The railroad between the People's Republic of China and Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.
The Eurasian Land Bridge (Russian: , romanized: Yevraziyskiy sukhoputniy most), sometimes called the New Silk Road ( , Noviy shyolkoviy put'), is the rail transport route for moving freight and passengers overland between Pacific seaports in the Russian Far East and China and seaports in Europe. The route, a transcontinental railroad and rail land bridge, currently comprises the Trans-Siberian Railway, which runs through Russia and is sometimes called the Northern East-West Corridor, and the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge, running through China and Kazakhstan. As of November 2007, about one percent of the $600 billion in goods shipped from Asia to Europe each year were delivered by inland transport routes.Completed in 1916, the Trans-Siberian connects Moscow with Russian Pacific seaports such as Vladivostok. From the 1960s until the early 1990s the railway served as the primary land bridge between Asia and Europe, until several factors caused the use of the railway for transcontinental freight to dwindle. One factor is that the railways of the former Soviet Union use a wider rail gauge than most of the rest of Europe as well as China. Recently, however, the Trans-Siberian has regained ground as a viable land route between the two continents.China's rail system had long linked to the Trans-Siberian via northeastern China and Mongolia. In 1990, China added a link between its rail system and the Trans-Siberian via Kazakhstan. China calls its uninterrupted rail link between the port city of Lianyungang and Kazakhstan the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge. In addition to Kazakhstan, the railways connect with other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, including Iran. With the October 2013 completion of the rail link across the Bosphorus under the Marmaray project the New Eurasian Land Bridge now theoretically connects to Europe via Central and South Asia.
Proposed expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge includes construction of a railway across Kazakhstan that is the same gauge as Chinese railways (standard gauge, as opposed to 1,520 mm gauge in the former Soviet Union), rail links to India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, construction of a rail tunnel and highway bridge across the Bering Strait to connect the Trans-Siberian to the North American rail system, and construction of a rail tunnel between South Korea and Japan. The United Nations has proposed further expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge, including the Trans-Asian Railway project.
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia, and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia in the north and west, China in the east, and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan in the south. The capital is Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana. Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, was the country's previous capital until 1997. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country, the world's largest Muslim-majority country by land area (and the northernmost), and the ninth-largest country in the world. It has a population of 19 million, and one of the lowest population densities in the world, at fewer than 6 people per square kilometre (15 people per sq mi).
Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically and politically, generating 60% of the region's GDP, primarily through its oil and gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources. It is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan is a member of the United Nations (UN), WTO, CIS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union, CSTO, OSCE, OIC, OTS, and TURKSOY.
The territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic groups and empires. In antiquity, the nomadic Scythians inhabited the land, and the Persian Achaemenid Empire expanded towards the southern territory of the modern country. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states such as the First and Second Turkic Khaganates, have inhabited the country starting from the 6th century. In the 13th century, the territory was subjugated by the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. In the 15th century, the Kazakh Khanate conquered much land that would later form territories of modern Kazakhstan.
By the 16th century, the Kazakhs emerged as a distinct group, divided into three jüz. The Kazakhs raided the territory of Russia throughout the 18th century, causing the Russians to advance into the Kazakh steppes, and by the mid-19th century they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire and liberated all the slaves Kazakhs had raided and captured in 1859. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times. In 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Human rights organisations have described the Kazakh government as authoritarian, and regularly describe Kazakhstan's human rights situation as poor.