Foreign Trade Promotes Development
3 min readOpenness in Xinjiang directly influences the increase of foreign trade and investment. Active import and export trade in Xinjiang drive the economic development in relevant ports. The growth of import and export at the ports pulls the development of relevant industries of trade in chain and objectively drives complex development of port economy by leaps and bounds. In 2008, foreign-trade dependence of Xinjiang’s GDP reached 36.7%. According to the estimation of experts, if Xinjiang exports commodities worth of dollar, it will contribute 0.15 Yuan to local finance. In Xinjiang, number of staff offering direct service to foreign trade and economies is up to 400,000. The development of foreign trade and economies in Xinjiang forcefully promotes the adjustment of economic structure in Xinjiang and speeds up new industrialization, agricultural and urbanization process.
In terms of economic relations between Xinjiang and its surrounding countries, perhaps many demonstrations with comprehensiv discussion and complete models can be put forward at academic level. Once I asked Selleck what the economic relation between Xinjiang and its surrounding countries was. He thought for a moment and answered, “The economic relation between Xinjiang and its surrounding countries is fast transportation of goods and materials, convenient personnel exchanges, mutual benefit from the trade, and improvement of people’s living standard.”
Starting of Economic and Trade Cooperation Surrounding area of Xinjiang is inland. Prosperous sea trade transferred the global trade mainstream from land transportation to ocean shipping, thus the Silk Road began to decline in the vast sand sea.
When the spring breeze of the reform and openness blew in Southern China, Xinjiang, this quiet border area beyond the Great Wall also changed quietly. This trade post on the Silk Road was ready to set out at any time.
Foreign Trade in the Initial Stage for Reform and Opening-Up(1983~1991) In the initial stage for reform and opening-up, the main trade partners of Xinjiang in surrounding areas were republics of the Soviet Union and former eastern European countries.
In April, 1982, Foreign Trade Departments of China and the Soviet Union came to an agreement on restoring the trade between Xinjiang of China and the Soviet Union.
In winter of 1983, Horgos Port and Torugart Port on the border between Xinjiang, China and the Soviet Union were opened for commercial intercourse so that volume of export trade from Xinjiang to the Soviet Union increased significantly, from USD 809,000 in 1981 to USD 22.391 million in 1985, with its proportion in total export volume in Xinjiang rising from1.7%in1981to12.4%in1985. During this period,the Soviet Union became the third largest trade partner of Xinjiang, apart from Hong Kong and Macao Regions in China and Japan. Xinjiang mainly exported light textile products, medicine and health products to the Soviet Union, while it mainly imported steel products, phosphate fertilizer, cement and other raw materials for production and articles for daily use in short supply, such as piano, refrigerator, and Adlai silk,etc.
On January 23, 1986, Ministries of Foreign Economics and Trade of China and the Soviet Union exchanged notes for confirmatic in Beijing, to restore the direct border barter trade in Xinjiang with Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic and Altay, Krasnoyarsk border region, and Kemerovskaya Oblast in Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, in neighboring areas between Xinjiang and the Soviet Union.
