China Focus: China-Mongolia economic cooperation set to thrive

While many Chinese associate Mongolia with its rolling, green pastures, Li Pengyuan sees the country as a huge opportunity.

Two year ago, Li co-founded ubmall.mn, the first online marketplace for China-Mongolia trade.

"At the beginning, there were just a handful of transactions every day.Now, on average, we handle 20,000 parcels, bound for Mongolia or Russia, daily," said Li, 35.

Ubmall is the biggest e-commerce platform in Mongolia. Chinese-made clothes, food, home appliances and machinery are all very popular, Li explained.

"Our success shows that Mongolia and Russia are great consumption markets," Li said.

The parcels are delivered by train through Erenhot land port in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In the first five months of 2016, 1,745 standard containers passed through Erenhot Port, up 150 percent year on year, along the 10,000-km long China-Europe rail route.

To facilitate transportation, Erenhot Port, the largest one between China and Mongolia, has streamlined procedures and shortened the time it takes for freight to be processed and wait at the port.

China has begun constructing the first unified standard railway to Mongolia, which will be 1,435 mm wide, rather than the Mongolian gauge of 1,520 mm. This will cut costs for shipments between the two countries.

The line will pass through Inner Mongolia's Ceke, the second largest port of entry between China and Mongolia.

Burgeoning commerce and construction has been noted since China proposed a trilateral "economic corridor" in 2014.

The corridor will align China's Silk Road Economic Belt initiative with Mongolia's Prairie Road program and Russia's transcontinental rail plan.

This June in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, a development plan on the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor was inked, which is expected to boost transportation connectivity and economic cooperation.

Premier Li Keqiang will pay an official visit to Mongolia from July 13 to 14 and attend the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting summit in Ulan Bator from July 15 to 16.

Li and Mongolia's new Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat will discuss cooperation in trade, industrial capacity, energy, finance, agriculture and animal husbandry, said China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Kong Xuanyou.

A number of agreements will be signed during Li's visit, which will "inject new impetus into the development of bilateral ties and benefit the people of the two nations", Kong added.

Mongolia's Prairie Road program includes expressway, railway and natural gas and oil pipeline projects. The whole program should cost around 50 billion U.S. dollars.

The Prairie Road program complements China's Belt and Road initiative, according to Gao Shumao, China's former ambassador to Mongolia.

"The connection of the two strategies is vital to Mongolia's development and the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor," said Gao.

He said there was plenty of potential to collaborate on road and rail projects, power, clean energy, tourism, medical care and people-to-people exchanges. Endi