Yan Wei
Co-founder of Randy Law Firm (Central Asia Region)
Has set up offices in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
Has provided legal services for over 100 Chinese enterprises expanding into Central Asia
Guest Introduction
Monica
Today’s live stream features a special topic: talking about Central Asia. In traditional overseas expansion perspectives, Central Asia is not among the top-tier markets that draw widespread attention. After my on-the-spot inspection recently, I gained profound insights. For one thing, I attended the GITEX Summit in Almaty, where numerous AI, technology and new energy enterprises showcased products and delivered speeches. What impressed me most was the large number of participating Chinese enterprises. Huawei, Lenovo, Unitree and other brands occupied prominent exhibition areas, with Huawei serving as the strategic sponsor of the summit. Besides, plenty of Middle Eastern enterprises also showed up, which was quite interesting. Since the start of this year, global market turbulence has pushed everyone to rethink where the next business opportunities lie and where certainty can be found.
Let me first share some practical insights.
Over the past three years, Xiaomi has secured the top share of the smartphone market in Kazakhstan. BYD has built assembly plants in Uzbekistan. When my plane was about to land in Tashkent, the most eye-catching logo around the airport was BYD even ten minutes before touchdown. A large number of taxis running in Tashkent are BYD vehicles. After entering the Central Asian market, Pinduoduo’s cross-border platform TEMU achieved astonishing GMV within its first year of operation. Currently, TikTok boasts over 20 million daily active users across Central Asia. Given the total population of merely 80 million in this region, its daily activity penetration rate is close to 30%. Nowadays, developing C-end and small B-end businesses in Central Asia requires solid layout in the TikTok ecosystem.
Nevertheless, there is an interesting phenomenon: although Chinese enterprises have devoted tremendous efforts to penetrating Central Asia, they keep a low profile with barely any publicity about their local layouts in China. Yet once you set foot in this market, you will find these enterprises have taken deep roots here for years with extremely high market penetration. Such low-profile development stems from multiple considerations. They have spotted huge business opportunities here, and meanwhile realized that this market demands long-term steady cultivation.
It’s my great pleasure to invite Lawyer Yan Wei today. With years of practical experience in Central Asia, Lawyer Yan has participated in numerous local landing projects of Chinese enterprises. Together with him, we will discuss the overall market situation of various Central Asian countries, mainstream business tracks, potential risks and opportunity maps.
Yan Wei
Hello everyone, I’m honored to join this live stream upon invitation from Ms. Monica. It’s such a pleasant coincidence that Ms. Monica and I share a mutual friend, who was also one of our earliest clients when we first stepped into Central Asia and grew alongside us. Our law firm expanded into Central Asia in 2024, ranking among the earliest Chinese legal teams focusing on in-depth local operations in segmented overseas countries. We established our first branch in Kyrgyzstan, followed by the Kazakhstan branch in 2025, and further launched branches in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in 2026. Up to now, we have fully settled down and carried out on-site operations in Central Asia.
Today I intend to share practical experience from the perspective of service providers. As local service practitioners, we have witnessed the whole process of numerous clients entering the Central Asian market in the past two years. Ms. Monica made a brilliant remark that most outstanding enterprises doing business in Central Asia always stay low-key. One of my clients is a well-known construction enterprise based in Dongyang, Zhejiang Province. I had no idea it had such a strong presence in Central Asia before. It has undertaken numerous real estate projects in second and third-tier cities across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, yet relevant project information is hardly searchable in China. This is indeed a typical local industry phenomenon. Central Asia is a market brimming with both opportunities and hidden risks. Taking this live stream as an opportunity, let’s talk about feasible entry points and potential pitfalls in this region. It is a market full of challenges as well as lucrative profits, and that’s all for my brief introduction.
Why Central Asia? Why Now?
Monica
Let’s start with macro analysis. I’d like to put forward a core concept: structural mismatch. In the early stage of overseas expansion, enterprises mainly targeted European and American markets for high profits and exchange rate gains. Later, emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, South America and India came into the spotlight. Against the current global backdrop, Central Asia has gradually gained popularity precisely due to such structural mismatch.
