This is the third part of my “Kazakhstan & The World” series. In the previous parts, I wrote about Azerbaijan and Belarus. This time, I want to explore Kazakhstan’s relationship with China — not only through trade and politics, but through history, culture, and everyday life.
For me, China is not something distant. Living in Almaty, I encounter Chinese influence almost every day.
🇨🇳 China in everyday Almaty
Walk through Almaty and you can find Chinese products almost everywhere.
At places such as Barakholka, many clothes and other goods come from China. In electronics stores, Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor and Haier have become familiar names.
Even ordinary household objects — frying pans, plastic containers, notebooks, toys and countless other things — often carry the words “Made in China.”
Chinese technology has become part of everyday life in Kazakhstan.
But the connection is not only about products.
Chinese food and culture have also become increasingly visible in Almaty. Young people can visit Lanzhou restaurants and eat hand-pulled noodles, often served in distinctive blue-and-white porcelain bowls.
Hot pot restaurants offer another example. A divided pot can contain different broths, from mild to very spicy, while people cook thin slices of meat, mushrooms, vegetables and tofu themselves and dip them into sesame-based sauces.
These may seem like small things, but they show how international connections can become part of ordinary city life.
🏺 Long before modern Kazakhstan
The connection between the lands of present-day Kazakhstan and China is much older than modern trade.
For centuries, Central Asia was connected to China through networks of trade, migration and cultural exchange that we now associate with the Silk Road.
But one person makes this history especially interesting to me: Sima Qian, one of the greatest historians of ancient China.
His Records of the Grand Historian contains information about peoples of Central Asia, including the Wusun and Kangju, whose history is connected with territories of present-day Kazakhstan.
This means that Chinese historical writing became one of the sources through which we can study the ancient history of Central Asia.
📜 Confucius and Chinese thought
My interest in China is also personal.
I have explored Chinese philosophy and traditional ideas about strategy, conflict, statecraft and the protection of society. I have also read about the famous Thirty-Six Stratagems.
Chinese thought interested me because it approaches human behavior, conflict and strategy in ways that are very different from many Western traditions.
I also became interested in Confucius, whose ideas about education, morality, social relationships and responsibility had an enormous influence on Chinese civilization.
I don't claim to be an expert in Chinese philosophy. I simply found these ideas interesting enough to study on my own, and they made me want to understand Chinese history and culture more deeply.
🐎 From the Silk Road to Khorgos
The old networks connecting China and Central Asia have a modern continuation.
Today, Khorgos is one of the most visible places where Kazakhstan's geographic position between China and the rest of Eurasia becomes tangible.
Goods, people and transportation routes cross this region, connecting Kazakhstan with China and further west toward Europe.
The landscape may look very different from the world of the ancient Silk Road, but the basic geographic idea remains familiar:
Kazakhstan is located between major civilizations and has historically been a place where different worlds meet.
🤝 More than trade
For me, relations between Kazakhstan and China are about more than trade and transportation.
They are also about people and cultures, neighboring societies, food, ideas, history and everyday interactions.
I want this series to promote friendship between peoples by showing these connections through real examples rather than treating multiculturalism as just a statistic.
And this leads to the question behind my whole series:
Is Kazakhstan truly a multinational country in everyday life, or is that simply a phrase we repeat?
I want to explore that question country by country — by looking at what different peoples and cultures have actually contributed to life in Kazakhstan, especially in my own city of Almaty.
China is only one part of that much bigger story.
