China is keen to expand energy cooperation with Turkmenistan, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday.
Wang met his counterpart Rashid Meredov, who is also Turkmenistan’s vice-president, on the sidelines of the China-Central Asia Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Chengdu, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Wang also said China was willing to further expand the scale of trade and investment cooperation with Turkmenistan and would encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in the country.
The meeting, which ends on Sunday, was also attended by the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Central Asian partners that are growing in importance for China.
Wang also met Jeenbek Kulubaev, the Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan, a key player in an US$8 billion rail project that starts in Kashgar in Xinjiang and goes through southwest Kyrgyzstan before ending in Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan.
The rail project is designed to cut the freight journey between China and Europe by 900km (560 miles), serving as a faster and cheaper alternative to existing China-Europe land routes, most of which pass through Russia.
