The Russian-built Suifenhe Railway Station with the station name in Chinese and Russian. Originally named Border Station in 1899, it was renamed Suifenhe Station in 1903 after completion of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). After completion of a new railway station on the left bank of the Suifenhe River in 2015, the old railway station on the right bank was designated a Major National Historical and Cultural Site and repurposed as the CER Museum.
Trains loaded with Russian timber at the Suifenhe Railway Station. Suifenhe has developed into a major timber trading and processing hub in northeast China, given its ready access to the timber-rich Russian Far East that provides around 30% of China’s annual timber imports. In 2019, construction began on the 380,000-square-meter China-Russia Timber Trading and Processing Center. Processed timber and timber products are transported from Suifenhe to other parts of China and abroad via the Harbin–Suifenhe–Russia–Asia (Ha–Sui–E–Ya) Sea–Land Multimodal Transportation Route.
1860: The area around Suifenhe, a river flowing into Amur Bay through Khanka Lowlands, witnessed increasing Russian influence after 1860. Here is when the lands between the Ussuri River and the Pacific Ocean was recognized as Russian territory by the Sino-Russian Treaty of the Convention of Peking.
1897: Russia gained a concession from the Qing dynasty in 1897 to construct the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), a branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway through Manchuria. Located 10 kilometers apart along the Suifenhe River, the Grodekovo Station in Russia and the Border Station in China were established in 1898 and 1899, respectively.
1903: The CER was officially opened, and the Border Station was renamed Suifenhe Station. After the Qing court established the Suifenhe Railway General Negotiation Bureau in 1903, settlement around the Suifenhe Station rapidly grew and was called “the window of East Asia.”
1923: After the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), Russia and China started to administer the Northern CER jointly. To better manage CER and the settlements along it, China established the Eastern Provinces Special District (EPSD; 1923–1932). Suifenhe City was established under the EPSD in 1926.
1929: Suifenhe Station was destroyed during the 1929 Sino–Soviet conflict that fought over the administration of the Northern CER. The station was rebuilt after the conflict in late 1929.
1932: Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932 and took control of Suifenhe City in 1933. The city entered into a steep decline as the Japanese army set up border blockade to interrupt the operation of the cross-border railway and Sino–Soviet trade and commercial activities.
1935: The Soviet Union sold its rights to the CER to the Manchukuo government in 1935. Soon after, CER was changed from Russian broad gauge to standard gauge.
1945: The Japanese control of Manchukuo ended after the Soviet–Japanese War. Cross-border trade at Suifenhe resumed, and a cross-border railway was reopened. CER was converted back to Russian broad gauge by the Soviet Army before its withdrawal from China in 1945, but was converted back to standard gauge once again in 1946.
1949: Suifenhe witnessed rapid resurgence after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and was a primary location for the Sino–Soviet trade and commercial activities in the 1950s.
1953: The Suifenhe Railway Port was established.
1958: The Suifenhe Sino-Soviet Friendship People’s Commune was established on China’s side. The settlement around the Grodekovo Station on Russia’s side was given its present name Pogranichny, which means “border town.”
1964: Due to Sino-Soviet Split, the Suifenhe Friendship Commune was disbanded and reformed as the Suifenhe People’s Commune, and the Suifenhe Port was closed.
1972: In the aftermath of the 1969 Zhenbao (Damansky) Island incident, toponyms of Chinese origin in Primorsky Krai were replaced en masse with newly designed Russian names. The Russian part of the Suifenhe River received the new name Razdolnaya, which means “widely flowing.”
1987: Sino-Soviet relations began to improve in the early 1980s. In 1987, Suifenhe and Pogranichny governments signed a bilateral collaboration agreement, and local-level cross-border trade resumed.
1991: The new national gateway at Suifenhe was completed.
1992: Suifenhe became a Border Open City, and Suifenhe Border Economics Cooperation Zone was established.
2010: Upgrading and electrification of the Harbin–Suifenhe Railway, originally built as the eastern branch of the CER, commenced. In the same year, the Heilongjiang section of the Suiman Expressway was opened to traffic. Upon the completion of its entirety, Suiman Expressway will connect the cities of Suifenhe in Heilongjiang with Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia on the Sino-Russian border.
2012: The expansion and upgrading of Suifenhe Port in China and Grodekovo Port in Russia began, and new port facilities and national gateways were opened in 2014.
2013: The construction of the new railway station on the left bank of the Suifenhe River started. The old Russia-built railway station on the right bank of the river was designated as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level and transformed into the China Eastern Railway Museum.
2016: The new Suifenhe Railway Station came into operation together with the upgraded Harbin–Suifenhe Railway.
2019: In September 2019, the Suifenhe Area of Heilongjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone was established, and the construction of the China-Russia Timber Trading and Processing Center in Suifenhe started. The timber industry has become a backbone of Suifenhe’s economy, with Gorodekovo–Suifenhe being a main export point of Russia timber.