Chinese leader Hu Jintao opened the Kazakh section of a new Central Asia-China gas pipeline on Saturday, tightening Beijing's control over natural resources in the vast energy-rich region, Reuters reported.
Lying on some of the world's biggest oil, gas and metals reserves, mainly Muslim Central Asia is at the centre of a geopolitical tug-of-war between China, Russia and the West, all seeking to grab a share of its untapped riches.
On a visit to the Kazakh capital Astana, Hu and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev pressed a symbolic button to inaugurate the Kazakh stretch of the new 1,833-kilometre (1,139-mile) Turkmenistan-China pipeline.
The entire pipeline, running from gas-rich Turkmenistan to China's restive region of Xinjiang via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, will be formally commissioned on Dec. 14 when Hu travels to Turkmenistan for an official ceremony.
"It's a huge project that will one day restore the ancient Silk Road route," Nazarbayev told Hu in Astana, referring to a mediaeval network of trading routes that ran across Eurasia.
In the icy steppe on the Kazakh border where the pipeline enters China, Chinese and Kazakh officials hugged and cheered following the Astana ceremony, some waving national flags.
The pipeline, which starts near a Turkmen gas field developed by China's CNPC, marks a new milestone in Beijing's quest for control over Central Asia's untapped energy resources.
China has already stepped up its presence in the region by handing out billions of dollars in loans, snapping up energy assets and building a separate oil pipeline from Kazakhstan.
On the sidelines of Hu's visit, officials signed a range of investment deals, all detailing earlier agreements between Astana and Beijing, in sectors such as steel and chemicals.
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