Structural mismatch means a region boasts a considerable population scale and demands in line with international standards—locals are keen on mobile e-commerce, TikTok and the latest smartphones—while its supply side remains underdeveloped, equivalent to China’s market status 15 to 20 years ago. Such huge supply-demand gap brings enormous development dividends, and Central Asia is a typical representative of such markets. Here are several sets of macro data for reference:
First, Central Asia has a total population of 80 million, among which people under 30 account for over 55%. Its population structure is younger than that of Southeast Asia and 15 years younger than China’s on average. Second, the smartphone penetration rate here exceeds 85%, yet the density of 4G base stations is less than one-fifth of China’s, indicating mobile devices gained popularity far earlier than network infrastructure. Third, the bilateral trade volume between China and Central Asia reached 94.8 billion US dollars in 2024, tripling over the past decade, maintaining double-digit growth every half year in the first half of 2025. All facts prove Central Asia is a market with prominent structural mismatch advantages. Next, let’s invite Lawyer Yan to share his in-depth insights into the five Central Asian countries based on his on-site experience.
Yan Wei
I totally agree with the concept of structural mismatch. I always advise people planning to develop business here to pay an on-the-spot visit, for most people hold biased stereotypes about Central Asia. The word ending with "-stan" easily reminds people of chaotic regions like Afghanistan, but in fact, Central Asia features high social security and stable political situation, which is the biggest cognitive contrast.
The second contrast lies in local consumption power and level. Daily consumption expenses here are surprisingly high. In China, dining with an average per capita cost of 100 to 200 RMB is common, while high-end restaurants in Central Asia often charge 300 to 500 RMB per person. I once treated friends to dinner in a local Chinese and Western-style restaurant, spending 2,500 RMB for five people, almost matching the consumption level in Shanghai. In terms of mobile phone consumption, despite Xiaomi’s dominant market share, most young local people, especially young women, use the latest Apple iPhones with extremely high popularity. Though the average local monthly income is roughly equivalent to 3,000 RMB, young locals are willing to splurge on high-end digital products, fully reflecting strong actual consumption capacity.
Generally speaking, Central Asia mainly includes five core countries with distinct characteristics. Kazakhstan leads in economic development thanks to abundant oil and gas resources; Uzbekistan ranks first in population size; Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are rich in mineral resources; Turkmenistan, known as "the North Korea of Central Asia", imposes strict restrictions on tourist visa applications. Nevertheless, Turkmenistan enjoys a fairly high per capita income and ranks among China’s top three natural gas suppliers, providing nearly 30% of China’s imported natural gas, which is far beyond public cognition.
When exploring Central Asian markets, enterprises can regard the whole region as an integrated market thanks to similar ethnic cultures and the widespread use of Russian. Meanwhile, targeted research on each country is indispensable due to their different leading industries and economic positioning. In addition, Central Asia maintains a high fertility rate with most local families having four to five children, bringing huge population growth potential. Historically, Kazakhstan had a population of only 10 million upon independence, now exceeding 18 million; Uzbekistan’s population has surpassed 40 million in the first quarter of 2026; Kyrgyzstan is home to 7.2 million people and is expected to hit 10 million within 2 to 3 years. The current 80-million population market is projected to expand to 100 to 120 million in five years with vast growth space. Furthermore, escalating tensions between major powers and unrest in the Middle East have brought more development opportunities to Central Asia, such as the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway project which we will elaborate on later, set to further strengthen economic and trade ties between China and Central Asia. In short, Central Asia was once an overlooked overseas expansion destination, yet it is now a market with promising long-term prospects.
Monica
Your sharing is very insightful. Let’s further discuss the development window period driven by the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway. This railway is an indispensable topic. Upon completion, it will become the shortest land route connecting China with Europe and the Middle East, shortening freight mileage by about 900 kilometers and cutting transportation time by 7 to 8 days, drastically reducing logistics costs and improving supply chain efficiency. It will also upgrade Sino-Central Asian cooperation from simple commodity trade to all-industry collaboration covering investment, technology, services and talent mobility, boosting the development of cross-border industrial parks, logistics hubs, engineering construction, equipment manufacturing, cross-border e-commerce and cold chain logistics, and activating the opening-up potential of western China. Lawyer Yan, could you talk about the specific construction schedule of this railway?
Yan Wei
The project was officially signed in 2024 and started full-scale construction in the second half of 2025. The original construction period was 6 years, scheduled to be completed and opened to traffic between 2031 and 2032. According to our communication with relevant project contractors, the actual construction progress is faster than expected. It is expected to be opened to traffic at least one year in advance, or even two years ahead of schedule, thanks to year-round uninterrupted construction work.
Monica
Got it. Besides railway construction dividends, industrial transfer brought by the Russia-Ukraine conflict also fuels local market growth. Apart from geopolitical conflicts, unrest in the Middle East has also accelerated industrial spillover. Have you observed changes in the pace of Western brands entering Central Asia amid these global situations?
