Yiwu City in eastern China, renowned as the global capital for small commodities, offers an unparalleled variety of goods, a draw that brought Mika Omuralieva Meerzat, a Kyrgyz jewelry exporter, to establish her second home here.

Mika arrived in Yiwu, home to the world’s largest wholesale market, in 2016. Since then, she has been exporting Chinese fashion jewelry to Central Asia and Europe.

"Why I’m living so long time here because, like we say about fashion and jewelry, you just find all of these items just in Yiwu. Nowhere else," said Mika, founder of Mika Import and Export.

Last year, Mika exported products worth 20 million yuan. But in the fast-paced fashion industry, speed is critical. So she must not only identify trending items quickly, but also deliver them to consumers as quickly as possible.

As Mika explains, Central Asia’s landlocked geography poses logistical challenges: air freight is costly, while road transport is slow. Over the recent years, she has turned to and relied on the Yiwu-Madrid railway, which crosses into Central Asia via northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur 

Autonomous Region, reducing transit time to just 12–14 days for her shipments.

"Fashion is changing every day, so we need to be quick to find some new items and even send in the same day," Mika said.
Operational for over a decade, the Yiwu-Madrid line has been instrumental for entrepreneurs like Mika. In the first four months of 2025, the railway handled 85,700 containers, marking a 6.5 percent year-on-year increase.

Mika’s success mirrors broader trade trends. China is Kyrgyzstan’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching 22.7 billion US dollars in 2024, a figure both nations aim to double by 2030.

"Central Asian countries now opening up to China, so many investors going to my country, to Central Asia," Mika added.