China opens new bonded zone in northeast border city

A new comprehensive bonded zone has been established in Hunchun city, northeast China's Jilin Province, which borders Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Formerly known as the Hunchun Export Processing Zone (EPZ), which was one of the 15 pilot EPZs approved by the State Council in April 2000, the bonded zone is the second in Jilin, following the Xinglong Bonded Zone in the provincial capital of Changchun.

Changchun Customs expects to develop Hunchun into a regional logistic hub in northeast Asia for high-end warehousing, supply chain management, smart logistics distribution and transaction settlement.

Hunchun has four road and railway ports at the national leval, surrounded by a dozen Russian and DPRK ports.

The border city is opening wider as China and Russia agreed to carry out the Northern Sea Route cooperation and jointly build the Polar Silk Road in 2017. Trade volume between Hunchun and Russia was 4.61 billion yuan (688 million U.S. dollars) last year, up by 90.1 percent year on year. The import volume has been more than doubled to 4.46 billion yuan annually.