Yan Wei
There are obvious practical changes. Firstly, Western capital has begun to intervene in Central Asian infrastructure construction. American sovereign wealth funds and investment institutions intend to cooperate with the Kyrgyz government to build new horizontal connecting railways based on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway, which is a clear signal of Western capital layout. Secondly, European enterprises have increased investment in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with many European, American and British enterprises participating in local mining and other industries. In addition, countries speaking Turkic languages such as Turkey maintain close ties with Central Asia, and Turkish enterprises have in-depth local layouts, with many local characteristic buildings invested and constructed by Turkish developers.
Moreover, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has prompted a large number of Russian enterprises to relocate production capacity to Central Asia to avoid international sanctions and operational risks, strongly driving local economic growth. The most intuitive manifestation is the continuous surge in local housing prices, with the average housing price in major Central Asian countries rising by 30% to 40% in the past three years. Apart from Chinese investors, a large number of European, Turkish and Russian investors also purchase local real estate, further boosting regional economic prosperity.
Monica
That makes sense. Next, let’s talk about local population characteristics. I arrived in Tashkent late last night. Even past one o’clock in the early morning when most stores were closed, nearly 90% of the remaining open shops were training institutions offering English and Chinese courses, which left me a deep impression. What’s your opinion on this prevalent language learning trend among locals?
Yan Wei
The core driving force lies in huge salary gaps brought by language advantages. Take our local legal staff as an example: local lawyers only mastering native languages and Russian earn about 1,000 to 1,200 US dollars per month, while those proficient in Chinese can double their salaries directly.
At present, many central state-owned enterprises directly recruit talents from Confucius Institutes in Central Asian universities. Driven by the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway project, Chinese-speaking talents in Kyrgyzstan are even fully booked before graduation. Local professional interpreters and bilingual talents are in severe short supply. In 2024, the monthly salary of ordinary Chinese interpreters was about 1,000 US dollars, while proficient interpreters now earn 1,500 US dollars monthly, and talents with native-level Chinese proficiency start at 2,000 US dollars per month. Compared with the local average monthly income of about 3,000 RMB, mastering Chinese means a substantial income increase. Many talents who have studied in China even run side businesses such as cross-border trade and agency services besides formal jobs, achieving quite impressive comprehensive income.
The booming language learning trend in Central Asia is highly similar to China’s development stage in the 2000s. Mass foreign investment has created numerous high-paying jobs for young locals, making mastering mainstream foreign languages an important way to improve personal income and social status.
Monica
This phenomenon is very similar to Vietnam’s development status, where young people are enthusiastic about learning Chinese and English to seize employment opportunities brought by incoming Chinese enterprises.
Track 1: Smartphones — Mature Market with Remaining Opportunities
Monica
Let’s move on to specific business opportunities, starting with mobile ecosystems including smartphones and internet industries. What’s your analysis of the current market situation?
Yan Wei
Chinese electronic products are extremely popular among local young people influenced by short video content on TikTok. Many local employees and even government officials take the initiative to entrust us to purchase mainstream Chinese electronic products such as DJI portable cameras and Huawei foldable phones. These products are sold at much higher prices in local physical stores, bringing huge profit margins for parallel import sales.
Monica
Xiaomi has set up offline physical stores in Central Asia, selling not only mobile phones but also a full range of smart home products, taking the lead in cultivating local smart home consumption awareness.
Yan Wei
The profit space of smart home products is even more considerable. High-quality smart door locks priced at over 1,000 RMB in China are sold at 5,000 RMB in local markets. Despite the average local income level, such high-priced products still have stable consumer groups, mainly thanks to locals’ advanced consumption concepts. Most young locals have no savings habits and are willing to spend all their income or even apply for installment loans to buy favorite products, forming strong actual market consumption power.
Monica
Which social media platforms are widely used by locals in daily life?
Yan Wei
Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram are the most mainstream local social platforms with highly open and smooth local internet access.
Track 2: E-commerce — Emerging Market in Rapid Growth
Monica
What is the current overall development status of Central Asian e-commerce ecosystems? Many people worry that mature local platforms have saturated the market and left no room for new entrants.
Yan Wei
It is more advisable for new entrants to prioritize local mainstream e-commerce platforms, such as Kaspi in Kazakhstan and Uzum in Uzbekistan. Among them, Kaspi integrates online shopping, payment and financial services into one super app, with its core technical system supported by Alipay team and achieving payment channel interconnection.
