For decades, the Amur River has separated modern China and Russia: its waters cut more than 1,600 from its roughly 4,000-kilometer border. But it always lacks one thing: a vehicle bridge.
Now, as Russia’s economic isolation from its invasion of Ukraine brings it closer to Beijing, this is changing, with fanfare.
Last Friday, Beijing and Moscow celebrated the launch of another new link, what state media on both sides have called the first highway bridge over the Amur, with rockets carrying colored smoke exploding through envelope and local officials applaud from the river banks.
View of the first bridge between Russia and China over the Amur River. (Credit image: © Government of the Amur region / TASS via ZUMA Press) (ZUMAPRESS.com)
His superiors came from Moscow and Beijing to the giant television screens specially carried for the day.
A second step, the only railway bridge connecting the countries on the other side of the river, is expected to open soon.
For the inaugural highway trip last week, eight goods trucks from China and eight from Russia drove in procession across the one-kilometer-long bridge, each with two large national flags on either side. taxis, as they glided at each other in a choreography captured by aerial drones.
The Chinese cargo ships carried electronics and tires, the Russians soybean oil and sawn timber, according to Moscow. And if some viewers doubted the symbolism, when the war in Ukraine has left Moscow desperate to show that it still has friends and business partners, a Russian deputy prime minister filled in the blanks.
“The Blagoveshchensk-Heihe Bridge has a special symbolic significance in today’s disunited world. It will become another thread of friendship that will unite the people of Russia and China,” said Yuri Trutnev, a Kremlin envoy to the Russian Far East.
The bridge “would create a new channel connecting the two countries,” Xi said during a call with Putin. (AP)
This point was further highlighted in a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, where they both discussed the opening of their new cross-border link and their “steadily progressing” economic ties, according to a reading of Foreigners of China. Ministries.
The bridge “would create a new channel connecting the two countries,” Xi said during the call, which took place on its 69th anniversary.
“The Chinese side is willing to work with the Russian side to promote the steady and long-term development of practical bilateral cooperation,” Xi said.
The $ 369 million ($ 533 million) project connects the twin cities of the city of Heihe in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang with the capital of the Amur region, Blagoveshchensk, in the Russian Far East. Moscow expects to clean up about 4 million tons of cargo and two million passengers each year when fully operational. Bridges are likely to further boost bilateral trade between China and Russia (AP). The timing of the launch of the bridge underscores Beijing’s interests in the partnership. It comes even though China continues with a relentless “zero-COVID” regime, which has seen the country repeatedly tighten land border controls: erecting fences in front of Myanmar, delaying border crossings with strict controls, and even instantly its citizens on the border with North Korea to close. your windows so that the virus does not explode.
China was “ready to meet with Russia halfway,” Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said at the inauguration on Friday.
Russian trucks drive the first Russia-China bridge across the Amur River at the Kani-Kurgan-Heihe Crossing Point (Photo: Government of the Amur Region / TASS via ZUMA Press) (ZUMAPRESS.com) The two bridges years have passed, with the railway project further east along the Amur, in the Chinese city of Tongjiang and in Nizhneleninskoye in Russia, began in 2014. The opening of the highway bridge on Friday follow a similar path: construction began in 2016 and was largely completed more than two years ago, but its opening stalled due to the pandemic. The new crossings highlight growing ties between countries. These have grown under Putin and Xi and include the goal, expressed by Moscow this spring, of reaching $ 200 billion ($ 289 billion) in trade by 2024, more than $ 146 billion ($ 211 billion). ) from last year.
“Russia and China recently had not 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 international relations at the lighthouse. East Federal University of Vladivostok.
But the bridges, each built in two halves, the Chinese on one side and the Russians on the other, and the river they cross also underscore the awkward foundations of this relationship.
