China–Kazakhstan border

Between empires

The line crosses the Tien Shan, then follows the Dzungarian Alatau and other ranges that close off the Dzungarian Basin, a steppe corridor linking western China and Central Asia; the Ili and Tekes valleys form natural routes across it. Russia and the Qing empire set the frontier by the 1864 Treaty of Tarbagatai, which left much vague.^[1]

After a Muslim revolt weakened Qing control, Russia occupied the Ili valley. A treaty of 1879 would have ceded it to Russia, but the emperor refused to ratify it; the 1881 Treaty of St Petersburg returned Ili to China in exchange for smaller areas, and demarcation protocols over the next decade created the modern line. In 1915 the Khorgos River was made the boundary north of the Ili. Kazakhs, Uighurs and Mongols live along the frontier.^[1]

Khorgos

The Khorgos International Center for Cross-Border Cooperation, founded in 2005, straddles the border on 560 hectares, 217 on the Kazakh side and 343 on the Chinese side, with malls, hotels and warehouses.^[2] Its visa-free, duty-free mall draws Kazakh shoppers, but the main business is the dry port, where gantries shift freight from Chinese to Kazakh trains so that goods can reach Western Europe in about two weeks. Its chief engineer called it perhaps the biggest dry port in Central Asia, not the world.^[3]

According to its managing company, trade through Khorgos reached about $12.5 billion in 2024, and in the first half of 2025 it handled 22.2 million tons of cargo, the most of any checkpoint in Xinjiang.^[2]

“There are many, many larger dry ports in the world; this is perhaps the biggest one in Central Asia”^[3]