
More than 2,000 years ago, it was right here (in Xi'an) that melodious camel bells set out across deserts and snow-capped mountains, forging a close link between Chang'an, which is now the city of Xi'an, and renowned cities of the Silk Road such as Samarkand and Bukhara, and inscribing a moving chapter of civilizational exchanges and mutual learning into the annals of human history.
Today, think-tank scholars and media friends from across the world convene at the very starting point of the Silk Road to exchange ideas and build consensus under the theme "High-Quality Belt and Road Cooperation: Empowering Modernization and Mutual Learning Among Civilizations."
Thirteen years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, collectively known as the Belt and Road Initiative. From its initial blueprint to its steady and substantive implementation, cooperation documents have been signed by over 150 countries and more than 30 international organizations. The BRI has thus become an open and inclusive platform for international cooperation and a widely welcomed global public good.
Central Asia used to suffer from inconvenient transportation due to being deeply landlocked and far from the ocean. Today, however, the China-Europe Railway Express and Central Asia Railway Express trains shuttle back and forth, and the transport network extending in all directions is turning this landlocked hinterland into a hub connecting the East and the West.
What runs on the tracks is not just minerals and commodities, but also opportunities and confidence leading to modernization. What is transported in the pipelines is not just natural gas but also trust and warmth of win-win cooperation. The Belt and Road has never been a solo endeavor of one party, but a symphony of common development for the Eurasian continent and the entire world.
Modernization is not just about roads and bridges, but also the development of people. Industrial parks and livelihood projects are allowing ordinary people to tangibly share the dividends of development. At the depth of modernization lies the question of civilization. Modernization is not a copy of a certain model, but the growth of various civilizations rooted in their own soil.
The Belt and Road takes connectivity of facilities as the warp and people-to-people connectivity as the weft, allowing diverse civilizations to achieve and shine on each other in exchanges and dialogues.
Think tanks are an important force in jointly building the Belt and Road. They are advisers on policies, suppliers of ideas, and more importantly, bridge builders for people-to-people connectivity: a joint research may find a better path for a regional cooperation project; an objective report may change the perceptions that millions of readers have of each other; a candid dialogue may resolve estrangement and doubts accumulated over years.
In the process of moving the joint construction of the Belt and Road from "sketching the outline" to "painting the fine details," the role of think tanks and media is irreplaceable.
Although the China-Central Asia Format is young, it has already yielded substantial outcomes across various fields. Within the framework of the mechanism, China and Central Asian countries have established 14 ministerial-level cooperation platforms covering such areas as economy and trade, transportation, agriculture, energy and education.
The Secretariat, which is located in Xi'an, officially began full operations in April 2025, and a series of centers and platforms have since been set up and become operational -- including centers for poverty reduction, educational exchange, and desertification control, as well as a trade facilitation cooperation platform.
With the continuous improvement of the institutional framework, trade volume between China and the five Central Asian countries exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars for the first time in 2025; the trade structure continued to optimize, the proportion of mechanical and electrical products and high-tech products kept rising, and the construction of the Kyrgyzstan section of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is being accelerated.
In addition to the format building and facility connectivity, people-to-people exchanges are also making solid progress: China-Kazakhstan and China-Uzbekistan mutual visa exemption has been realized, the Xi'an-Almaty people-to-people passenger train operates regularly, and youth training, language teaching, and sister city exchanges continue to deepen.
Why has a format established for only six years yielded such fruitful results? The answer lies in the revelation left to us by the high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road" -- peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual appreciation, mutual benefit and win-win results, equality and transparency, and mutual respect.
As the permanent organ of the China-Central Asia Mechanism, the Secretariat is deeply aware of its responsibilities and is willing to continue to play its role as a bridge and bond to promote stronger cooperation among think tanks, media, and universities in China and Central Asian countries.
We are willing to support think tanks of the six countries to conduct joint research on common topics of regional development and share research results; Encourage friends from the media to conduct joint interviews, joint production, and joint communication, so that true and vivid stories can cross national borders; Promote universities to enable each other's success in joint scientific research and youth exchanges.
Editor's note: Shohin Samadi is deputy secretary-general of the Secretariat of the China-Central Asia Format.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Xinhua News Agency.