At present, long logistics cycles are the core bottleneck restricting cross-border e-commerce development. It usually takes about 25 days for goods delivered from China to reach Central Asian consumers. Yet with the continuous improvement of local infrastructure and the layout of Chinese logistics giants such as SF Express building overseas pre-positioned warehouses, logistics efficiency will be greatly improved in the future. Besides, there is a huge price gap between offline physical stores and online shopping channels in Central Asia, making locals more inclined to choose cost-effective cross-border e-commerce products. Enterprises engaged in local e-commerce business need to focus on localized operation such as using Russian and native language store signs.
Monica
There are also plenty of derivative service opportunities such as customs clearance, overseas warehouse operation and localized translation. Brands like Shein have achieved rapid local growth relying on TikTok short video marketing and KOL promotion targeting young female consumer groups.
Track 3: New Energy — Hottest Track with Fierce Competition
Monica
New energy is currently the most popular yet highly competitive track in Central Asia. Please share your professional insights.
Yan Wei
Large-scale new energy power generation projects such as photovoltaic, hydropower and wind power are basically monopolized by central state-owned enterprises and leading listed private enterprises, and small and medium-sized enterprises can only participate in project construction as subcontractors.
In terms of new energy vehicles, local governments have issued favorable policy support. For instance, Tashkent has stipulated that only new energy vehicles are allowed to operate as urban taxis, creating huge market advantages for BYD which has built local assembly plants in advance. Chinese new energy vehicle brands including Li Auto, Zeekr, Chery and Great Wall Motors all enjoy high local recognition with substantial price premiums in overseas markets.
Monica
What is the current tariff policy for imported new energy vehicles in Central Asia?
Yan Wei
The average tariff rate for new energy vehicles in various Central Asian countries is within 10%, with partial export subsidy policies. However, preferential tariff policies are only applicable to enterprises investing in local assembly plants, which is why many domestic vehicle brands are accelerating local factory construction layouts.
Track 4: Payment & Fintech — Hard-to-launch Track with Great Potential
Monica
Many fintech and blockchain enterprises have poured into Central Asia thanks to loose local regulatory policies. What development opportunities exist in the payment and financial fields for start-ups?
Yan Wei
Central Asia boasts prominent financial industry advantages including extremely high local deposit interest rates ranging from 12% to 15%, relatively loose financial supervision and accessible qualifications such as foreign-funded bank establishment licenses.
In addition, Central Asian countries hold an open and inclusive attitude towards digital currencies and Web3 industries. Relevant industrial practitioners have conducted in-depth local investigations, and some domestic crypto mining facilities have also been relocated here. Kyrgyzstan plans to launch its official digital currency in late 2026 with relevant legal systems under professional guidance, bringing broad long-term development space for the digital economy industry. Enterprises can also tap into opportunities such as supply chain finance services for Chinese enterprises expanding locally.
Monica
Many viewers are concerned about local real estate investment opportunities.
Yan Wei
The Central Asian real estate market has experienced rapid price surges in recent years with remarkable investment appreciation effects. However, the market is gradually showing signs of overheating. The real estate investment policies vary across different countries: foreign investors cannot directly purchase real estate in Kazakhstan and need to complete transactions through registered companies; foreign buyers in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan can purchase residential houses but are restricted by property right terms.
Despite regional policy differences, local real estate features high rental yield with an average capital recovery cycle of about 6 years. Foreign investors are the main group of local high-end housing tenants, and the continuous influx of overseas investors further pushes up local housing prices and hotel consumption levels.
Track 5: Infrastructure & Cloud Industry — Largest Hidden Market
Monica
Chinese enterprises have deep participation in local infrastructure construction, cloud infrastructure, intelligent city construction and other fields. What are the core development opportunities in this sector?
Yan Wei
Local infrastructure foundation is relatively weak, and about 70% of large-scale infrastructure projects are undertaken by Chinese central state-owned construction enterprises. In terms of urban construction, major Central Asian cities face severe traffic congestion problems caused by backward road planning and intelligent traffic management systems, bringing huge market space for Chinese intelligent city construction enterprises with mature technical experience.
In addition, locals generally master multiple languages including native languages, Russian, English and Chinese, yet there is a serious lack of small-language training corpus for mainstream AI large language models. This creates vast development opportunities for enterprises engaged in multilingual AI technology research and development and localized intelligent service layout.
Track 6: Short Video & Content Industry — Most Underrated Track
Monica
The short video industry is another promising local track. What is the current development status?
Yan Wei
TikTok is the most mainstream short video platform for local users, while Douyin and WeChat Channels are excellent channels to disseminate Central Asian local content to Chinese audiences. Many overseas students studying in Central Asia have become influential local internet celebrities by shooting daily local life videos, providing various convenient agency services while accumulating fan traffic.
