China and Russia are getting ready to open two new border checkpoints

Almaty. July 15. Silkroadnews – Russia and China are getting ready to open two new border checkpoints, Evgeny Tomikhin, Ambassador-at-Large at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said to Russian journalists on Thursday.

As TASS notes, he took part in the regular meeting of the Russian-Chinese commission on the border. The meeting agenda included discussion of border-crossing regulations agreements, first control of the joint border, hydrological monitoring.

“Right now we complete the approval of a bilateral agreement on the opening of two new border checkpoints. The first of them is located on the Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island, the second one is a pedestrian checkpoint to be opened in Blagoveshchensk as additional to the one in operation. It will be focused to serve the passengers of the cable railway to be built between Blagoveshchensk and Heihe,” E. Tomikhin said.

He also added, the negotiations are carried out under way to allow the citizens of the border regions to pass the border using their transport vehicles.

“Russia and China have created quite a holistic approach for interaction within the border areas, established a number of mechanisms to regulate the cooperation in the border regions,” Russian diplomat said.

He noted that in the first half of this year the Russian-Chinese border checkpoints recorded more than 3.5 million crossings in both directions.

“We observe growth in the most of the statistical indicators on the Russian-Chinese border: I mean number of border-crossings by citizens of both countries and number of border crossings by transport vehicles. The crossing data are impressive. Due to strengthening of cooperation of law enforcement and border services this year we also see a noticeable reduction in the number of various kinds of offenses and incidents on the border,” E. Tomikhin added.

According to him, representatives of both countries’ border services meet on a regular basis, and the same is true for the law enforcement agencies of two countries that keep the contacts with each other.

“In the law enforcement field a special focus is made to prevent the cross-border crimes, various expressions of extremism. According to our border service officers, in six months the number of border violations decreased by almost four times,” diplomat also said.