As rich countries poured billions of dollars into bank bailouts, China quietly announced plans last month to invest $100bn building roads and railways to open up remote central Asia to the rest of the world. More than 20,000km of rail track will be built in the coming decade to bring Chinese goods into central Asia and carry back oil and metals to China.

Reaching out towards Russia, Europe, Iran and Pakistan, the railways will create a modern equivalent of the region's ancient Silk Road.

The project, at a time when even the most backward and insular central Asian countries are beginning to look outwards for investment, is expected to energise the region's delayed integration with global markets. Central Asia's remote geography, together with the security threat emanating from its southern border with Afghanistan and Iran, has kept most investors at bay since the five countries emerged as independent states at the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Even international oil companies competing fiercely for the region's vast energy reserves, have grappled to find transport routes out of the landlocked region. Furthermore, its authoritarian leaders have been slow to enact political and economic reforms that could attract investors and foster the development of an entrepreneurial class.

"Central Asian countries have not reformed or integrated themselves with the global economy as fast as other former Soviet states," says Olivier Descamps, managing director for Eurasia at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. "Most central Asian states have not yet turned up on international investors' radar screens."

The one exception is Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president, was the first regional leader to understand the potential benefits of global integration. Mr Nazarbayev moved swiftly after independence to introduce market reforms and invited international oil companies to tap the country's vast reserves. Kazakhstan's banking sector, transferred into private hands, flourished while international capital was cheap, borrowing exuberantly to fund an oil-driven domestic consumer boom.

Compared with other central Asian countries, Kazakhstan is a consumer paradise, its once drab city streets lined with shopping emporiums, smart restaurants and foreign cars. The country's success may in part be responsible for the slow opening up elsewhere in central Asia, where governments have, until recently, shunned reform.

Uzbekistan, the most populous and industrialised country in the region, having almost completed the privatisation of large agricultural co-operatives is preparing to sell part of its stake in the state oil company. A more extreme transformation is taking place in Turkmenistan where Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the new leader, has declared the country open to foreign investment, ending years of isolation imposed his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, a dictator, who died in December 2006.

Oil companies are courting Turkmenistan as Russia, Europe and China compete for access to the country's huge gas reserves. Mr Berdymukhammedov has skillfully played investors off each other while his immediate priority has been to bring in outsiders to reform the country's neglected agriculture and social services.

In spite of its isolation from global markets, central Asia is not immune to the shocks affecting the rest of the world. Economic growth is expected to slow on the back of a contraction in Russia and Kazakhstan. Russian corporations, driven partly by the Kremlin's determination to reassert its influence, have begun to invest in central Asian industrial projects but are now strapped for cash. Kazakh banks are struggling to repay foreign obligations and are expected to cut investments in regional banks.

Meanwhile, inflation, has hit central Asia particularly hard. Remittances account for more than 20 per cent of gross domestic product in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but are expected to drop sharply as Kazakhstan and Russia lay off migrant workers employed in the construction industry.

Russia, China and international oil corporations will continue to vie for access to energy resources, in spite of financial woes. Western oil majors in Kazakhstan are already committed to investing more than $20bn in the next five years at Caspian oilfields that will allow the country to double its production and join the ranks of the world's top 10 exporters.

China has moved to lock central Asian energy into its orbit, while the US and the EU have urged Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to direct energy exports to the west in new pipelines across the Caucasus.

However, the recent conflict in Georgia has exposed the vulnerability of pipelines built with strong US backing to help Caspian producers diversify export routes away from Russia. Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, visited Kazakhstan for energy talks with Mr Nazarbayev this month, but denied that the US was vying with Russia for influence over Kazakhstan.