While European partners limit themselves to diplomatic hints of interest in Kyrgyzstan's strategic subsoil, China is acting. On April 23, 2025, the “Kyrgyz-Chinese Company for Development of Rare Metals” was officially registered in Bishkek, which is confirmed by the data of the Ministry of Justice.

The main activity of the new legal entity, established by Erzhan Asanov and I. Gaowen, is specified as mining and enrichment of ores of precious metals. The company's office is located in the capital, but there is no information about a specific license or deposit yet.

The registration of a company with a speaking name is difficult to consider outside the global context. China and the US are involved in a full-scale trade war, and rare earth metals are a key front in this conflict. They are the raw material basis for batteries, microchips, defense technologies and green energy.

We would like to add that since 2011 another structure has been registered in Kyrgyzstan - Kashki Rare Earth Elements Plant LLC, which is linked to Canada's Stans Energy Corp. and its subsidiary Kutisai Mining LLC. According to open sources, these companies are or were related to the Kutessai II and Kalesai deposits, the development of which was frozen back in the 1990s.

Despite the fact that both companies are listed as active, however, instead of growing in recent years, they have only decreased their activity. Thus, the already modest payments of the Kashki plant to the budget fell 3.5 times - from 443.6 thousand KGS in 2022 to 127.5 thousand KGS in 2024. At Kutisai Mining, the drop is even sharper: from 650.7 thousand soms to 96.7 thousand KGS.

Recall that in early April, speaking at the summit “Central Asia - European Union” in Samarkand, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov called on the countries of the European Union to jointly develop deposits of rare earth metals. However, the Western partners have not yet taken concrete steps, at least not to the general public.