Kazakhstan, an important country along the Belt and Road, is rich in non-renewable resources such as petroleum and minerals. Its economic development ranks first among the five Central Asian countries (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan) and has friendly trade relations with China. Therefore, understanding the economic development status and sustainable development of Kazakhstan is of great significance to bilateral friendly cooperation. We applied emergy theory to analyze the resource utilization structure, foreign trade status and sustainable development of this country in 2014-2018. The results showed that about 89.94% of Kazakhstan's total emergy used depended on the consumption of local non-renewable resources, and there was a large amount of raw materials (such as petroleum, minerals, metals, etc.) for export, which undoubtedly has a greater impact on the ecological environment and increasing environmental burden of Kazakhstan. And the export of low value-added products placed Kazakhstan in a disadvantaged position in the foreign trade market. The emergy money ratio showed that Kazakhstan's unit currency has low purchasing power (9.50×1011-1.22×1012 sej/$), and the amount of emergy purchased per unit currency is small, the country's economic development is still at a lower level than that of developed countries. The emergy yield ratio fluctuated within a range of 16.87-26.11. From the perspective of emergy-based sustainability index, the emergy yield ratio was 0.90 in 2014, the system development of Kazakhstan lacked sustainability. From 2015 to 2018, the index was higher than 1, and the system development was sustainable. In addition, Kazakhstan has a high environmental loading ratio, which is mainly due to the exploitation of local non-renewable resources, and the utilization efficiency is low. In view of the above, this paper puts forward suggestions such as strengthening the development of renewable resources, improving resource utilization efficiency, and improving the structure of foreign trade to enhance the competitiveness in the world market, in order to promote the orderly and healthy development of Kazakhstan.