Kazakhstan’s largest Chinese business round in years put data, computing and digital logistics at the center. The measure of it will be deployment.
Eldaniz Gusseinov.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s working visit to Shanghai on July 16-17 produced a familiar number and a new emphasis. Kazakhstan and China signed more than 70 commercial documents worth over $15 billion, covering artificial intelligence, transport, finance, agriculture and machinery. What set this round apart was where the weight fell. The center of gravity sat in data, computing and digital logistics, the fields that will define the next decade of the relationship, rather than in the oil, metals and transit flows that built it.
Tokayev opened the roundtable with the figures that anchor the partnership and a phrase to frame them. The two countries, he said, have entered a new “golden thirty years.” Bilateral trade reached $49 billion in 2025, a record, and Chinese firms have put more than $30 billion into the Kazakh economy, with over 8,500 enterprises carrying Chinese capital now active in the country. He named CNPC, CITIC and Huawei among the anchors, then pointed to a newer industrial layer: a gas chemical complex with Sinopec, a corn processing plant with Fufeng and a textile cluster with Lihua, alongside multi-brand vehicle assembly for Changan, Great Wall Motor and Chery. The value of Chinese participation, in his telling, sits increasingly in jobs, technology and industrial depth, with raw trade volume the older part of the story.
The pivot to data and computing
Alexander Dergay
The signing list showed the shift in plain terms. Huawei took the largest share, concluding a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and a separate equipment supply agreement with Samruk-Kazyna. Kazakhtelecom signed a framework with Hengtong Group on Data Center Valley, the gigawatt-scale computing complex rising near Ekibastuz. Almaty gained an artificial intelligence and robotics agreement involving UBTECH, and Kazakh universities tied up with Shanghai and Suzhou institutions. The timing was deliberate. The visit opened alongside the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, where Astana joined 29 governments in the Shanghai-based World AI Cooperation Organization.
Data Center Valley is where Kazakhstan’s positioning becomes legible. The same Ekibastuz site that now draws Chinese fibre and construction capital also anchors a $10 billion arrangement with Nvidia and a US-linked cloud partner, reported earlier this summer. Astana is not committing to one technology ecosystem. It is inviting both and pricing the same underlying assets into each: land, spare grid capacity and electricity near $0.025 per kilowatt-hour. Power that is scarce and expensive in the United States and Europe is abundant and cheap in northern Kazakhstan, and the government is monetizing that gap across the very rivalry that constrains hyperscale expansion elsewhere.
Mobility and ports rounded out the industrial side. Allur signed to build Li Auto vehicles in Kazakhstan, Astana Motors licensed Omoda and Jaecoo assembly with Chery, and Samruk-Kazyna, Freedom Holding and Astana’s city administration agreed a framework with Geely on electric-vehicle charging and automotive AI. On the Caspian, Guoyou committed to a multifunctional terminal at Kuryk, the port that feeds Kazakh cargo onto the Trans-Caspian route. In parallel talks, Tokayev discussed a first Central Asian battery plant with CATL. Each of these keeps more of the manufacturing chain inside the country.
Corridors, minerals and the deployment question
The logistics agenda followed the same logic. About 85% of China-Europe rail traffic already crosses Kazakhstan, and freight with China rose roughly 9% in the first half of 2026 to 18.7 million tons, while container trains dispatched from China through the country climbed more than a third year on year. In Shanghai, Tokayev sold the next layer, a digital one: Smart Cargo, a single window pooling customs, logistics and commercial data, built so that goods clear borders at something closer to the speed at which data moves. The framing matters because the Middle Corridor’s physical ceiling is fixed. Two changes of rail gauge and a Caspian crossing keep it structurally more expensive than the all-water route to Europe. Additional value has to come from speed, transparency and digital integration, since the geography will not yield maritime-scale tonnage.
Critical minerals formed the other pillar. Tokayev restated the demand Kazakhstan now makes of every partner it courts, which is processing and manufacturing capacity on Kazakh soil, with extraction rights as the opening term rather than the prize. That message runs alongside Astana’s parallel engagement with Washington and Brussels on rare earth separation and refining. It is also the message the Shanghai deals encode. The stated goal across them is technology transfer, research centres and production chains, with capital treated as the entry ticket.
The authors are Alexander Dergay, a column writer for Berliner Zeitung and the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine, and Eldaniz Gusseinov, a co-founder and head of research at Nightingale Int.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Astana Times.
