Suifenhe, a northeastern Chinese town bordering Russia, is stepping up efforts to broaden relationships with neighbors. It officially started the construction of a new economic area as part of the recently launched pilot free trade zone in the province of Heilongjiang.

With its unique location and industrial advantages, Suifenhe aims to develop the FTZ into a trade and logistics hub for cooperation between China, Russia, and Northeast Asia. Wang Zhigang, mayor of Suifenhe, said the city positioned itself differently from two other districts of the Heilongjiang FTZ. "We will mainly focus on trade, financial settlement, logistics services and industrial clusters," Wang said.

The processing of imported commodities like timber, grains and clean energy will be a priority in the yet-to-be-completed Suifenhe FTZ covering an area of about 20 square kilometers. The opening ceremony on Sunday witnessed the signing of contracts for 13 projects in key sectors and three companies got the first batch of business licenses in the zone. Meanwhile, the construction of a China-Russia timber trading and processing center is also underway.

Ludmila Vasyukova, an assistant professor from Far Eastern Federal University, believes both sides will benefit, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are in urgent need of FTZ policies to ease financial and logistic difficulties. " Besides, border cooperation is likely to bring a better business environment, more foreign talents, and jobs," she added.

The new batch of pilot free trade zones to be established in strategic border regions announced by the Chinese State Council in August, including the one in Heilongjiang, show China's strong determination to further improve trade ties with neighboring countries and boost its border regions.

As for Suifenhe, the hundred-year-old port has continued to grow from one of the country's earliest open border posts to a fully-fledged free trade zone. This suggests a new momentum being injected into China-Russia cooperation. Besides, experts believe the dynamism and reform in the region will soon bring multilateral economic ties to a higher level and promote the Belt and Road initiative as well as the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.