Crossroads Asia | Diplomacy | Central Asia

Tajikistan and China Sign Permanent Friendship Treaty

Rahmon’s four-day state visit also produced more than $8 billion in projected investment deals and confirmed Beijing’s displacement of Moscow as Dushanbe’s principal economic patron.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed the China-Tajikistan Treaty on Permanent Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 12, the political capstone of Rahmon’s four-day state visit.

The two leaders also signed a joint statement on deepening the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in the new era and witnessed the signing of roughly 31 intergovernmental cooperation documents covering trade, investment, artificial intelligence, green mining, agriculture, culture, education, housing, inspection and quarantine, and market supervision.

The partnership had been elevated to “comprehensive strategic cooperative” status during Xi’s July 2024 visit to Dushanbe; the treaty now anchors it in a binding instrument.

The day before, Tajik and Chinese companies signed more than 50 agreements projected to attract over $8 billion in investment. A “Tajik-China Digital Business Connect” IT forum yielded cooperation deals worth $647 million. Rahmon and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank President Zou Jiayi signed a long-term investment plan committing more than $800 million in new AIIB financing on top of the $400 million already allocated to ongoing infrastructure projects.

Bilateral trade reached $790 million in the first quarter of 2026, up more than 50 percent year-on-year. In 2025, China surpassed Russia as Tajikistan’s largest trading partner for the first time in more than two decades, with full-year trade hitting around $4.3 billion by Chinese customs data. Rahmon put accumulated Chinese investment in Tajikistan at nearly $6 billion since 2017 – including roughly $3.5 billion in direct investment – outpacing Russia’s stock of approximately $2 billion. Around $900 million, or 12.5 percent, of the $7 billion in foreign investment Tajikistan received last year came from China, and more than 700 Chinese-capital companies now operate in the country.

The pivot extends beyond bilateral arithmetic. China’s trade with the five Central Asian republics surpassed $100 billion in 2025, a 12 percent year-on-year jump. The first container train from China arrived in Dushanbe in February 2026 through a new corridor crossing Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Last........

© The Diplomat