Construction site of the China-Russia Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye cross-border railway bridge. (Photo by Zhang Tao / Xinhua via Getty Images) (Xinhua News Agency via Getty Ima)
Known as the Amur in Russia and Heilongjiang in China, its shores were once tense and heavily patrolled areas. A tributary of the Amur was the site of a border conflict in 1969 as a result of growing tensions between the Soviet Union and a young communist China, and it was not until the 1990s that territorial disputes escalated. they largely resolved.
Agreements at the time to develop co-operation across the river stalled for years as pontoons, hovercraft and seasonal ice roads remained the means of transporting people and goods, while land and sea connections in other parts of the country they managed more trade.
The previous routes were not enough, which led to an increase in the volume of trade between Russia and China, according to Lukin.
“China has always been pushing for more port infrastructure, but Russia has been a little reluctant until recently to build such infrastructure, for fear of becoming too dependent on China,” Lukin said.
“But now Russia has no choice,” he said, adding that since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing Western backlash, Russia has been “much more open” to Chinese initiatives. to develop cross-border infrastructure.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on the left and Far Eastern and Arctic Development Minister Alexander Kozlov visit the road bridge over the Amur River on the border between Russia and the Arctic. China in the city of Blagoveshchensk, in the Amur region, in the far east of Russia. August 2020. (Dmitry Astakhov, Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP) (AP)
The highway bridge, in its original design, was designed not only to allow freight traffic, but also to lead to new economic zones and passenger travel between the Chinese city of Heihe, which hosts about 1.3 million in its metropolitan area, and Blagoveshchensk. with a population of a quarter of a million.
China’s COVID-19 policies may put it on hold for the time being, as the bridge will only begin with the transportation of goods, officials said. And even during Friday’s opening ceremony, the country’s now infamous workers dressed in hazardous materials were on the side of the road welcoming Russian cargo trucks, a reminder of strict controls.
But the prospect of even closer cross-border links for Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, which had already prospered with tourism and trade before the pandemic, could mark the beginning of a new phase for the region. According to local media, the government has ordered all students in Blagoveshchensk to study Chinese from September 1.
The opening could provide economic vitality to a “populated” region of Russia, according to Yu Bin, a professor of political science at Wittenberg University in Ohio and a senior researcher at the Center for Russian Studies at the Normal University of East China in Shanghai. .
It could also indicate a shift in Russian “perception or misperception” that such links could lead to an influx of Chinese nationals into Russia’s Far East regions, Yu said.
There is little evidence of this trend, but these concerns have been linked to disparities between the two sides of the river. Heihe, part of Heilongjiang Province with a population of about 31 million, has in recent decades become a bustling city with a colorful horizon reflected in the Amur River in Blagoveshchensk.
Blagoveshchensk has experienced slower growth and for a long time has experienced a population flight to western Russia, as the largest region in the Far East. The region accounts for more than 40 percent of the country’s land, but its 8 million residents make up only 5 percent of its population.
“This time, Western sanctions against Russia appear to have helped alleviate these misconceptions and concerns about China’s potential immigration,” Yu said.
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At the national level, the bridge, seen as a major diplomatic and economic victory by Russian state media, also underscores a pending question about the extent to which Beijing will come to support Russia amid the international crisis it has caused since the invasion of Russia. ‘Ukraine.
So far, China has walked a fine line. Beijing has said it maintains a rule-based world order, while refusing to join most of the world in condemning the Moscow movement and using its state media apparatus to mimic the Kremlin lines that blamed the United States. and NATO from the crisis.
It has also increased some of its heavily sanctioned neighbor’s imports, though it seems prudent to avoid incurring any of them, carefully following high-tech exports that Western countries have widely blocked from exporting to Russia.
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“The first batch of cargo that crossed into China from Blagoveshchensk on the day of the official opening, soybean oil … underlines this role that Russia plays economically for China as a supplier of natural resources and products said Lukin of the Federal University of the Far East. .
“The most interesting question,” he said, “is what will come from China across this bridge?”