Chinese efforts to woo Saudi Arabia’s ethnic Chinese community highlight the People’s Republic’s effort to avert criticism from the Muslim world of its crackdown in the north-western province of Xinjiang and strengthen relations with the kingdom and Middle Eastern nations.
Uzbekistan’s so-called “spring” is more about upgrading this Central Asian state than providing political freedoms.
At first glance, Kazakhstan’s new financial center is an exercise in ambition. Built out of the infrastructure of a futuristic, Epcot Center-like World Expo venue, the Astana International Financial Center at least doesn’t have to put in new wiring. It has everything. It wants to be everything, too.
Any Kazakh official with a microphone in front of them would say President Nursultan Nazarbaev enjoys widespread popularity.
A court in Kyrgyzstan has upheld a decision to extradite a Kazakh opposition activist to his homeland despite concerns by human rights activists that he could face torture and ill-treatment if returned.
Dozens of people were detained across Kazakhstan on June 23 as Astana sought to abort a planned protest called for by the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK), an opposition party banned as an extremist group by the Kazakh government in early March.
Police in Kazakhstan detained dozens of people at an anti-government rally on Saturday organised by an exiled opponent of the veteran president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Francis Maude MP is advising Kazakhstan on how to create a financial "free zone", which is likely to handle big money from Russian oligarchs.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev emphasized on Sunday at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit the need to push international connection projects such as the Beijing-Berlin high-speed rail line that will pass through Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.
Martha Brill Olcott is one of the most famous experts on Kazakhstan. She is the author of two books on Kazakhstan (The Kazakhs, published in 1987, and Kazakhstan: The Unfulfilled Promise (2002).
