China Has Flooded Central Asia With Electric Cars—the Impact Will Be Long-Lasting

Look who is buying and reexporting electric cars!

According to Google: "The population of Central Asia is estimated to be over 82 million people as of 2024"

"Last year, every fifth car sold in the world was electric. China is leading the charge: every tenth car on the country’s roads is electric, and it accounted for 40 percent of global electric car exports in 2024. 

While the West is using customs duties to try to head off an influx of Chinese electric cars, the countries of Central Asia have taken the opposite approach and are doing everything they can to welcome them.

Despite the geographical proximity, Chinese brands were not always so popular in Central Asia. As recently as in 2020, China supplied just $750 million worth of cars to all five Central Asian countries put together. These were mainly used cars with internal combustion engines.

But by 2024, that figure had soared to almost $10 billion, of which $1.1 billion were electric cars. Now cars account for about 10 percent of all Chinese exports to Central Asia. ...

There are over 100 cars per 1,000 people in all of the Central Asian states except for Tajikistan. Kazakhstan is even catching up with Russia, with 308 cars per 1,000 people compared to Russia’s 331.

Central Asia also plays a role as a reexporter of cars to the Russian market, which saw an exodus of Western companies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It’s more expensive for Chinese exporters to supply cars directly to Russia than Central Asia, since customs duties are three times lower in Kyrgyzstan, for example. As a result, Kyrgyzstan, which has no automobile industry of its own, has since 2022 become the second-largest supplier of cars to Russia after China. ..."

China Has Flooded Central Asia With Electric Cars—the Impact Will Be Long-Lasting | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "By entering this new stage of development of the automotive industry via Chinese electric cars, Central Asia will eventually be forced to adopt Chinese standards for the industry’s development, integrating into the Chinese tech ecosystem and leaving no room for competition."