AN ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF TRADE BETWEEN CHINA AND UZBEKISTAN

Abstract

As a key hub of the Belt and Road Initiative and an important gateway from Asia to Europe, Uzbekistan isan important participant in the China-Central Asia Cooperation Mechanism, and China-Uzbekistan economic and tradecooperation is of increasing economic and strategic significance to the development of both countries. Under the Beltand Road Initiative and the New Uzbekistan Strategy, economic and trade relations between China and Uzbekistan havecontinued to take new leaps forward.By comprehensively measuring Uzbekistan’s import and export volume, growth rate, bilateral trade commodity structure,trade openness, export similarity index and Lawrence index, this paper concludes that both Uzbekistan and China haverelatively high levels of trade openness, but Uzbekistan’s economic development is more dependent on foreign trade.Bilateral trade between Uzbekistan and China has a greater impact on Uzbekistan than on China, while the commoditystructure of Uzbekistan’s exports to China is highly volatile, suggesting that Uzbek goods are relatively uncompetitive inthe Chinese market. Uzbekistan’s imports from China are much larger than its exports to China, and there is some riskthat the trade deficit will widen year by year.