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This article examines the cultural apprehensions linked to China by studying a corpus of texts written by the main Central Asian Sinologists, most of whom are Kazakh. Its sets out from the hypothesis that cultural apprehensions comprise one of the bases on which decision-making in international relations is, indirectly, formed. The discrepancy between China’s massive presence on the economic and geopolitical levels and Central Asia’s lack of knowledge of contemporary China and its culture tends to give rise to academic works that are stamped by deep identity anxieties connected to this very sudden, and already essential, Chinese proximity.