China and Russia have set their respective responsibility for the progress of the contruction of the Heilongjiang River Highway River linking China's Heihe city and Russia's Blagovescensk. The overall design revision and the structural design of the main bridge are planned to be completed by August 2005.

Thanks to increasingly frequent Sino-Russian economic and trade exchanges, the bilateral trade volume exceeded US$20 billion for the first time in 2004 and the import and export of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province also hit US$3.82 billion.

The construction of Heilongjiang River Highway Bridge will surely drive the rapid development of the whole region. Based on the envisioning of Heilongjiang provincial Party committee and the provincial government, Heihe city government has made plan for the cities at the end bridge. It set port area, finance and business area, heavy industry area, light industry area, bonded area and resident area. The construction of the bridge-end areas will go along with that of the main bridge.

The bridge will help ease the transportation shortage along Sino-Russian border and promote economic and trade, technological cooperation and cultural exchanges between the two sides.

By People's Daily Online