Border trade fueling economy on China's frontiers

2003/04/16
China Daily

Once considered desolate and uncivilized, China's border areas along its 20,000-plus-kilometer frontier are leading the country's drive to open to the outside world, thanks to the booming border trade.

An official from the newly established Ministry of Commerce said border trade had rocketed since China began its opening-up policy in the 1980s and now accounted for more than half of the total imports and exports.

Northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's border trade totaled US$1.63 billion in 2002, representing 54 percent of the region's total imports and exports, according to statistics from the region's Department of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

In the northwest, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has also seen an average 40 percent growth rate in its border trade during recent years. In 2002, Xinjiang reported a year-on-year increase of 57 percent in its border trade, which totaled US$1.54 billion and accounted for 57.3 percent of the region's total imports and exports.

Analysts said China's border trade was growing rapidly as a combined result of the economic recovery of the southeast Asian economies and the development of neighboring countries like Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan

Goods turnover in port cities, a major indication of border trade, also reflected an optimistic future in the border areas.

Foreign trade statistics in Inner Mongolia show export turnover totaled 14 million tons in the region in 2002, a 30 percent rise year on year.

Meanwhile, Xinjiang's Alataw Pass alone, which borders Kazakhstan, reported more than 5.8 million tons in goods turnover in 2002, an increase of more than 700,000 tons over the previous year.

"In the past, the border areas were considered remote and desolate," said Doctor Lu Nanquan, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Now the borderland has become a symbol of resources and advantage."

"Most of China's inland port cities now depend on border trade for development," Lu said, adding that they could flourish only with the prosperity of border trade.

In Dongxing, a border city in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, border trade contributes two thirds of the city's financial revenue. In Pingxiang, Guangxi's another border city, 70 percent of its financial revenue in 2002 was from border trade.

To date, China has more than 120 inland port cities along its boundaries, where border trade with neighboring countries has kept surging in recent years.

China has accelerated its pace of economic development in the border areas by relying on the construction of border cities and border trade over the past ten years.

Since the State Ethnic Affairs Commission launched a special program to develop the border areas in 1998, more than 11 billion yuan (US$1.33 billion) has been invested in more than 20,000 projects in border areas.

However, the border areas once had a reputation tainted by rampant fakes and inferior goods ten years ago.

"The time of this chaotic border trade is over, as the entire Chinese market is becoming more and more standardized," said Gu Xiaosong, director of the Southeast Asia Research Institute with Guangxi Regional Academy of Social Sciences.

"The mechanism which stresses the importance of honesty and integrity in the market is now extending to various industries in China," Gu said. "Those who break the market and economic order will be severely punished."