Short video content featuring cross-cultural daily communication between Chinese and local people is extremely popular among local users. Enterprises doing local C-end business can carry out localized content operation by translating core content into Russian and local languages, and carry out brand promotion and product drainage relying on local social media traffic dividends.
Practical Risk Avoidance Guide for Central Asian Expansion
Monica
Next, let’s talk about the most practical part: common risks and compliance pitfalls encountered by Chinese enterprises expanding into Central Asia summarized based on years of service experience.
Yan Wei
First, unreliable translators are the most common primary risk. Unprofessional translators may distort business negotiation information or even collude with local partners to seek private interests, leading enterprises to make wrong market judgments. Besides, most translators lack professional industry terminology reserves, resulting in inaccurate transmission of core business information.
Second, excessive superstitious belief in local interpersonal connections. Many enterprise investors blindly trust local partners who claim to have high-level government relations, ignoring standardized market operation rules. Most superficial connections and group photos cannot solve practical business problems, and excessive reliance on personal connections will easily trigger subsequent operational risks.
Third, insufficient due diligence on investment projects. Many private enterprises neglect basic qualification verification of local cooperative projects due to emotional factors, resulting in problems such as incomplete property rights certificates and unregistered project files, bringing huge hidden dangers for investment acquisition and project cooperation.
Fourth, irregular labor employment issues. Many Chinese employees work locally with tourist visas instead of formal work visas, facing inspection risks from local immigration departments. Meanwhile, enterprises fail to sign standardized labor contracts and pay social security and taxes for local employees in accordance with local labor laws, easily triggering administrative penalties. In addition, a large number of cross-border transactions adopt cash settlement to evade taxes. Although local tax supervision is relatively loose at present, relevant regulatory systems will be gradually improved, and long-term tax evasion will inevitably bring legal risks.
Fifth, other compliance hidden dangers including local data storage regulations requiring user information to be stored locally, as well as certain capital flow supervision restrictions in individual countries that need standardized supporting document procedures for cross-border fund transfers.
Monica
What are the core points needing attention in local employee recruitment and localized labor ratio requirements?
Yan Wei
All Central Asian countries have clear localized employee proportion requirements, and the quota application of Chinese employees’ work visas is directly linked to the number of recruited local staff. In terms of work habits, local employees generally stick to strict off-duty schedules with low willingness to work overtime, which is a key difference that Chinese management teams need to adapt to in advance.
Monica
What impact do local religious cultures have on enterprise daily operation?
Yan Wei
Central Asian religious groups feature high secularization with minimal impact on daily work and business operations. For factories recruiting a large number of grassroots employees, simply setting up dedicated prayer rooms can meet the basic religious activity needs of employees, and there is no need to worry about excessive restrictions on production and operation.
Monica
From the perspective of geopolitical patterns, what long-term development trends of Central Asia are worthy of attention?
Yan Wei
Central Asian countries adopt balanced diplomatic strategies among China, Russia and Western countries to seek maximum development benefits. At present, the local de-Russification trend is increasingly obvious with more countries promoting the popularization of native languages, and China’s economic and diplomatic influence in this region is steadily rising.
From the perspective of business layout, consumer goods industries face the lowest geopolitical risks and are suitable for priority layout; infrastructure and digital technology industries need to keep an eye on policy supervision trends; energy-related heavy asset projects must rely on high-quality local cooperative resources to achieve stable operation. In addition, enterprises are advised to complete trademark and intellectual property registration layout in various Central Asian countries in advance to prevent brand squatting disputes caused by language translation differences.
Monica
Opportunities are always explored and seized through practical exploration rather than passive waiting. My sincere suggestion for enterprises hesitating about overseas expansion is to collect sufficient industry information first and conduct on-the-spot field inspections in person to grasp real local market demands. We need to seek stable development certainty amid global market uncertainties.
Yan Wei
I fully agree with this viewpoint. Successful overseas expansion requires three core mindsets: taking the first step to step out of the domestic comfort zone, settling down locally to achieve on-site real-time management, and adhering to long-term development philosophy to patiently cultivate local markets. Only by integrating into local life, leveraging local human resources and respecting local market rules can Chinese enterprises truly take root and achieve stable development in the Central Asian market.
Monica
Thank you very much for Lawyer Yan Wei’s detailed and practical sharing today. Wish all enterprises planning to expand into Central Asia seize market dividends and achieve steady local development!
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