Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Kazakhstan is the region’s giant but lies between two even greater territorial titans: Russia and China. During the Soviet era, the northern tier of Kazakhstan was heavily Russified, and in the 2010s ethnic Russians still account for about 22 percent of the total national population of 17.9 million. To stay on good terms with post-Soviet Russia, the Kazakhs carefully maintain the railway and highway links that connect their north to Russia—and they even moved their capital to Astana in the heart of Russified Kazakhstan. Today, this country is in the forefront of Central Asia’s energy boom: it already ranks among the world’s leading producers of uranium, and in 2014 it ranked 15th among the oil-producing countries. . . . New oil and gas pipelines operating across Kazakhstan are serving to reduce China’s dependence on oil imports carried by long-haul tankers along distant international sea lanes. Kazakhstan’s economic growth has averaged 8 percent annually over the past decade, a development thrust that is certain to continue as the country becomes even more of an oil power as well as a leading beneficiary of China’s New Silk Road project . . . " [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 226]