The bridge that will boost bilateral trade between China and Russia and economic partnership is complete and soon to be inaugurated.
This is the first China and Russia highway bridge across the Amur River opened for freight traffic where for decades the Amur River has separated modern China and Russia — its waters cutting through more than 1,000 of their roughly 2,500 border miles.
Last Friday, Beijing, and Moscow celebrated the launch of what both sides have called the first highway bridge over the Amur — with rockets trailing multicolored smoke bursting above in the skies, and local officials applauding from the riverbanks, while their superiors flashed smiles in from Moscow and Beijing on giant television screens specially brought in for the day.
For that maiden highway journey last week, eight freight trucks from China and eight from Russia drove in procession over the kilometer-long bridge, each bearing two oversized national flags on either side of their cabs, as they glided by each other in choreography captured by aerial drones.
A second crossing, the only railway bridge to connect the countries across the river, is expected to open soon.
The Chinese freighters carried electronics and tires, the Russian ones soybean oil and sawn timber, according to Moscow.
The symbolism was clear,- coming as the war in Ukraine has left Moscow frantic to show it still has friends and trade partners — a Russian deputy prime minister filled in the blanks.
“The Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge has special symbolic significance in today’s disunited world. It will become yet another thread of friendship linking the people of Russia and China,” said Yury Trutnev, the Kremlin’s envoy to the Russian Far East.
That point was further underlined in a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, where the two discussed the opening of their new cross-border link and they are “steadily progressing” economic ties, according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.
The bridge would “create a new channel connecting the two countries,” Xi said during the call, which took place on his 69th birthday.
“The Chinese side stands ready to work with the Russian side to push for the steady and long-term development of practical bilateral cooperation,” Xi said.
The $369 million project connects the twin cities of Heihe city in China’s Heilongjiang province with the Amur region’s capital Blagoveshchensk in the Russian Far East. Moscow expects it to clear some 4 million tonnes of goods and two million passengers each year when fully operational.
The two bridges are years in the making, with the railway project — further east along the Amur in China’s Tongjiang city and Russia’s Nizhneleninskoye — breaking ground in 2014. Friday’s opening of the highway bridge followed a similar path: construction started in 2016 and was largely completed more than two years ago, but its opening stalled due to the pandemic.
However, the world is wondering what will happen after this bridge friendship between China and Russia, and will more sanctions be slammed.
In the meantime, Pangong-Tso Lake of “3 Idiots” is now taken over by China.