Defining the Silk Road Borders: Central Asia Regional Dynamics and the Soviet Legacy in Sino-Kazakh Bilateral Relations in the Belt and Road Era
Journal: Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University)
Year: 2023

Despite being the setting for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2013 announcement of the country’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a project of monumental economic and geopolitical consequence—Kazakhstan did not officially begin participation in the BRI until 2015. This thesis focuses on that intriguing delay, and questions the circumstances and considerations that led Kazakhstan to formalize its engagement with the BRI two years after the original announcement, particularly given the country’s geoe