Staff members disinfect containers in Alataw Pass, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Feb. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Ma Kai)

About 41.6 tonnes of birch timber has been transported from Russia to Wuwei City, northwest China's Gansu Province, said the customs of Lanzhou, the provincial capital.

The batch of timber was transported to Wuwei after it had been disinfected at the Alataw Pass port in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to Lanzhou Customs.

Wuwei, located at the eastern end of the Hexi Corridor, was an important commercial town on the ancient Silk Road. Gansu (Wuwei) International Land Port has since been built here, becoming an important platform for the province to open to the west.

In 2016, Wuwei International Land Port was approved as the designated supervision site for imported timber, becoming the second designated supervision site for imported timber in China's inland region after Ganzhou in Jiangxi Province. In 2019, it passed the inspection of the General Administration of Customs and was put into operation, attracting many wood processing enterprises.

Fang Jun, deputy general manager of the company that imported the timber, said that compared with the customs clearance and supervision at the land port, the designated supervision site for direct-entry timber can effectively shorten the turnover time of goods and reduce the operating cost of enterprises.

After the batch of imported timber is processed into products, they will be exported to Central Asia, Russia and other places to further deepen the economic and trade exchanges between Gansu and Russia and other countries along the Belt and Road, according to Fang.

Statistics from Lanzhou Customs show that in the first 11 months of the year, the total value of imports and exports between Gansu Province and countries along the Belt and Road reached about 21.5 billion yuan (about 3.4 billion U.S. dollars), up 38.5 percent year on year, among which, the imports and exports with Russia reached over 4 billion yuan, up 362 percent year on year.