While 2019 is officially the “year of China” in Ukraine, the increased volume of trade and investment details is already making the bilateral relationship one of the strongest.
Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai announced plans for $7 billion in joint projects between China and Ukraine on a Dec. 5 visit to Kyiv. Last year, trade between China and Ukraine increased 18 percent, to $7.68 billion, according to Ukraine’s Economy Ministry. China ranks third as trade partner behind the European Union and Russia.
The major projects announced include:
- Chinese companies plan to build a $2 billion new metro line in Kyiv.
- A $500-million loan from China’s CCEC (China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation) trading firm to finance affordable housing mortgages.
- CCEC plans to build a $400 million passenger railway connecting Kyiv with Boryspil International Airport, as well as a solar energy farm near the closed Chornobyl nuclear energy plant.
- On Dec. 28, Ukraine’s Economy Ministry reported that China and Ukraine had agreed to speed construction of grain elevators, silos, port terminals, highways, and railroads.
- China plans a ring road around Kyiv along with other road projects close to Kyiv.
- China Harbor Engineering Co. announced on Dec. 29 that it had completed dredging 4.4 million cubic meters of soil from Ukraine’s busiest port of Yuzhnyy; the $38-million project was completed three months ahead of schedule. Chinese companies are looking into dredging ports in Mariupol and Berdyansk as part of a plan to upgrade commercial ports on the Sea of Azov.
- China is now the top purchaser of military equipment from Ukraine with $90 million in sales in 2016.
- From June 2016 to July 2017, Ukrainian grain supplies to China went up by 11 percent year-on-year
- China is planning to build two giant Antonov An-225 aircraft in Chengdu and Shaanxi.
- A Chinese company will start working on a 200-kilometer cement coastal highway for grain transportation
- China is planning to build a 500-megawatt wind farm on the Sea of Azov.
- Odesa Oblast signed a cooperation agreement with China’s Jiangxi Province.
