About Qazinform Chinese

Qazinform Chinese

Qazinform Chinese is the Chinese-language version of Qazinform, also rendered Kazinform — Kazakhstan's state international news agency, headquartered in Astana and operating under the Television and Radio Complex of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The agency launched the Chinese version of its website in March 2014, an event China's ambassador to Kazakhstan publicly called a new landmark of information cooperation between China and Kazakhstan. Qazinform confirms that it still publishes news in Kazakh, Russian, English, Chinese and Uzbek, with Chinese one of the five full languages of the agency, supported by a correspondent presence in China and by partnerships with Chinese state media. The Chinese service presents Kazakh politics, economy, society, culture and China-Kazakhstan relations to Chinese readers, and is a distinct language edition of the agency, separate from its Kazakh- and Russian-language flagship output and from its English edition.

A launch announced in March 2014

The Chinese version was launched on the instruction of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, shortly after Kazinform attained international agency status in January 2014. Announcing the expansion, the agency said it was enlarging its audience by launching the Chinese version, adding Chinese to its existing information offer in Kazakh, Russian and English. China's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Kazakhstan, Le Yucheng, commented publicly on the launch, congratulating the agency and calling the Chinese version a unique project for an agency that had recently attained its international status. He predicted that the new version would make a weighty contribution to the development of political, economic, social and humanitarian ties between the two nations, and that it would introduce Chinese internet users to Kazakhstan's distinctive history, culture, local traditions and customs, its development successes and its business information. The launch was thus framed from the start not as a routine translation exercise but as an instrument of bilateral relations — a framing made possible by the agency's position: Kazinform was the only state-run news agency of Kazakhstan, and it had been the first Kazakhstani medium to establish a correspondent bureau in China.

Partnerships with Chinese media

The Chinese service was built on partnerships that preceded it. Before the 2014 launch the agency had established partnerships with China's biggest news organisations — Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily Online and Tianshannet. Those relationships remain visible in the agency's present partner network: in its 105th-anniversary accounting in 2025, Kazinform listed cooperation with 31 leading media organisations from 18 countries, including China Media Group and People's Daily among its partners, alongside agencies such as Saudi Press Agency, Yonhap, TASS, BelTA, UzA and AZERTAC. Cooperation with China deepened further in the 2020s: at the China-Central Asia media events held in Astana in June 2025, a memorandum of cooperation was signed between the Presidential Television and Radio Complex of Kazakhstan — Qazinform's parent — and Xinhua, outlining news content exchange, joint training programmes and workshops, new multimedia formats and information promotion. For the Chinese-language edition, these partnerships supply both a flow of China-related content and channels through which Kazakh news reaches Chinese platforms.

The agency: a century from Orenburg to Astana

Qazinform is Kazakhstan's oldest news agency, and the Chinese edition is a late chapter in a long institutional history. The story began on 13 August 1920, when the Orenburg-Turgay branch of the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) opened — the first Kazakh news agency. In the Soviet period the agency passed through successive forms, becoming KazTAG, the Kazakh Telegraph Agency. In 1992 KazTAG was reorganised into the Kazakh State Information Agency, transformed in 1997 into the Republican State Enterprise "Kazakh Information Agency" (KazAAG). In 2002 the National Company Kazinform JSC was established on the basis of KazAAG by government decree, adopting the parallel Kazakh name KazAkparat in 2004; from 2008 to 2013 it sat within national media holdings, and in 2013 it was restructured as the International News Agency Kazinform LLP, returning to joint-stock form in 2019 as JSC Kazinform International News Agency, when JSC Kazcontent became part of the company. In 2023 the agency was reorganised by joining the Television and Radio Complex of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, under which it operates today. It marked its 94th anniversary in 2014 — the year of the Chinese launch — and its 105th anniversary in August 2025.

