Recently, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun will attend the SCO Defense Ministers' Meeting in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan (hereinafter referred to as Kazakhstan), and pay an official visit to Kazakhstan after the meeting.
[Chinese Defense Minister will visit Kazakhstan]
It is worth mentioning that just before the announcement of this news, Kazakhstan had just held a "special meeting". A few days ago, the Embassy of Kazakhstan in China held a special press conference for the Chinese media, detailing the country's major political and economic reforms in recent years
Commenting on political reforms, Ambassador Nuryshev said that the reform measures taken in the country have ensured the best synergy between the various branches of power and further consolidated the "presidential-parliamentary-government" tripartite cooperation and balanced working model. In terms of economic reform, Nuryshev briefed the Chinese media on Kazakhstan's "new economic path" and stressed that the country will further optimize its investment and business environment. In addition, Nuryshev also spent a lot of space enumerating and introducing the actual achievements of China-Kazakhstan cooperation in the past, focusing on the current investment potential of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan has taken the initiative, consistently and openly explained its economic cooperation policy to China and clearly expressed its friendly attitude to China, and its goal is very clear: they hope to use China's economic growth momentum to promote their own economic development. In the past, despite the efforts to develop the economy in Kazakhstan, due to the instability of the domestic political situation, a considerable part of the energy had to be devoted to dealing with the internal political unrest in the country.
[Large-scale riots broke out in Kazakhstan before]
In 2022, an anti-government protest erupted in Kazakhstan and then quickly turned violent, the largest civil unrest in Kazakhstan's 30 years of independence, and an externalization of the power struggle within the ruling party. Regarding the initiator of the riots, although Kazakhstan did not say too clearly, everyone knows that it must be inseparable from the former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
From the very beginning of Tokayev's tenure, the power struggle with Lao Na has already begun. As a former ruler with real power and deep roots, Lao Na initially did not see Tokayev as a threat, but only as an "interim president", and all the lifeblood of the domestic economy remained in the hands of the Na family. Under this premise, even if Tokayev intends to promote economic reforms, he is powerless.
According to Lao Na's original plan, after the end of Tokayev's term, he planned to let his eldest daughter Nazarbayeva take over as president, and at that time, Kazakhstan will still be under the control of the Na family. It is worth mentioning that before Tokayev took over the presidency, his position was the chairman of the Senate, and after he became president, Nazarbayeva was arranged by the old Na as the president of the Senate, and the signal of waiting to take over the baton is already very obvious.
[Nazarbayev and Tokayev]
In 2020, the Nate family broke out in "infighting", Nazarbayeva's son Aisutan revealed to the outside world that his mother was involved in a scandal involving billions of dollars in corruption, and Tokayev, who had been dormant for a long time, kicked Nazarbayeva out of parliament after the Knott family scandal was exposed, which greatly weakened the prestige and influence of the Narva family in Kazakhstan.
At the same time, demonstrations against the rise in natural gas prices broke out in Kazakhstan, and Lao Na, who did not admit defeat, seized this opportunity to pull Tokayev down, so he united with some Western non-governmental organizations to incite and manipulate public sentiment, so that the conflict escalated into a large-scale anti-government protest across the country in less than a week.
Unexpectedly, however, the riots instead gave Tokayev a chance to "clean up the portal". With Russia's support, Tokayev took advantage of the situation to arrest a number of leading figures and important officials in the intelligence services, and to reduce a large number of supporters of Lao Na. In the end, Tokayev really took power, winning a landslide re-election in the 2022 presidential election, which allowed him to push for reforms with all his might. Over the past two years, Tokayev has swept away a large number of remaining obstacles through political and economic reforms, and has largely cleared the country's development plans and trajectory.
[The Ambassador of Kazakhstan introduces the situation in his country]
Now that the domestic problems have been basically dealt with, all that remains is how to develop, and if you want to develop rapidly, you will inevitably have to provide assistance from the outside world. Among them, Russia, which is close to Russia, will not be able to help much, because Russia and Kazakhstan are highly overlapping in terms of economic structure and commodity exports, and if Kazakhstan and Russia continue to be bound, they can only pick up what is left by Russia, and it is obviously very difficult to develop their own economy to a large extent. And cooperation with the West not only risks being "invaded" politically, but also causes discontent on the Russian side.
In contrast, China is undoubtedly Kazakhstan's most ideal partner. On the one hand, China and Kazakhstan are geographically close to each other and have convenient economic and trade relations; on the other hand, China is powerful and has been the largest trading partner in Central Asia for many years; at the same time, there is no need to worry about political interference or provoking Russia when cooperating with China. Therefore, the Kazakh side took the initiative to make its policy transparent to China in order to tell China that it is ready to cooperate.
Against this background, the Chinese defense minister personally visited Kazakhstan and held meetings and dialogues with leaders of the Chinese state and defense departments, which fully reflects the importance that China attaches to Kazakhstan. It is worth mentioning that this is the second international military visit by Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun since he took office, and compared with the previous visit, this visit is more formal and eye-catching, which has laid a solid foundation for further deepening cooperation between China and Kazakhstan in the future.