New Silk Road promotes Jilin commerce

Linking vibrant East-Asian with the well-developed Europe Economic Circle, Jilin has started to shed a light on a new opening-up program.

Jilin Province, located at the hub of Northeast Asia, will become a significant point of the Chinese-Mongolian-Russian economic corridor and seize the chance to develop its economy rapidly.

Construction of new railways, express ways, and airports between Jilin and other countries have promoted trade.

Hunchun Railway Port has been conducting the 7/12 working system since Jan 8, 2016, and has seen a year-on-year growth of 79.2 percent at the end of the year.

Moreover, 186 cross-border chartered flights from Jilin to Russia were in operation and have transferred goods worth $170 million.

The Changchun-Manzhouli-Europe International Rail Freight Line opened in August 2015, which makes it convenient to trade with cities such as Brest, Belarus; Warsaw, Poland; and the terminal location of Schwarzheide, Germany.

The whole route covers 9,800 kilometers, taking 14 days to transfer goods from Changchun to Germany, which saves more than 20 days compared to maritime transport, said Wan Yue, president of Changchun International Land Port Corporation which operates the line.

To date, there are five freight trains exporting goods to Europe and two importing products into China every week, and about nine trains will be operated on this route each week by the end of May.

Additionally, enterprises in Jilin province are encouraged to focus on the market along the Belt and Road routes, covering industries including mining, wood processing, and medical science.

Thirteen external marketing platforms have been set in countries such as Malaysia, Russia, and Iran for the sake of trade docking and business services and about 123 new external enterprises have settled along the Belt and Road with a total resource pool of $4.35 billion since 2014. The amount of imports and exports in 2016 alone reached $17.91 billion, with year-on-year growth of 3.8 percent.