On September 7, 2013, at Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan), the President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping announced the creation of the «Silk Road Economic Belt» initiative, which in March 2015, along with the «21st Century Maritime Silk Road» project, was united into a single «One Belt and One Road» initiative (later became the «Belt and Road» Initiative or BRI) and over time transformed into a large-scale global project. This initiative was initially launched towards a weak global economic recovery, but due to the difficult situation of the economies of the countries of the world affected by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, BRI is increasing its relevance. In the first quarter of 2020, trade between Kazakhstan and China due to the closure of borders significantly decreased and the most pessimistic scenarios were predicted, however, the data for 8 months of this year exceeded the same indicators of 2019, which inspires optimism and gives hope for an early recovery of the Kazakh economy due to the development of projects within the BRI. At the same time, the pandemic has an impact on the change of priority areas of cooperation between the two countries in favor of digital technologies and healthcare.

This article was prepared within the framework of the project IRN AP08956330 "Central Asia and the Belt and Road Initiative after the pandemic: opportunities and risks" of grant financing of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan.