Kazakh president's upcoming Beijing trip stokes Sino-phobia

Transparency needed if Kazakhstan is to benefit from China projects: analysts

Since the 1990s, all aspects of Kazakh-Sino relations -- delimiting the common border, bilateral trade, Chinese companies' arrival in the Kazakh oil and gas sector -- have been 99% closed to public scrutiny, one analyst says. © AP

NAUBET BISENOV, Contributing writer

September 10, 2019 14:08 JST

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- As President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev prepares to make his first official visit to China, Kazakhs are becoming the latest citizenry to push back against perceived Belt and Road intrusions.

The public mood began to sour in March, when Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only president Kazakhstan had ever known, abruptly resigned and Tokayev took over the very same day. Since then, mass protests have been brutally crushed, and President Tokayev has had the modifier "interim" removed from his title.