By CGTN’s Zhou Jiaxin

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev vowed on Thursday to accelerate the alignment of the respective development policies, as experts said the two countries are seeking to tighten the economic ties.

Zhang Jianping, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, said on CGTN's The Point that trade between China and Kazakhstan is generally “balanced,” noting “there is still a very big trade potential to explore.”

Trade between the two countries in the first four months of 2017 surged by 45.6 percent.

Chinese investment in Kazakhstan amounted to more than 42.8 billion US dollars, while China’s lending to the Central Asian country has exceeded 50 billion US dollars on a cumulative basis.

Kazakhstan’s exports to China are also on the rise. The country has exported 100 million tons of oil to China via crude oil pipeline, and 183 billion cubic meters of gas through the natural gas pipeline.

China has shifted its investment focus in Kazakhstan from pipeline construction and resources to industrial capacity cooperation, including the construction of steel and cement plants after the Belt and Road Initiative was introduced, Zhang noted.

Zhang added that Kazakhstan needs to restructure its economy, promoting industrialization and infrastructure. In this regard, China’s “strong supply capacity” is poised to forge closer economic ties between the two countries.

Yelena Kalyuchnova, director of the Center for Euro-Asia Studies at University of Reading, said Kazakhstan is expected to move from its dependence on natural resources to economic diversification, such as providing more international logistics zones, which the country is missing at the moment.

“If we don’t have any international connections and links, we are very unlikely to become a competitive nation in this case,” Kalyuchnova said.