A Profile of Xinjiang's Frontier Trade Development

    Xinjiang has a unique geography and human advantage in developing its frontier trade, for it borders on eight countries, such as: Russia, Kazakhstan etc.; it has 16 category-A open ports ratified by the state (including 14 land ports, 2 air ports and 11 category-B open ports. Moreover, Xinjiang is very close to marginal countries and regions in language, religious belief and life habit, with much superiority in developing mutual frontier trade.In 1986, the ministry of foreign trade officially ratified Xinjiang to develop local and frontier trade, aiming mainly at former Soviet Union and East European countries.

    From 1991-2000, The total sum of mutual trade between Xinjiang and five central Asian countries amounted to 68.925 hundred million USD, at average annual increase of 45%, of which the frontier trade between Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang took up 70% of the total frontier trade. Frontier trade dealings mainly center on Yining, Bole and Tacheng. In order to facilitate frontier trade and alleviate the tiresome during their journey and business risk, category-B frontier trade ports have been set up in Urumqi so far, where tour-purchasing trade can be done directly inside Urumqi in payment of USD or RMBY. The Frontier Trade and Commercial located inside Urumqi Frontier Hotel is the biggest tour-purchasing market in terms of trading volume in Xinjiang.

    Light industrial products, 70% of which are industrial products including food, shoes, textile goods, garment, daily necessities and house appliances dominate Xinjiang??s frontier-trade exports. Although a part of central Asian merchants begin to purchase higher-grade products, most of the exports are still lower in grade, lacking of dominate products and brand commodities as well as lower in their price. The products with high-added value such as: electro-mechanical products, chemical products, oil products and house appliances take up smaller percentage of them.

   The products exported through Xinjiang's frontier trade basically come from the township enterprises, non-governmental enterprises and private-owned enterprises in Zhejiang, Hebei, Fujian, Northeast China and Guangdong provinces. The products are carried by C.I.S merchants to vast rural areas and town wholesale markets, with less chance of entering city department stores upon their arrival in Asia. In 1988, the frontier trade volume only reached 35.99 million USD, taking up 8.8% of total external frontier trade in the same year. In 1990s, Xinjiang's frontier trade grew from 94.36 million USD to 9.81 hundred million USD in 2001, holding the half sky of Xinjiang's foreign trade for successive nine years, becoming an important pivotal point of external trade and main growth point, only next to Hei Longjiang province in doing that.