International status and the logic of adding Chinese

Kazinform describes itself as the first leading state news agency in Kazakhstan to obtain international status, a status it gained in January 2014 and which its leadership at the time called the start of a new era. The Chinese launch two months later was the most visible early fruit of that status, and its logic is geographic and economic: China is Kazakhstan's giant eastern neighbour, the Belt and Road Initiative had been first announced by President Xi Jinping in Astana in 2013, and a Chinese-reading audience is directly relevant to Kazakh trade, investment and tourism. The agency's correspondent geography reflects the same priorities: its foreign network has included Russia, China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, later reporting an unmatched domestic foreign-correspondent network with journalists in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, China, Uzbekistan, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Türkiye, the United States, Armenia and the United Kingdom. The bureau in China — the first opened by any Kazakhstani medium — both feeds the Chinese edition with original reporting and embodies the bilateral relationship the edition serves.

Languages, scripts and output

Today Qazinform publishes news in five languages — Kazakh, Russian, English, Chinese and Uzbek. For compatriots abroad it also makes news accessible in Latin script and in Töte zhazu, the traditional Arabic-based script used by Kazakhs in China and Mongolia — a detail of direct relevance to the agency's Chinese-facing work, since ethnic Kazakh readers in China are among its natural audiences. Across its languages the agency covers politics, economy, education, healthcare, sports, culture and other key aspects of society, reporting on the Presidential Administration, Parliament and Government, regional authorities and national financial and industrial structures. Its central office is in Astana, with correspondents in all of Kazakhstan's regions — its institutional profile counts representation in 17 regions — and an audience geography that, in the agency's words, spans all countries of the world. The Chinese edition carries this agency output — Kazakh state, economic and social news and China-Kazakhstan coverage — in Chinese.

Chinese social media: Weibo and WeChat

The Chinese operation has grown beyond the website. Reporting on the China-Central Asia media forum in Astana in June 2025 noted that Kazinform is expanding its presence on Chinese social media: the agency's official accounts on Weibo and WeChat allow Kazakh news to be distributed quickly and effectively to a broad Chinese audience. This is a significant development in the service's history: the 2014 website launch addressed Chinese internet users through a Kazakh-hosted portal, while the Weibo and WeChat accounts place Kazakh state news inside the platforms Chinese readers actually use daily. Together with the Töte zhazu provision for Kazakh readers in China and the partnerships with Xinhua and People's Daily, the social accounts make Qazinform's Chinese-facing operation one of the most developed among Central Asian state agencies — a point underlined by comparative study of the region, which found that only Kazakhstan's and Uzbekistan's national agencies maintain Chinese news layouts on their websites.

What the Chinese edition covers

The content of the Chinese edition mirrors the agency's mandate: reliable and timely information on politics, economy, education, health, sports, culture and other important areas of Kazakh life, together with the bilateral file — presidential visits, Belt and Road cooperation, trade and the work of the China-Central Asia mechanisms. The agency's own early Chinese-era output shows the pattern: its reporting in the period of the launch covered Chinese as well as Kazakh developments, from China's Chang'e-3 lunar mission to Kazakh anniversaries and state programmes, presenting each country to the other. For Chinese readers the edition functions as the Kazakh state's own account of Kazakhstan — the source Chinese media themselves cite when reporting Kazakh official news — and for Kazakhstan it is a standing channel into the Chinese information space that does not depend on third-party translation.

Position in Central Asia

Qazinform's Chinese service occupies a distinctive regional position. Kazakhstan was the country where the Belt and Road Initiative was first proposed in 2013, and its state agency was the first in the region to build a Chinese edition on a correspondent bureau in China and formal partnerships with China's largest news organisations. Its 2014 launch predates most comparable Central Asian efforts, and its survival and expansion — confirmed in the agency's 2025 anniversary reporting, which lists Chinese among its five publishing languages, and in its move onto Weibo and WeChat — show the edition to be a permanent part of the agency rather than an experiment. As part of the Presidential TV and Radio Complex, and as a partner of agencies from TASS and Xinhua to Yonhap and the Saudi Press Agency, Qazinform carries Kazakhstan's official news into Chinese from within the main institutions of Kazakh state media.

Access

Qazinform Chinese is published on the agency's website at qazinform.com, alongside the Kazakh, Russian, English and Uzbek editions, and is supplemented by the agency's official Weibo and WeChat accounts. Headquartered in Astana, with correspondents across Kazakhstan's 17 regions and in China and other countries, the agency marked 105 years of Kazakh news reporting in August 2025 — with the Chinese edition, launched in March 2014, now in its second decade as Kazakhstan's Chinese-language window on itself.