Recently genome-wide association studies on East Asian populations reported an association between diabetes and several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a 40-kb linkage disequilibrium block in intron 15 of KCNQ1. However, the association between KCNQ1 variants and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Chinese Kazakh populations is unknown. We investigated the relationship between rs2237892 and rs2237895 SNPs in KCNQ1 and susceptibility to and clinical characteristics of T2DM in 100 Chinese Kazakh T2DM subjects and 100 healthy subjects. SNPs were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism and the main anthropometric and biochemical parameters of individuals were assessed in the genotype groups (rs2237892: CC, CT, or TT, and rs2237895: AA, AC, or CC). Genotype distribution and allele frequencies of these two SNPs were not significantly different between T2DM and control groups (P > 0.05). The frequencies of CT and TT genotypes and T allele for the rs2237892 SNP in females with T2DM were significantly higher than that in the control group (genotype: P = 0.016, allele: P = 0.004). However, there were no significant differences among individuals with different genotypes with respect to the rs2237895 SNP (P > 0.05). The main anthropometric and biochemical parameters did not correlate with the rs2237892 or rs2237895 SNPs in the T2DM group (P > 0.05). Thus, the T allele-containing genotypes of the rs2237892 SNP in KCNQ1 may increase the susceptibility to T2DM in female Chinese Kazakh individuals, whereas the rs2237895 SNP may not be associated with T2DM in the Chinese Kazakh population.