ABSTRACT
Khorgos is one of the main logistical hubs between Asia and Europe. The adjacent ‘International Centre of Boundary Cooperation’ (ICBC Khorgos) is a free-trade zone straddling the Sino-Kazakh border and administered equally by Kazakhstan and China. Its Chinese and Kazakh sides physically melt into each other, and thus it qualifies as an international twin city. The differences between the two sides, however, are striking: compared to the commercially busy Chinese side with its high-rise buildings, the sleepy and flat Kazakh side looks underdeveloped. Its champions promise ‘a huge new city of the future’ and ‘a city of dreams’ with, amongst other things, an international university, a cultural theme park, entertainment and sports complexes. Correspondingly, the greater Khorgos area is imagined and narrated as a future ‘second Dubai’ by politicians, engineers and architects, envisioning a large urban conglomeration with an international airport. As of 2021, neither the airport nor a ‘second Dubai’ has materialized, but construction proceeded little by little. In this chapter, I explore the case of ICBC Khorgos to show how development and interdependence produced a dominant-subordinate twin.
