China News Service, Suifenhe, September 12 (Shi Yifu, Tian Xiaohui) The freight train whistle sounded, and domestically produced home appliances and department stores drove out of the Suifenhe railway port and rushed to Russia; in the storage workshop, honey, grain and oil from Russia completed customs clearance and sorting, and were sent to various parts of the country. The busy scene of entering and exiting is a vivid microcosm of Suifenhe, a "century-old port", practicing "double buying and double selling" to create the frontier of opening up to the north.
On September 12, reporters learned from Suifenhe Port that from January to August this year, Suifenhe City’s mutual trade volume reached 370 million yuan, accounting for more than 50% of the total volume in Heilongjiang Province, ranking first in the province. Relying on the policy dividends of the Comprehensive Free Trade Zone, Suifenhe has opened up a two-way trade chain of "buying all over the country, selling all over Russia, buying all over Russia, and selling all over the country". The former transit channel is transforming into a cross-border trade hub where factors gather.
Walking into Tianfu Shenglongjiang No. 1 Warehouse, the sorting assembly line is running at high speed, and orders in the bilingual live broadcast room continue to jump. Domestic goods are gathered and shipped out of customs here, and Russian-style goods are imported and distributed over there. The "double warehouse and double clearance" system builds a two-way logistics closed loop. "In the past, foreign trade channels were blocked, and the costs for small and medium-sized enterprises to go overseas were high and turnover was slow. Now the entire chain has been opened up, and operating efficiency has been doubled." The person in charge of a local cross-border e-commerce company said with emotion.
From January to July 2026, Suifenhe's cross-border e-commerce trade volume reached 2.97 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.3%, accounting for 30% of the province. The industrial scale remains the first in Heilongjiang Province, and the proportion of high value-added commodity trade has increased significantly. Cross-border e-commerce has become the core engine for improving the quality and increase of the city's foreign trade.
If cross-border e-commerce is the "new engine" of opening up to the outside world, then mutual trade is the "ballast stone" for revitalizing borders and enriching people. Relying on its unique location, Suifenhe has made good use of its mutual trade policy advantages, continued to upgrade its mutual trade model, broken the limitations of traditional border residents’ scattered transactions and simple passing of goods, and embarked on a new path of integrated development of “trade + processing + enriching the people”.
With the help of the "Suihutong" digital platform, border residents can complete supply registration and cross-border settlement online. "In the past, we just simply resold goods, with meager profits. Now that we join a cooperative, we can not only trade, but also work in factories nearby." said the person in charge of the Border Trade Cooperative.
At present, Suifenhe City has registered 24 border residents’ mutual trade cooperatives and 24 supporting processing enterprises. The ratio of mutual trade processing has jumped from less than 1% to 61.6%. From January to August 2026, the city's mutual trade volume reached 370 million yuan, accounting for more than 50% of the province's total, ranking first in the province.
Behind the continuous improvement of the trade industry, it is inseparable from the continuous support of port hardware and institutional innovation. The local TIR international highway line has been opened, and the railway has implemented "broad gauge re-exit" to solve the past problem of "heavy entry and light exit"; a number of new import qualifications have been added, and the vehicle customs clearance and registration time has been reduced from 30 minutes to 2 minutes. Multiple national-level park platforms are linked together, and digital platforms and diversified cross-border financial services continue to help thousands of foreign trade companies solve their problems.
From one-way transit to two-way interoperability, from channel economy to port economy. Currently, Suifenhe City's trading countries have expanded to 151, and the number of trading companies has increased to 681. The scale of trade with Russia and cross-border new business formats ranks at the forefront of Heilongjiang Province. The per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents has ranked first and second in Heilongjiang Province for 14 consecutive years.
