China's involvement with Central Asia is crucial to the global economy because emerging nations are growing more rapidly than the rest of the world, Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said recently.

"It's better to try to nurture the growth of emerging economies because they are the only part of the world maintaining growth that could help drive the global economy out of difficulties," Supachai said.

He also said that Central Asian countries are benefiting from regional integration and "we should use the real recovery in Asia, particularly in Central Asia, to maintain the momentum".

According to Farrukh Hamraliyev, Tajikistan's minister of economic development and trade, bilateral trade between China and his nation will increase fourfold over the next five years.

Hamraliyev said Beijing had made a wise decision to establish several free trade zones in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, which will enable more privately owned Tajik enterprises to invest in China.

The 2011 UNCTAD Trade and Development Report, which was released in September, shows that growth is strong in developing economies, which have resumed their pre-crisis growth and are expanding at more than 6 percent this year. In contrast, the world's developed economies will only grow by between 1.5 and 2 percent in 2011.

"We have serious concerns about the health of the global economy, because the recovery seems unsustainable at the moment," Supachai said.

"International trade, which is the key to maintaining global growth, is not always supported by recovering economies because current difficulties make some developed economies, such as the US and the EU, restrict imports to maintain domestic employment."

China has been a major target of the EU's anti-dumping investigations. During the past 30 years, the EU has filed 140 cases against China, making it the WTO member with the most trade disputes with China.

To drive global economic recovery, the UNCTAD will promote a trade system between China, Central Asia and the EU, and introduce new policies to promote more global investment, Supachai said.

"Regional integration can help expand economic scale and we have also seen that China has become a major investor globally, with more than 50 percent of its foreign direct investment flowing into developing countries," Supachai said.

He added that the UNCTAD would like to see technology being transferred from China to Central Asia, especially in renewable energy.

Investment from China is driving forward processing industries in poor countries, as more and more Chinese entrepreneurs transfer their production bases to less advanced Asian countries due to rising labor costs in China. In addition, Chinese enterprises are also investing internationally in areas such as agriculture and manufacturing.

"We expect the active participation of Chinese enterprises in global investment, particularly in poor regions such as Africa."