Northeast to benefit from new high-speed rail link

Liaoning and Jilin also play an important role in economic cooperation with the Korean Peninsula.

There are over 4,500 South Korean enterprises in Northeast China with investments by companies, including STX, LG, SK, POSCO and Hana Bank worth $4.58 billion.

Dandong, in Liaoning province, meanwhile, sits on the main route for trade between China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In 2011, the city's import and export trade with the DPRK was worth $1.86 billion, accounting for 40 percent of Sino-DPRK trade volume.

In the past three years, China has launched many policies to promote the opening-up of Northeast China, most recently in early August when the State Council approved a plan to push cooperation between the region and Russia.

The three provinces have also worked hard to enhance cooperation with countries in northeast Asia.

"It's very important and viable for China to strengthen its cooperation with Russia," said Qi Wenhai, researcher of Northeast Asian Studies Center at Heilongjiang University.

However, he added one of the main stumbling blocks has been transportation infrastructure.

Da Zhigang, director of Northeast Asia Institute at Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said that the new high-speed railway will help accelerate passenger, logistics and information flow, which will directly or indirectly promote contact between northeast regions and neighboring countries.

He explained that the four core cities along the railway - Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian - are linked closely with future economic exchange.

Besides the new high-speed railway, the three provinces are also planning to build a local high-speed railway network, including lines from Shenyang to Dandong, Changchun to Hunchun, and Harbin to Fuyuan, all of which will have terminals very close to Russia and the DPRK.

Experts agreed that the new railway lines represented an important import and export channel for China, which will ease current freight transportation pressures, and mean that bulk goods, such as coal, oil, wood and grain, will be transported to southern regions far quicker.

Lin Zhonghong, deputy director of the Economic and Planning Research Institute of the Ministry of Railways, was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying the high-speed railway will increase the transport capacity between Harbin and Dalian from 50 million to 60 million metric tons a year.

Contact the writers at wuyong@chinadaily.com.cn and liuce@chinadaily.com.cn

Han Junhong in Changchun and Zhou Huiying in Harbin contributed to this story.