Kyrgyzstan

So what?  A border-bridge project and a checkpoint-management agreement signed alongside a rail-corridor accord point to Beijing building redundant, faster physical links into Central Asia that reduce its dependence on any single crossing or partner, worth tracking as an indicator of how fast Chinese goods can reach Central Asian and onward European markets outside existing chokepoints. The new interbank payment channel is also a small but real building block for settling China-Central Asia trade outside dollar-clearing systems.