For decades, the Amur River has separated modern China and Russia: its waters cross more than 1,000 of its nearly 2500 miles of border. But it still lacked one thing: a vehicle bridge.
Now, when Russia’s economic isolation following the invasion of Ukraine takes it to Beijing, this is changing, with great fanfare.
Last Friday, Beijing and Moscow celebrated the launch of another new link, what state media on both sides called the first road bridge over Amur, with rockets dragging colored smoke over their heads and local officials clapping from banks, while their superiors broadcast from Moscow and Beijing on giant TV screens brought especially for the day.
It is expected that soon a momentary crossing will open, the railway bridge to link the countries on the other side of the river.
For the first time on the road last week, 8 shipping trucks from China and 8 from Russia crossed the kilometer-long bridge in procession, each with two oversized national flags on each side of their cabin, as they slid close to each. among themselves in a choreography captured through aerial drones.
Chinese shipping ships carried electronics and tires, the Russians carried soybean oil and sawn timber, according to Moscow. Minister filled in the blanks.
“The Blagoveshchensk-Heihe Bridge has a special symbolic importance in today’s disunited world. It will be another thread of friendship that will connect other people from Russia and China,” said Yury Trutnev, the Kremlin’s envoy to the Russian Far East.
This point was further highlighted in a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, where the two discussed opening their new cross-border link and their economic ties “in steady progress,” according to a reading from China’s Foreign Ministry. Affairs. Ministry.
The bridge would “create a new canal that would connect the two countries,” Xi said at the call, which took place on his 69th birthday.
“The Chinese are willing to negotiate with the Russians to promote the stable and long-term progression of practical bilateral cooperation,” Xi said.
The $369 million allocation connects the dual cities of heihe city in China’s Heilongjiang province with the capital of the Amur region, Blagoveshchensk, in Russia’s Far East. Operational.
This is expected to further encourage the bilateral industry between China and Russia, which is already expected to develop as Moscow increasingly turns to Beijing for an economic partnership, doubts remain about how far China will go to help its sanctioned neighbor.
The timing of the bridge’s release underscores Beijing’s interests in this partnership. This comes even as China continues a relentless “zero-Covid” regime, which has noticed the country tightening land border controls: erecting fences in front of Myanmar, blocking border crossings with strict controls, and even urging its citizens at the North Korean border to close their windows for fear that the virus will spread.
China “is ready to meet Russia halfway,” Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said Friday at the inauguration.
Both bridges have been in production for years, with rail assignment (further east along the Amur River in the Chinese city of Tongjiang and Russia’s Nizhneleninskoye) in 2014. The inauguration of the road bridge on Friday followed a similar path: the structure began in 2016 and largely ended more than two years ago, but its opening was blocked due to the pandemic.
The new passages highlight emerging links between countries. These have a higher level under Putin and Xi and come with a goal, expressed through Moscow this spring, of achieving $200 billion in the industry through 2024, up from a record $146 billion last year.
“Recently, Russia and China didn’t have a single bridge over the Amur River, but now they have up to two. . . so the trend is clear,” said Artyom Lukin, an associate professor of foreign relations at the Far Eastern Federal University. in Vladivostok.
But the bridges, built in two halves, through the Chinese on one side and the Russians on the other, and the river they cross also underscore the complicated foundations of this relationship.
Known as the Amur in Russia and Heilongjiang in China, its shores were once tense and heavily guarded areas. A tributary of the Amur River, scene of a border dispute in 1969, the result of the development of tensions between the Soviet Union and a young Communist China. and it wasn’t until the 1990s that territorial disputes were largely resolved.
Agreements at the time to expand cooperation on the river stalled for years, as pontoons, hovercrafts, and seasonal ice routes remained the means of transportation for other people and goods, while land and sea links in the countries became more concerned with trade.
Previous routes were sufficient, given the increased volume of industry between Russia and China, according to Lukin.
“China has pushed for more port infrastructure, but Russia was a little reluctant until recently to build this kind of infrastructure, for fear of relying too much on China,” Lukin said.
“But now Russia has no choice,” he said, adding that since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Western reaction that followed, Russia has been “much more open” to Chinese projects to expand cross-border infrastructure.
The road bridge, in its original design, was not only intended to allow the transit of goods, but also to generate new economic zones and new passenger movements between the Chinese city of Heihe, which is home to around 1. 3 million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and Blagoveshchensk, with a population of around a quarter of a million.
China’s Covid-19 policies may suspend this for now, as the bridge will begin with shipping, officials said. a reminder of strict controls.
But the prospect of even closer cross-border ties for Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, which had already thrived thanks to tourism and industry before the pandemic, may usher in a new phase for the region. According to local media, the government ordered all academics in Blagoveshchensk to examine Chinese from September 1.
The opening may bring economic energy to a “sparsely populated” region of Russia, according to Yu Bin, a political science professor at Ohio’s Wittenberg University and a senior fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
It could also mean a replacement for Russia’s “perception or misperception” that such ties could cause an influx of Chinese citizens to Russia’s Far Eastern regions, Yu said.
There has been little evidence of such a trend, yet those considerations have been linked to disparities between the two sides of the river. with a colorful skyline that is reflected in the Amur River in Blagoveshchensk.
Blagoveshchensk always had a slower expansion and for a long time had a flight of the population to the west of Russia, such as the Region of the Greater Far East. The region accounts for more than 40 percent of the country’s land, yet its 8 million inhabitants make up five percent of its population.
However, “this time, Western sanctions against Russia appear to have helped mitigate those misperceptions and considerations about possible immigration from China,” Yu said.
Domestically, the bridge, touted as a major diplomatic and economic victory through Russian state media, also highlights a notable question about the extent to which Beijing will move to Russia amid the foreign crisis it has sparked following its invasion of Ukraine.
So far, China has walked a fine line. Beijing has said it defends a rules-based global order, while refuting joining most countries around the world in condemning the resolution of Moscow and its state media apparatus to mimic the Kremlin’s lines according to the US. The US and NATO crisis.
It has also boosted some imports from its heavily sanctioned neighbor, while seeming wary of suffering itself, cautiously avoiding high-tech exports that Western countries have largely blocked from exporting to Russia.
“The first batch of products to enter China from Blagoveshchensk on the day of the official opening, soybean oil (. . . ) underscores this economic role that Russia plays for China as a source of herbal resources and raw materials,” said Lukin of Far Eastern Federal University.
“The most attractive question,” he said, “is what will happen from China with this bridge?”
El-CNN-Wire ™
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