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June 27, 2017

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Belt and Road initiative brings new life to old port

BUSINESS is booming at a fur apparel store in Horgos, a port bordering Kazakhstan in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The store is recruiting shopping guides who speak Kazakh or Russian and saleswoman Guliman said: “We have had more customers from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russia recently. They like fur a lot.”

The ethnically Kazakh 28-year-old makes around 5,000 yuan (US$730) a month depending on sales. Much more than she could earn at her old job, in an office at a local housing institution.

Marten coats, produced in north China’s Tianjin, cost up to 10,000 yuan at the store and monthly sales revenue can reach 800,000 yuan.

The store, Aliu International, is in the China-Kazakhstan International Border Cooperation Center, the world’s only duty-free shopping center spanning two countries, which opened in 2012.

People from both countries can shop at the center without a visa.

As a port, Horgos, which means “a place where caravans pass” in Mongolian, dates back more than 130 years.

While it lost its shine as caravans faded into history, the Belt and Road initiative, proposed in 2013, has revitalized the old port.

On a June afternoon in a parking lot on the Chinese side, foreign buyers loaded their purchases into cars and headed home across the border. Guldan, 46, was among them. She is from Zharkent, a town in Kazakhstan some 40 kilometers away. She visits the center every day, along with her two siblings, and their driver, buying children’s goods worth around 5,000 yuan each time.

At the center, one person is allowed to purchase up to 8,000 yuan in duty-free goods a day.

“My husband runs a baby store at home, so we come here every day to refill our stock. China-made products are very popular for both price and quality,” Guldan said, while packing strollers, bicycles and beds for children into cars.

Seric, 34, also from Zharkent, sells small goods at a duty-free building at the center. Working at Horgos, he is able to go home every day. When he worked in Kazakh capital Astana, 1,600 kilometers away, he returned home just once a year.

“Although I’m in Horgos, I just feel like I’m working at home,” he said. “My neighbors are jealous and often ask me when the companies here will offer more jobs.”

According to the border control station in Horgos, more than 5 million Chinese and foreigners crossed the border last year via the Horgos cooperation center, accounting for 70 percent of total entries and exits in Xinjiang.

Cargo trains from the Chinese cities of Chongqing and Zhengzhou pass through the port on their way to Europe.

Earlier this month, a new passenger train route was launched via Horgos, which reduces travel time by eight hours between Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, and Almaty in Kazakhstan, compared with the old route via the Alataw Pass.

Wang Gang, Party chief of Horgos, said the number of service cashier windows at the industrial and commercial registration center has risen from five in 2014 to 20 at present.

Thirty new businesses are registered every day on average in Horgos, which was inaugurated as a city in 2014.

They are attracted by preferential policies, a simpler registration process and a five-year exemption on business taxes.

“These businesses will bring tens of thousands of jobs as well as consumption,” he said.




 

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