In the 1990s, Kazakhstan was just entering the Great Oil Game. In negotiations with Western companies and Asian partners, the then head of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, acted as a technocrat and diplomat.
But it was in those years that the foundation was laid for China’s investment expansion into Kazakhstan. Today, oil and gas, the foundation of the Kazakh economy, are exported mainly to China.
And the Chinese-Kazakh border trade zone has become a strategic corridor through which trade, money and influence flow.
Journalist Ayan Sharipbayev talks about this on the independent resource Elmedia Kazakhstan.
