**5. Conclusions**

The five-stage approach allowed to (1) reveal comparative, trade, and competitive advantages of Central Asian economies in agricultural trade, (2) match those advantages with production capabilities of agricultural sectors, (3) divide products into groups according to the degree of competitiveness. It is revealed that the countries of Central Asia are able to compete internationally in labor-intensive horticultural products and some crops, primarily, wheat and oilseeds. Capital and technology-intensive sectors of animal husbandry, livestock production, and food processing are all low competitive across the region (to a certain degree, the exceptions being Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan where some meat and dairy products are recognized conditionally competitive).

The matching between the revealed advantages of Central Asian agricultural sectors and China's current imports, investment in the region, and future demand in food demonstrates several opportunities that can be embraced from closer China—Central Asia collaboration. First, there is a growing demand for diverse food products in China. Currently, Central Asia is indeed a very modest contributor to China's agricultural imports. None of the five countries of the region is now capable to pose any substantial influence on food supply in China. However, at least in C and CC product groups (oil seeds, fruit, wheat, cereals, feeding stuff for animals), Central Asia can become one the sources of food import in the diversified food supply network. Second, closer agricultural ties between China and the countries of Central Asia in the framework of the BRI, economic development corridor, as well as agricultural investment, knowledge-sharing, and technology will ensure regional food supply and enhance the sustainability of agricultural value chains. Third, the development of agricultural value chains between Central Asia and China may have food security and pro-poor benefits as it would involve farmers in the international food supply and provide more jobs and income opportunities to low-income people in rural areas.

To enhance the integration between Central Asia's supply and China's demand sides of the value chains, the authors construct a set of policy responses to major advantage-related challenges. The approach is that the stakeholders in C and CC value chains should be supported to implement or develop competitive advantage and expand exports, while MC and NC value chains should be aimed at the domestic markets to contribute to the solution of the food insecurity problem. It is expected that the implementation of policy measures will facilitate the concentration of the resources toward competitive and potentially competitive products, protect and promote vulnerable competitive advantages in the value-added sectors of animal production and food processing, enhance the competitiveness and productivity of the stakeholders within the chains, thus contributing to better performance of agricultural sectors in Central Asia, agriculture-driven economic growth in rural areas, and more sustainable food supply in the macro-region of Eurasia at the end.

This study is a preliminary attempt to roughly link trade and competitive advantages and production capabilities with the sustainability of value chains in agriculture. Thorough work is required to eliminate the existing limitations and make the approach relevant in a wider sustainability-related context. Due to the fact that this study considers China as a single trade partner, there is a rationale to extend the research to a wider pool of trade partners of Central Asian economies, for instance, Russia, the Middle East, and the EU. This will allow to assess the degree of diversification in value chains and suggest the responses to possible demand and price fluctuations on particular markets. Intra-regional agricultural trade in Central Asia has been stagnating since the 1990s due to the fact that no country possesses a decisive advantage over the others. In almost similar climate, geographical, technological, and economic conditions of agricultural production, they all produce similar products of a rather narrow assortment. There is no economic basis for intensive exchange then. Still, it is worth studying those marginal competitive advantages which exist outside the traditional sectors of horticulture and crop production in order to understand how they may be promoted for the benefit of intra-regional supply chains. Quality constraints to expanding agricultural exports from Central Asia should be studied primarily in relation to C and CC product groups. Moreover, there is a rationale in analyzing the effects of trade policy constraints (both export restrictions from Central Asia's side and import policies of trade partners) for the stability of value chains.

**Author Contributions:** V.E. designed the research framework and wrote the paper; L.D. performed the data collection; P.D. analyzed and interpreted the data. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research and the APC were funded by (1) China Overseas Chinese FederationMajor Project "Study on Transnational Migration, Human Capital Structure and Economic Growth in Silk Road Economic Belt Countries", grant 17AZQK203; (2) special "country-region" research project led by Wuhan University's dual first-class construction; (3) Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China, grant project 3072019CFP0902.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
