China grants new status to leading Russian port

China has added Russia’s Far Eastern port of Vladivostok as a transit hub for domestic trade shipments, the country’s customs agency announced on Monday.

The move is intended to facilitate cross-border transfers of local goods via Russia’s largest port on the Pacific Ocean. It will come into effect in June and will provide China’s northeastern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang with access to the sea port.

The new route will help save shipping time and costs to deliver goods to China’s southern provinces, as well as promoting domestic trade and revitalizing northeast China’s aging industrial base, according to Liang Haiming, the dean of Hainan University’s Belt and Road Research Institute.

“The opening of the transit port will also attract more investment and business to northeastern China in the future, which will contribute to the takeoff of the regional economy,” Liang said.

The inclusion of the Russian port in China’s trading system also reflects deepening economic ties between the two countries, which have shown continuous growth in recent years, analysts say.

Trade between China and Russia hit a record high in 2022, soaring by nearly a third in the wake of Ukraine-related Western sanctions on Moscow. It has continued to grow in the first quarter of 2023, with both exports and imports surging at double-digit pace, according to data from the General Administration of China. Figures showed that bilateral trade surged by more than 43% to $73 billion between January and April compared to the same period in 2022.

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