And Japan makes it five for the C5 in 2025.
The heads of state of the five Central Asian countries are traveling to Japan for a December 19-20 summit hosted by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takachi under a format dubbed C5+1. It marks the fifth such “C5+1” summit for Central Asian leaders this year, following similar gatherings each involving a different major global power — China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States.
Each C5+1 meeting has followed roughly the same script with bilateral meetings, a plenary session, and a business forum designed to encourage an expansion of trade relations. The Japanese summit will be no different, according to an agenda published by the Japanese government.
“It is expected that the Central Asian countries and Japan, an important partner, will affirm their unchanged cooperative relations and further strengthen their mutually beneficial cooperation,” the Japanese statement notes.
The EU and US, during their respective C5+1 summits earlier in the year, expressed particular interest in tapping into Central Asia’s abundance of critical minerals and rare earths, seeking to reduce their dependency on supplies from China, which controls a lion’s share of the market in mining and refining such elements.
Rare earths are likely to be a hot topic at the upcoming summit, too. Japan is one of the few countries that has already established an independent supply chain, circumventing China, for critical minerals and rare earths used in the production of advanced equipment and automobiles.
By Eurasianet
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