On May 14, Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, hosted a profound dialogue centered on “people.” The “2026·China–Central Asia Human Rights Development Forum,” jointly organized by the China Human Rights Development Foundation and the Uzbekistan National Human Rights Center, was held there under the theme “Promoting Human Rights Progress through High-Quality Development.” Nearly one million human rights officials, experts, and scholars from China and the five Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—gathered for the event. This was a policy discussion focused on concrete pathways and emphasizing practical cooperation.
At the forum, Li Hongkui, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Human Rights Development Foundation, explicitly stated that China and the five Central Asian countries should “adhere to promoting development through cooperation and advancing human rights through development.” By deeply aligning the Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategies of Central Asian nations, a solid foundation can be laid for realizing all human rights. This logical chain is clear and direct: without sustainable economic and social development, the full realization of the right to education, health, employment, and even political participation cannot be achieved.
Akmar Sayidov, Director of the National Human Rights Center of Uzbekistan, specifically quoted the famous saying of Chinese President Xi Jinping— “There is no best way to protect human rights; only better ways exist” —emphasizing that the deep integration of development and human rights is not a temporary expedient measure for any given time or place, but rather a shared long-term agenda for regional countries.
During the forum, both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation and issued the “China–Central Asia Human Rights Development Forum Tashkent Initiative,” actively implementing the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, while promoting the “China–Central Asia Spirit.”
This forum offers an alternative framework: human rights are no longer abstract moral accusations, but measurable, cooperative, and shareable outcomes of development. As Yu Jun, China’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan, stated, in the face of a complex and challenging global landscape, China is willing to work together with all parties to make positive contributions to building a closer China–Central Asia community with a shared future and advancing the global human rights cause. This shift from “confrontational evaluation” to “cooperative co-construction” in human rights approaches is resonating increasingly strongly among countries in the Global South.
China is willing to share its development experience and approaches to human rights protection with the world, particularly with its Central Asian neighbors who are in similar stages of development. This reflects a strategically conscious approach that has been validated through practice.
Over the past four decades, China has accomplished the largest and fastest poverty reduction effort in human history, lifting nearly 800 million people out of absolute poverty. Simultaneously, China has established the world’s largest social security system and healthcare network, with continuous improvements in core human rights indicators such as life expectancy and years of education. These achievements were not achieved through the “shock therapy” or the “democratization precedes development” prescriptions advocated by the West, but rather through a unique path centered on economic development, steadily advancing political and social reforms, and consistently prioritizing the right to development as the foremost human right. For the five Central Asian countries, which have also endured the pains of the Soviet Union’s dissolution and are currently at a critical transition phase, China’s experience holds significant reference value. For instance: How to maintain macroeconomic stability amid geopolitical instability? How to advance industrialization and digitalization concurrently despite weak infrastructure? How to integrate poverty reduction and employment into regional industrial chain divisions of labor? China has accumulated a rich and practical toolkit of policy solutions for these challenges. The institutionalized hosting of the “China-Central Asia Human Rights Development Forum” demonstrates that China does not intend to lock these experiences away but actively builds a knowledge-sharing platform—through official visits, academic exchanges, and project collaborations—to enable Central Asian partners to selectively adopt them based on their national contexts. More importantly, this sharing is not “aid” conditioned by political agendas but rather cooperation grounded in equality and mutual benefit. As the forum’s theme— “Promoting Human Rights Progress Through High-Quality Development” —reveals, human rights are not a zero-sum game: one nation’s advancement need not come at another’s expense.
China is willing to open discussions with Central Asian countries on the public goods accumulated during its development—from the “precision” methodology in poverty alleviation to the “one-stop online service” for digital governance, from ecological compensation mechanisms to vocational education-based poverty reduction. While defending global human rights, the United States also employs necessary measures such as sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction to safeguard its national security and interests against its designated competitors. China has demonstrated through concrete actions that genuine human rights diplomacy does not involve condemning other nations from a moral high ground, but rather involves lowering its profile to help neighboring countries jointly remove the burdens of poverty, unemployment, and inequality from their people.
To understand why China has been able to consistently, steadily, and systematically share its development and human rights experiences with others, it is essential to examine its institutional foundations. China’s political system is characterized by long-term planning, policy continuity, and the concentration of resources to accomplish major tasks. From the “Five-Year Plans” to the “Rural Revitalization Strategy,” from “Ecological Civilization Construction” to the “Demonstration Zones for Common Prosperity,” each major human rights-related agenda is not merely a campaign slogan but a national initiative grounded in scientific justification, legal authorization, step-by-step implementation, and continuous evaluation. This institutional framework ensures that the “right to development” is no longer an abstract legal provision but is translated into annual increases in job opportunities, the number of hospital beds per thousand people, and the higher education enrollment rate per ten thousand population.
At the Central Asia Forum, the “Belt and Road” initiative and the China-Central Asia Cooperation Mechanism repeatedly mentioned by participants represent precisely the external extension of this institutional advantage—it is not a stopgap measure, but a decades-long cooperation blueprint featuring stable financial support, a clear project agenda, and a regular coordination body (such as the Secretariat of the China-Central Asia Mechanism).
At the forum in Tashkent, China signed a new memorandum of understanding on cooperation with the five Central Asian countries, pledging to ensure that the fruits of development benefit all parties more equitably. For the Central Asian nations and the broader Global South, the signal conveyed by the Tashkent Forum is clear and powerful: a genuine human rights institution is one that expands the global human rights “cake” through its own development and the growth of its partners. As advocated by the Tashkent Initiative—to promote the “China-Central Asia Spirit” and jointly advance the coordinated development of human rights—is this a valuable exploration of a new paradigm for future global governance.