Photo taken on Jan. 8, 2021 shows freight trains at Erenhot Port in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. (Photo by Guo Pengjie/Xinhua)
North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has leveraged its regional advantages and achieved fruitful results in promoting the Belt and Road cooperation in recent years.
In 2023, the year marking the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the region made remarkable achievements in the Belt and Road cooperation and made efforts to build itself into an important bridgehead for China's opening up to the north.
In terms of the policy coordination, last year, Inner Mongolia actively improved the multi-level consultation and meeting mechanisms with Russia and Mongolia. At present, Inner Mongolia has established friendly relations with 23 regions in Mongolia and ten regions in Russia.
Specifically, regular meetings and coordination mechanisms were established between the governments of Inner Mongolia and the Outer Baikal border region of Russia, as well as between Erenhot and the Zamyn-Uud Free Economic Zone of Mongolia.
In terms of infrastructure connectivity, logistics channels were further broadened. In 2023, five international flight routes were launched in Hohhot port, Hailar port, and Manzhouli port, connecting three cities abroad.
From January to November, 475 China-Europe freight trains arrived or departed from Inner Mongolia, up 127.2 percent year on year.
Inner Mongolia also saw the enhancement in the financial integration. The region conducted cross-border RMB trade settlements with a total of 47 Belt and Road partner countries and regions last year, totaling 33.93 billion yuan (about 4.69 billion U.S. dollars), up 90.5 percent year on year. Such settlements with Russia and Mongolia were 5.6 billion yuan and 20.06 billion yuan, up 89.4 percent and 77.3 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, Inner Mongolia also paid high attention to the people-to-people exchanges with the Belt and Road partner countries and regions last year. The region carried out extensive cooperation in areas like medical care, education, culture and tourism, media, and think tanks with the Belt and Road countries. For example, universities in Inner Mongolia worked with those in Russia and Mongolia to run the Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classroom program which helped cultivate over 6,300 students in total. (Edited by Hu Pingchao, Xie Weijia, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
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