The city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province has announced plans to open a site online for Chinese-Russian art, which was started by a cultural enterprise in June of 2016, for specialized cross-border e-commerce that combines culture and finance.

The site is expected to offer 180,000 oil paintings with Russian authentication for sale with a liberal return policy, as a groundbreaking approach to the market. it will provide access to information on artworks at more than 160 e-commerce sites in Russia, Poland and Ukraine, where Chinese can surf the website.

The operator of the site, the Qiji Cultural Group, says it has branches in the Russian cities of Vladivostok, Irkutsk and Moscow where they collect oil paintings and handle the authentication and customs procedures. They also say they plan to open off-line stores to display artworks nationwide and give a good shopping experience.

Harbin has the largest stock of Russian oil paintings in China, but annual sales amount to no more than 6-million yuan ($923,000).