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.
This uptick came about because of a fortunate combination of circumstances. First, the region is experiencing a demographic boom, and both purchasing power and demand for cars are growing. 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.
The growth in demand in Central Asia has coincided with a surge in supply from China. Beijing is using subsidies and tax breaks to encourage its manufacturers to sell more electric cars both domestically and abroad. Chinese automakers are so keen to increase sales that they are willing to resort to some outlandish schemes, such as selling new cars as used ones with zero mileage.
This state support is paying off. In 2022, BYD—the biggest Chinese maker of electric cars—overtook the U.S. Tesla in terms of global sales, and in 2025, it also made more profit and sales than Tesla on the world’s third-largest market: the European Union. In Asian countries too, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand, about three-quarters of all electric cars purchased in 2024 were Chinese.
Central Asia is also part of this trend. In Uzbekistan, 99 percent of all imported electric cars come from China, and in Kazakhstan, sales of Chinese brands are growing by 50 percent a year, displacing traditional market leaders such as Hyundai, Kia, and Chevrolet.
Environmental concerns are also a factor in the growing popularity of electric vehicles. Dozens of environmental protests take place in the region every year, and Tashkent, Bishkek, Almaty, and Dushanbe regularly top the global rankings of cities with the worst air quality in winter.
Accordingly, regional authorities also support electric cars as part of the green agenda. In Kazakhstan there is zero customs duty on electric cars through the end of 2025, while in Kyrgyzstan there are import discounts, and in Tajikistan they are exempt from taxes and import duties through 2032.
Still, even all these favorable conditions put together are not enough to sell cars. The key factor in China’s success is that Chinese brands have managed to adapt to local business conditions and find a unique approach to each country.
Historically, Central Asia has not been of particular interest to global automakers. The region has usually been seen as an add-on to the larger Russian market: nearly all the global brands opened offices in Russia and localized production there.
With the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and the introduction of sanctions, that strategy had to be changed: dozens of car brands left Russia, and their presence in other post-Soviet markets had to be adapted to the new circumstances, including for resale to Russia. In 2024, a record number of cars were sold in Kazakhstan—more than 200,000—while the total figure for Central Asia was 700,000, comparable to Russia’s 1.5 million.
The most attractive car market in Central Asia is Uzbekistan, which is second only to Russia in the post-Soviet space in terms of the scale of its automobile industry. For decades, Tashkent used high customs duties to protect its monopoly car manufacturer Uzavtosanoat and its international partners (first South Korea’s Daewoo, and later the U.S. General Motors).
Since 2020, however, a second major automaker, ADM Jizzakh, has emerged as a separate entity from Uzavtosanoat. It now produces cars designed by several Chinese brands: Chery, Great Wall Motor, JAC Motors, and BYD (this is BYD’s first assembly plant outside of China). A year after that plant was launched, BYD successfully lobbied for a fourfold increase (to about $6,000) in the “recycling fee” (a future scrappage fee) paid when importing electric cars. Since BYD is the only company producing electric cars inside the country, it is exempt from the recycling fee and effectively has a monopoly on Uzbekistan’s electric car market.
Unlike Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are both members of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and were initially viewed in China primarily as countries for reexport to Russia. During the last three and a half years, about 236,000 cars—mostly Chinese—were reexported from those countries to Russia. But the Russian government’s increase in the recycling fee on cars cleared through customs in EAEU countries last year closed that loophole.
Still, the interest of Chinese manufacturers in the markets—especially Kazakhstan—did not disappear. Chinese producers have been able to offer their new electric cars at prices that are often cheaper than used cars that run on gasoline. In 2024, almost half of all cars sold in Kazakhstan were Chinese brands, and the number of electric cars in the country has increased more than thirty times since 2022. Now three Chinese automakers (Chery, Great Wall Motor, and Changan) are launching assembly plants there.
Tajikistan is Central Asia’s smallest car market, with just fifty-five cars per 1,000 people, though here, too, Chinese brands have found their niche. Instead of expanding using market methods, China has relied on diplomacy and lobbying.
In 2022, Tajikistan exempted electric car imports from taxes and duties, and the following year, President Emomali Rahmon’s son Rustam, who is both speaker of the upper house of parliament and mayor of the capital Dushanbe, signed an agreement with the Chinese for the construction of an electric car plant. He subsequently decreed that by September 2025, all taxi services in the capital must use electric vehicles. Considering that the vast majority of electric cars in the country are Chinese, the direct beneficiary of such decrees is China.
For decades, China’s lack of expertise and experience in Central Asia meant it faced problems in the region, such as business conflicts and resistance from the public to a Chinese presence. But the success of Chinese carmakers shows that the country’s businesses have come to understand their neighbors better. Investments in specialized Chinese think tanks that study Central Asia are having an impact, along with the thousands of people from the region who have studied in China.
China is also expanding its presence in other areas. By 2025, there were more than 11,000 enterprises with Chinese capital in the region, which is 13 percent of all enterprises with foreign capital in Central Asia.
The dominance of Chinese electric cars there is part of a general trend in which Chinese brands are conquering ever larger shares of the region’s tech markets. Previously, Central Asian countries tried to diversify their electronics suppliers in a bid not to become dependent on a single exporter. Now such a policy is too expensive and makes no sense.
China’s technology monopoly is rapidly making it a necessity for the Central Asian countries to integrate into their giant neighbor’s tech ecosystem. Electric cars are not just an alternative to cars with internal combustion engines; they are also the next stage of the industry’s development, which will bring new technologies.
Accordingly, 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: the entire infrastructure of electric charging stations, servicing, the replacement and disposal of batteries, and in due course, standards for driverless cars. That will ultimately spread to the level of management: first of municipal infrastructure, and then the nationwide transport system, leaving no room for competitors.
