Five years ago, Bekzat Maxutkanuly was a small-time clothes merchant in Kazakhstan, uninterested in politics but worried over rumblings of a brewing crackdown across the border in China’s Xinjiang region, the land of his birth.
Now this week, as soldiers goose-stepped to anthems welcoming Chinese leader Xi Jinping on a visit to Kazakhstan, Maxutkanuly is preparing to drive from village to village across his country’s vast hinterlands to sign people up for a political party that will challenge Beijing, not welcome it.
