Signal C5+1 dialogues with Central Asia multiply and move to summit level, while Korea's summit slips

Summary

Dialogue formats between the five Central Asian states and outside partners, known as C5+1, now exist with the United States, Europe, China, Korea and Japan. The report records that Japan launched its foreign-minister-level forum in 2004, Korea in 2008 and the United States in 2015, and that the formats have recently been upgraded to summits. China held a leaders' meeting with the five states in 2023 and a further one in June 2025, suggesting that summit-level C5+1 meetings will become regular. Korea agreed in 2024 to hold a leaders' meeting with the five states in 2025, but domestic political circumstances made holding it in 2025 impossible. The authors argue that the US and European formats were late imitations prompted by Japanese and Korean initiatives and by Russia's annexation of Crimea, rather than frameworks the West created on its own.