Harbin Comprehensive Bonded Area is located in the Xiangfang district of Harbin, capital city of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province — and is neighbors with the Harbin Railway Container Center Station and Harbin Inland Port.
 
It has a total planning area of 3.29 square kilometers.
 
The construction of a comprehensive bonded zone — approved by the General Administration of Customs on Dec 25, 2014 — is a major strategic move for Harbin to develop its commerce with Russia. 
 
To date, 39 companies have signed contracts to move to Harbin Comprehensive Bonded Zone and 29 of them have completed industrial and commercial registration.
 
The resident enterprises are involved in international trade, bonded logistics, cross-border e-commerce, processing, manufacturing and other areas of business.
 
Officials said they are enjoying the most preferential policies in Heilongjiang province, which include export tax rebates and an exemption on added-value tax and consumption tax.
 
The establishment of Harbin Comprehensive Bonded Zone provides a new engine for Heilongjiang province to open up its economy to the outside world.
 
Officials said it is a zone with the highest level of opening-up, the most preferential policies, the most complete array of functions and the most efficient customs clearance procedures.
 
Harbin is a mega city that can link to 25 trade ports and is the only city other than Beijing that has been approved by the central government to establish the China Post International Gateway to Russia.
 
Facilitating ever-expanding business links, Harbin Bank has opened ruble account deposit businesses. It has established a ruble cash exchange center and a Heilongjiang ruble cash transaction center.
 
In addition, a Sino-Russian cross-border financial settlement platform has been established and gone into operation – enabling Russian users to pay in rubles instead of renminbi when conducting transactions with Chinese online business enterprises.
 
The platform is expected to save at least 2 percent of capital procedure costs.