Chinese people in Kazakhstan
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (Disputed) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Almaty | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Overseas Chinese |
The number of Chinese people in Kazakhstan is not very clear. There have been various migrations of ethnic minorities from China to Kazakhstan in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as that of the Dungan people fleeing Qing Dynasty forces after a failed 1862–1877 rebellion in northwest China, or the Uyghur and Kazakh exodus from Xinjiang during the 1950s Great Leap Forward; however, their descendants do not consider themselves to be "Chinese people". The modern wave of migration from China only dates back to the early 1990s.
During the Mongol Empire, Han Chinese were moved to Central Asian areas like Besh Baliq, Almaliq, and Samarqand by the Mongols where they worked as artisans and farmers. The Daoist Chinese master Qiu Chuji travelled through Kazakhstan to meet Genghis Khan in Afghanistan.
China and Kazakhstan agreed on visa-free travel in early 1992, which led to 150 to 200 Chinese citizens entering Kazakhstan each day and not returning to China. Most are believed to have simply used Kazakhstan as a transit point to Europe. Visa-free travel was terminated in 1993. The border between the two countries remained strictly controlled and highly militarised until the 1995 China–Kazakhstan Joint Declaration, following which People's Liberation Army units in the region were redeployed to the borders with Tajikistan and Afghanistan in southern Xinjiang. Starting from them, many Chinese traders began flowing into Kazakhstan. When the Kazakhstani government first opened a consulate in Ürümqi in 1997, it did not even issue visas to local people, but by 2004 it was possible for Chinese people to obtain business visas with an invitation from an organisation in Kazakhstan. Chinese citizens of Kazakh ethnicity do not require visas at all.
Some Kazakhstan popular media reports claimed there were as many as 300,000 Chinese people in Kazakhstan by the year 2000. An article from China's official Xinhua News Agency repeated this same number in 2009. However, official entrance statistics showed only 28,000 in 2004, 34,000 in 2005, and 29,000 in 2006. Furthermore, surveys show that among migrants from China, non-Han ethnicities form the majority. 67% of Kazakhstanis expect that migration from China will increase in the future.
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