In early February, headlines in Uzbekistan proclaimed that 31 gold mining sites Navoi region had been auctioned off, with many claiming that the majority of the buyers were Chinese.
As is often the case, there was a degree of nuance that got lost in the initial chatter. The public fixation, however, on the China aspect serves to illustrate the sensitivities of the Uzbek public and the growing involvement of Chinese businesses in Central Asia – even if all is not what the most salacious rumors filtering through social media proclaimed.
On February 4, the E-auksion platform hosted an online auction of 31 plots of land that sold, collectively for 25.1 billion Uzbek soms ($1.95 million) to 12 companies. The plots, located in Navoi’s Nurota and Karmana districts, were for mining access to the Navoi, Nurota, Aksakalota, Sop, and Shukhsay deposits.
Kun.uz reported that during the bidding, “prices rose sharply due to competition among bidders, and 31 plots were sold for a total of 25.1 billion soms. This is 23 times more than the total starting price of the lots.”
The most expensive plot, Kun.uz reported, was Sop-10/24 plot in Nurota district, which sold to the Xinlong Mining Drilling company with a bid of 3.6 billion soms, 110 times higher than the starting price.
Xinlong Mining Drilling also took the second-most expensive plot, Sop-14/24, with a bid of 1.9 billion soms, as well as six other gold mining sites for a total of 9.1 billion soms.
Other companies that won plots included Neo Gold Mining (four plots, 2.7 billion soms), Zhonghuitong Mining Group (four plots, 1.13 billion soms), and Golden Diggers (three plots, 3.24 billion soms). In total, 12 companies walked away with winning bids and new mining plots.
Given the names of some of the companies, it was perhaps not surprising that many assumed them to be Chinese. That narrative dominated conversation about the auction last month.
Regionally, the prospect of selling land to foreigners, particularly Chinese, is highly incendiary. For example, in neighboring Kazakhstan in 2016, changes to the country’s land code that opened state-owned agricultural land to privatization and possible renting by foreigners triggered protests that were significant enough to delay the changes. Skip forward to 2021, when Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed into law a bill that banned the selling and leasing of agricultural land to foreigners.
The Center for Subsoil Use, an Uzbek government entity that issues permits related to mining activities, issued a statement via Telegram on February 22 that stated unequivocally: “We deny the information that 31 mines in Navoi were sold to the Chinese.” The statement sought to clarify that permits for “the right to use subsoil plots” – in other words, to prospect and mine them – “are issued only to legal entities registered in the Republic of Uzbekistan or citizens of Uzbekistan…”
Of the 12 companies that won bids in the online action, the Center for Subsoil Use said that some were fully owned by Uzbek citizens and that none of them were fully owned by foreigners. Citing some examples, the center claimed that Xinlong Mining Drilling was 70 percent owned by Uzbek citizens and Zhonghuitong Mining was 97.6 percent Uzbek owned.
The center closed its statement by stressing that China is one of Uzbekistan’s main economic partners: “In today’s era of globalization, strengthening ties with China is an important driver for our country’s economic development, export development, economic modernization, and expansion and diversification of transit routes.”
RFE/RL and Kun.uz reported that Xinlong Mining Drilling was founded in the summer of 2024, with Bakhtiyor Musurmanov, an Uzbek citizen, listed as owning 70 percent of the company’s authorized capital. The other 30 percent belongs to three foreign, presumably Chinese, citizens: Zeng Xianming, Yang Dianlin, and Zhou Hongli.
In 2024, China overtook Russia in terms of foreign direct investment in Uzbekistan. Out of more than 15,000 foreign enterprises operating in Uzbekistan, 3,467 were Chinese – a 42.5 percent increase from the previous year. China’s rise comes as Russia has faltered. The number of Russian companies decreased by 2.5 percent, from 3,049 at the start of 2024 to 2,973 by the beginning of 2025.
In an interview with RFE/RL, Temur Umarov of the Carnegie Berlin Center for the Russian and Eurasian Studies made an astute observation:
Here we are not only seeing the embodiment of the fact that in Central Asia they are skeptical about China due to insufficient information, insufficient understanding of Chinese interests, insufficient understanding in general of what China is, and so on. But there is also the factor of low trust in their own elites. There are sentiments in society that say that the elites can sell their own country, their national interests to literally anyone who offers any amount, including China.
This won’t be the last we hear of gold mining in Uzbekistan. Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Co (NMMC)., the world’s fourth largest gold producer, may have its eyes on an IPO this year – a prospect that was floated back in 2022 and 2023 but arguably delayed by the war in Ukraine. At present, the company is 98 percent owned by the Uzbek Ministry of Economy and Finance, with the remainder held by the State Assets Management Agency. According to reporting last year by Daryo.uz, NMMC’s “contribution to state budget revenues stood at 14.1%, making it the country’s largest taxpayer.”
And there’s more than gold under the ground in Uzbekistan. The global rush for critical minerals will certainly come into play, too, and here again Chinese investment and involvement will generate attention.