The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was born on the Kazakh steppe, where President Xi Jinping unveiled the Silk Road Economic Belt in 2013. More than a decade on, Hong Kong has validated his vision. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has led the largest delegation of his term to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the mission reads less like a sales call and more like a declaration: The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s superconnector role has found a frontier on which to earn a bigger reputation.

The scale signals intent. Around 70 business leaders made the trip, roughly 40 from Hong Kong and 30 from the Chinese mainland, among them Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd Chief Executive Bonnie Chan Yi-ting and the heads of mainland champions in mining and energy, car manufacturing, and information technology. It was the first mission to head abroad since the city set up its task force for mainland firms “going global”, and the largest that Lee has led. It aims to build channels for capital, deals, and talent.

The timing is deliberate. After years of enticing the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and with the BRI’s next chapter unfolding across the Eurasian interior, Lee has turned his attention to the interior. His pitch is a hub-to-hub model: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are the gateways into Central Asia, and Hong Kong is the conduit into East and Southeast Asia.

But what can the city offer a region the mainland already dominates, and why now?

As the new geopolitical reality rewires global trade, Central Asia, the crossroads of the old Silk Road and the new Belt and Road, is the high-growth, underserved arena in which Hong Kong’s superconnector promise can be proven once again. If the SAR converts this homecoming into binding agreements, that promise is its own to keep. If the city hesitates, the corridor will find other gatekeepers

The answer is complementarity, not rivalry. The mainland’s trade with Kazakhstan reached $48.8 billion last year, accounting for some 46 percent of its commerce with the region; Hong Kong’s exports to all of Central Asia totaled only $313.4 million. That gap defines our role. Where the mainland moves goods and builds roads and railways, the HKSAR supplies the common-law contracts, listings, arbitration, and patient capital that turn corridors into bankable enterprises.

The model already works. In 2025, the Development Bank of Kazakhstan sold the first dim sum (offshore yuan) bond issued in Hong Kong by a state-owned Central Asian borrower; the national oil company KazMunayGas followed within weeks. A Chinese tungsten miner operating in Kazakhstan became the first to list simultaneously in Hong Kong and Astana. These are prime examples for others to follow suit, with Lee pressing Kazakhstan to repeat them through listings, bonds, and project finance.

Hong Kong’s balance sheet lends credibility to the pitch. Hong Kong is the world’s largest cross-border wealth management center, holding $2.95 trillion in cross-border assets, and it commands close to half of Asia’s international green bond market, arranging over $43 billion in green and sustainable bonds in 2024. To a region scrambling to fund its transformation, those numbers travel further than any spoken word.

Geography seals the logic. Kazakhstan is the overland bridge between China and Europe, generating more than half of Central Asia’s output and roughly 70 percent of its inward investment. New trade routes are being threaded through it, demanding the financing, insurance and logistics expertise Hong Kong has spent decades refining.

Connectivity is also going digital. Kazakhstan has designated 2026 the Year of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence and is expanding its data center capacity. On the trip, Astana Hub signed pacts with Hong Kong’s Cyberport and Science and Technology Parks Corp, and the Belt and Road Office with Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development. As they grow, those ventures will need the depth of fundraising that Hong Kong was built to provide.

Uzbekistan, the mission’s second stop, offers a different prize. The region’s most populous and youngest market, home to more than 38 million people, is chasing World Trade Organization membership and aims to double exports by 2030. Its “Made in Uzbekistan” drive, built on cotton, textiles, gold, and low-cost labor, is just the light-industry base our traders and financiers can scale into Europe. First movers will set the terms.

A human corridor is forming, too: Kazakhstani students are studying in Hong Kong, some under Belt and Road scholarships, building the talent and trust on which durable ties rest.

Central Asia is an early-stage gold mine, and that cuts both ways. The Astana International Financial Center, a common law enclave, has attracted more than 4,900 companies and over $20 billion since 2018, yet only 15 are from Hong Kong. The aim is to place three to five Kazakh issuers a year on Hong Kong’s exchange this decade, but rival hubs, the Arabian Gulf among them, circle the same prize, and preferred-connector status is earned, never granted.

Hong Kong arrives with the hard part behind it: the corridors opened, the deals proven, the capital amassed. What it has yet to show is its ability to deliver. As the new geopolitical reality rewires global trade, Central Asia, the crossroads of the old Silk Road and the new Belt and Road, is the high-growth, underserved arena in which Hong Kong’s superconnector promise can be proven once again. If the SAR converts this homecoming into binding agreements, that promise is its own to keep. If the city hesitates, the corridor will find other gatekeepers.

The writer is a cofounder of Brandstorm Communications and a published author who writes extensively about Russia and Central Asia.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.