Believe it or not, between 25% and 40% of oil production in Kazakhstan belongs to Chinese businesses today, particularly oil fields in the Aktobe region. Like in other countries, after signing a contract, Chinese companies would bring their workers and equipment, and control strictly production, ostracizing outsiders.
Chinese farmers hold thousands of hectares of Kazakh land under lease while the country has been recently shaken by public protests against an increase in the term of a lease to 25 years for fear that China may gobble up Kazakhstan.
According to local journalist Kamil Kasimbekov, the number of Chinese companies has increased by one third in the former Soviet republic over three years alone. Chinese businessmen invested more than $40 billion in the Kazakhstan's economy.
Increasingly, Beijing insists on Astana introducing a visa-free travel regime for its citizens. In that case the Chinese would overflow into the country.
Kazakh nationalists complain that their country now risks becoming a satellite of Beijing. “When the Chinese come, the apocalypse follows,” runs a Kazakh saying.
The Financial Times notes that Kazakhstan has traditionally gravitated towards Russia, itself wary of China’s growing clout in central Asia, for political and economic patronage. A deeply Russified cultural legacy remains in the former Soviet republic, with most ethnic Kazakhs on the border using Russian, rather than Mandarin, as the lingua franca of trade.
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