Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Central Asia region has become a focus of the international community. As part of the past Soviet Union, this region is full of contradictions at present. Two major countries in this area - Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have chosen different development strategies, which led to interesting and results full of differences. After gaining independence, Kazakhstan chose to open up its economy, and the government of Uzbekistan chose to focus on political stability and coordinated development in economy. In the early 1990s, Uzbekistan’s strategies seemed more reasonable and less painful, and Kazakhstan suffered a severe economic recession. However, by the turn of the century, Kazakhstan's economic performance is far better than its neighbor. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the two different transition strategies of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the early period of independence, and evaluates the prospects of these two strategies in the next few years and their implied meaning.