More than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia is the largest trading partner of Kazakhstan, although China it penetrated most of the territory from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria.

The economic sanctions imposed by the West on Russia are opening up new opportunities for China by changing the flow of trade. And the government of Kazakhstan, like the minister of trade, believes that in a few years China will displace Russia from the first place.

Central Asia has been a gateway for China’s trade with Europe and the Middle East for centuries. Today it is entangled in a web of competing interests that stretches from Washington to Moscow to Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping Last year, he decided to visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for his first post-pandemic trip. And while Western countries, from Italy to Australia, are re-examining their relationship with China, Central Asian countries such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are having a hard time resisting this. Kazakhstan’s trade with China increased by about 30% last year, approaching $24 billion.

It still lags behind trade with Russia, which grew just 6% last year. Kazakhstan claims to comply with restrictions placed on Russia, but expanded its trade relations with Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Along with countries such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan is the focus of Western governments who are investigating whether it facilitated exports to Russia.

The world’s largest landlocked country, it ranks first in uranium mining and in the production of commodities such as ferrochromium. For Kazakhstan, Russia has long been a window to the outside world, giving it access to maritime transport and a much larger market thanks to low tariffs and limited barriers to trade and supply.

The two countries are members of the Customs Union and are connected by the world’s second longest border after the US-Canada border and by a pipeline linked to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which carries about 80% of Kazakh oil exports.

But all this changes after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Transportation of products through Russia is difficult, and some companies under sanctions can no longer receive raw materials from Kazakhstan. And as more and more Russian producers are now turning to the domestic market, they are losing sight of Kazakh exports.

So Kazakhstan is looking further east, to China, but also beyond the Caspian to Iran and the Persian Gulf, to India, but beyond.

At a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Kazakh President Kassym Tokayev set a goal of doubling trade relations with China to $40 billion by 2030.

Fearing sanctions, Kazakhstan is turning away from Moscow and towards China, and also seeks to increase its trade with Europe.