9.4 million pieces of commodities now tradable with Russia

An online “Silk Road” from Harbin to Russia successfully opened thanks to joint effort from the Harbin government and Dhgate.cn, an online B2B business platform. The Harbin-Russia E-Commerce Operation Center Website (beta version of DHgate.cn in Russian) was recently launched. At present, 9.4 million pieces of commodities can be traded with Russia on the platform.

"The advance rate of construction of Harbin-Russia E-commerce Operation Center Website is beyond our expectation,” said a person in charge of DHgate’s department of strategic development. At the end of last year, the Harbin government signed a contract with DHgate to build the Harbin-Russia E-Commerce Operation Center linking the online

"Silk Road” to Russia. The operation center plans to receive nearly 20 million kinds of goods from 80,000 commercial tenants.

Construction proceeded quickly after that. The Russian beta version of the trading platform has 9.4 million pieces of tradable goods and was successfully launched in January this year. The office of the Harbin-Russia E-Commerce Operation Center in south Harbin is being decorated at the moment. The research and development group and the customer service center in Beijing will move to Harbin when decorations are completed.

Because of Harbin’s favorable location and Russian-speaking talent, DHgate, who ranks first in terms of online foreign trade volume in the Asia-Pacific region, has made plans to recruit technical personnel and Russian-speaking talent in Harbin since it signed the contract to establish the Harbin-Russia E-Commerce Operation Center, especially hoping to encourage college students to start low- or no-cost businesses. “When school starts in March, the recruitment and training project will be launched on a large scale,” the official said.

At the same time, the municipal government is considering formulating favorable policies for cross-border (towards Russia) e-commerce, striving to build a comprehensive service system for Harbin-Russia e-commerce by integrating segments like customs clearance, commodity inspection, taxation, foreign exchange settlement and logistics in order to promote the development of cross-border e-commerce.

The Harbin-Russia E-Commerce Operation Center is expected to become the world’s most competitive e-commerce center working in conjunction with Russia and a simple and effective channel for Chinese goods sold to Russia.