The hall stood in silence before the speeches began, Tengrinews reported at 13:39, on the Friday Tokayev had declared a day of national mourning for the servicemen of the Khazar Korgany-2026 exercise, 14 dead by noon. His speech then ran through the ledger of the “golden thirty years”: trade that “approached the record mark of $50 billion” in 2025 and a $100 billion target the two governments are working towards; Chinese investment “with a cumulative volume of over $29 billion”; “more than nine thousand enterprises with Chinese participation”; a portfolio of 260 major joint projects worth more than $62 billion. Kazakh Invest’s morning note had counted the same things differently: $49 billion of trade, more than $30 billion invested, more than 8,500 enterprises, $2.8 billion of Chinese direct investment in 2025, 77 projects worth $13.3 billion completed with 21,600 jobs and 269 in the pipeline. Two ledgers left the same building within four hours.
Kazakh Invest’s chairman Sultangali Kinzhakulov had told Kazakhstan Today at 10:10 that more than 300 Chinese and more than 200 Kazakh companies were in the building and that “more than 40 commercial documents worth several billion dollars” were expected by the close. The list Kazinform published at 14:44 has 10 lines and one figure. Akmola region signed with SUNGROW Renewable Development for wind stations of 450 MW; Samruk-Energy signed a joint development agreement with China Energy Overseas Investment and SANY Renewable Energy; Abai region signed twice with a consortium of Xinjiang Sanbao Industrial Group and Inner Mongolia Wanjiang Investment, for an electrolytic aluminium plant with its own wind station and for a particleboard plant in Semey. East Kazakhstan region signed a letter of intent with East Motors Corporation for a vehicle plant, Turkistan region with Turan Chemical Company for a urea plant, and Almaty with Everest Development and SunnyWorld Group for a hotel and business complex. Three lines are financial: Kazakh Invest and Silk Road Finance Corporation agreed the main terms of a special investment fund at the AIFC, Almaty and Guotai Junan Securities (Hong Kong) signed on dim sum bonds, and the Development Bank of Kazakhstan and China Construction Bank’s Astana branch signed preliminary financing terms. No sum is attached to any of the 10.
Two ledgers left the same building within four hours.
The yuan runs through the day’s most specific lines. Tokayev told the hall that Samruk-Kazyna had gone to China’s interbank market in early September with panda bonds of more than 3 billion yuan, about $450 million, as, in his words, the first issuer from Central Asia and the SCO countries to do so, and that he sees “great potential” in the AIFC’s work with Hong Kong. Almaty’s dim sum bonds and the Development Bank’s terms with China Construction Bank belong to the same channel, Kazakh borrowers priced in Chinese currency. The $440 million robotics project of Nero Group and UBTech, “announced on the sidelines” in The Astana Times’ account at 15:50, is a July agreement signed in Tokayev’s presence and restated, with educational robots due from October and 30 Almaty schools to be supplied by the end of the year.
The president’s minerals sentence listed uranium, copper, gold, coal, critical minerals and rare earths; gas and pipelines are absent from the speech as Akorda published it. His forecast for the rail corridor was 3,000 container trains from China to Europe by 2029. The accounts of the day name Kinzhakulov for the organiser, more than 300 Chinese companies for the guests and Xi Jinping in the president’s speech, and no Chinese official by name. The closing line was Tokayev’s: “Kazakhstan and China, as two friendly and neighbouring states, will together be able to carry out any undertaking.” A forum that had promised 40 documents and several billion dollars delivered 10 agreements and one number in megawatts, on the day the Caspian count closed at 14.