Russia-China Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang Bridge Crossing Exports: Update

The new Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang cross-border bridge between Russia and China has proved beneficial to Russia’s raw material exports since it opened in November 2022, and has become a key route for Russian coal and iron ore to be transported to China. Chinese finished goods are also imported in containers via the same cross-border bridge.

Russia’s Transit has also announced the launch of their first freight train as part of the development of land transportation shipments through the Mikhailo-Semenovskaya border crossing (Leninsk II) / Tongjiang according to the company. Russian trains deliver goods to the Tongjiang station, where they are reloaded into Chinese wagons. Similarly, Chinese goods travel through Russia only to the Mikhailo-Semenovskaya station (Leninsk II) in Nizhneleninskoye, in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Tongjiang is in China’s Heilongjiang Province and has direct connections to Harbin and Beijing.

According to the company’s press service, a train loaded with plywood from Galich Plywood Mill LLC headed from Galich station to China. The shipment was made using the company’s modern equipment, including 80f railcars and containers. The transit time to the border crossing will be 12 days, then the wagons will be loaded with import cargoes from China and continue their way back to Moscow.

Raw materials are still the main Russian commodity for cargo transportation across the bridge. From January to October, an increase in freight traffic was recorded – 1.8 times, up to 4.6 million tons. Including 3.1 million tons of coal (1.6-fold growth) and 1.4 million tons of ore (2.4-fold growth) were exported. There is also a significant increase in the import flow – 5.6 times, up to 59 thousand tons of cargo in containers.

The bridge made it possible to reduce the distance of cargo transportation from Russia to northern China by more than 700 km. Throughput capacity at the first stage is 5.5 million tons of cargo per year, and in the future it will increase to 9.6 million tons. The design capacity of the bridge will increase trade turnover between the countries by 10%.