President Xi Jinping welcomed about 200 Kazakh youngsters to Beijing on Tuesday as the university students began to retrace the ancient Silk Road, which has given the two countries centuries of close ties.

The students' visit is one of the cultural exchange programs that Xi has promoted since China created a strategy to revitalize the trade and personal ties between China, Central Asia and Europe, through which the ancient Silk Road ran about 2,000 years ago.

The young guests are from Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev University, where Xi made a speech on China's Central Asia strategy in September and proposed for the first time that China and Central Asian countries build an "economic belt along the Silk Road".