Chinese news media is reporting that China and Mongolia are beginning a new process of conducting a feasibility study regarding development of a new Free Trade Zone (FTZ).
This comes in the contest of the second China-Mongolia Expo, held in Hohhot, the capital of China’s Inner Mongolia region. The conference will occur in late September, and will serve as a forum to discuss issues of mutual cooperation and development between China and Mongolia.
Mongolia’s trade with China in the first six months of 2017 has been USD $3.1 billion. This is a 44.2% increase year-on-year. China mainly exports gas, diesel, food, machinery and equipment to Mongolia, and imports natural resources, fur and raw materials.
Talk of the new FTZ comes after the China-Mongolia Cross-border Economic Cooperation Zone (CECZ) was announced in 2015. The CECZ is a 18 square kilometer territory evenly divided along the China-Mongolia border. The CECZ is intended to facilitate import/export processing, logistics, warehousing, and e-commerce.
The increase in economic cooperation between China and Mongolia is a core part of the wider China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor, which seeks to facilitate integration of Mongolia with the economies and infrastructure of China’s northern territories and Russia’s far east.