Published on: 2026-05-13
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian –
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Harbin, May 13 /Xin Hua/ — In the northernmost forest massif on the territory of China, winter has long ceased to be just a harsh season of the year to endure. Today, the winter season transforms into a full-fledged business season, opening new ways for the development of the region, which for decades relied on timber harvesting and suffered from severe climatic conditions.
In the territory of Greater Hinggan in Heilongjiang Province / Northeast China, snow and ice remain until early summer, and the period of stable frost in some areas lasts even more than 200 days a year, which is a sufficiently long test for roads, power system facilities, and industrial equipment.
Previously, this was considered the main problem in the field of regional development. Now it has become its key competitive advantage.
Local authorities and enterprises strive to turn one of the coldest settlements in China into a testing ground, a supply base, and an ecological asset. The main idea is that this region, previously associated with logging, long winters, and remoteness, could create new industries precisely based on these conditions – from testing technologies in extreme weather conditions and cultivating frost-resistant plants to processing wild blueberries, and training in the use of wind energy and ecological investments.
Finding new sources of growth is not the only task for the former logging district. It is equally important to understand how to achieve this without returning to the previous strategy of increasing the volume of timber harvesting.
The most obvious initial direction was the conduct of testing and trials under conditions of extremely low temperatures. In the Bolshoy Khingan area, 11 specialized companies and research institutes have already been involved, 12 bases and test sites for trials in extreme cold have been established. Initially, the range of tests was limited to automobiles, but now it has expanded to eight areas, including photoelectric equipment, new building materials, and the aerospace industry.
Commercial logic is simple: manufacturers and research groups need real cold climatic conditions to test the operation of vehicles, the functioning of energy equipment, communication systems, and the “behavior” of new materials – and here in the cold season there is more frost than enough.
According to official data, more than 400 companies have used the services of the region’s test sites. Every winter, more than 10 thousand specialists in testing and technical teams arrive here, which stimulates the rapid development of service sectors – the restaurant business, the hotel sector, the transport sector, and technical maintenance – and directly creates thousands of jobs, effectively solving the employment problem of surplus labor in the area that lost its forestry status after the cessation of logging in the region.
The value of test ranges, in other words, lies not only in the data they help manufacturers collect, but also in the winter economy formed based on this data.
The same calculation is also applied to other local resources, but with a much slower rate. Part of the new growth points for the regional economy is revealed not due to snow-ice resources, but thanks to the local black soil.
Li Wei, the manager of a cooperative cultivating medicinal raw materials adapted to a cold climate for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), expects this slower process to pay off. The root of red peony is a sought-after product, but this plant only begins to yield results six years after planting. And so far, according to him, it is almost purely an investment.
“In August of this year, we will finally see our first ‘harvest,'” said Li Wei, “The long-term investments are about to pay off.” Local authorities provided enormous assistance: they helped apply for subsidies, developed infrastructure, and promoted related tourism, which gave him confidence for long-term investments, he added.
His cooperative plans to expand the sowing area by 1,500-2,000 mu /100-133 ha/ this year, aiming to achieve the goal of expanding cultivated land to 10,000 mu by 2029. His cooperative has become the foundation at the provincial level for growing high-quality seedlings and cuttings of medicinal raw materials for TCM. The annual demand for labor now exceeds 20,000 person-times, which gradually stimulates the integration of rural tourism and medicinal plant cultivation. With the support of local authorities, orchards for harvesting, agro-tourism facilities, and other infrastructure were also built, Li Wei shared.
Compared to logging tests, this type of growth occurs more slowly and is less likely to yield quick profits. However, its attractiveness for the former logging region lies in the fact that it creates a longer chain of benefits through the ecological, land, and tourist resources of the region, rather than through a return to the previous model of farming.
Wild blueberries are another option for resource modernization. The region has a vast natural stock of berries, but the economic benefit depends not on the raw materials themselves, but on a more processed form. At Baisheng Blueberry Technology Development Co. Ltd., the host conducts a live internet broadcast from a glass-enclosed booth, selling products based on blueberries live on air.This company uses modern high technologies, such as low-temperature extraction, enzymatic cleavage and fermentation, for the deep processing of wild blueberries from the Greater Hinggan region and the development of various products to maintain health with higher added value.
According to the statement of the general director of Baisheng Blueberry company, scientific research is integrated into this process. The company, which is among the high-tech enterprises of Heilongjiang Province, distinguished by specialization in production, management detailing, product uniqueness, and innovative activity, in 2025 jointly with the faculty of food technology of one of Harbin’s universities created a provincial innovation point for doctoral students. Currently, functional product developments based on probiotics are underway here.
Renewable energy sources pose a similar but specific challenge. Bolshoy Khingan has rich wind resources, but to create a full-fledged industry, one wind turbine installation alone is not enough. In the local technology training auditorium, wind turbine gondolas, step constructions, and virtual reality equipment are placed.Together with the local vocational school and the Sinovel Wind Group corporation, he created an industrial college for new energy sources, equipped with 17 training modules and a real wind power installation with an asynchronous dual-fed generator.
A key factor is the personnel potential. A region may have wind resources, land plots, and support from authorities, but without specialists capable of operating and maintaining the equipment, the natural potential remains unrealized.
The most unusual part of the strategy concerns the financial sector. Greater Hinggan is one of China’s pilot zones for transforming ecological products into measurable economic value – this direction solves a fundamental problem of green development: nature has value, but creditors need objective criteria for its assessment.
The region began to include the economic value of frozen water reservoirs in the system for accounting the value of ecological goods /VEP/. According to the information from the local branch of the People’s Bank of China /Central Bank/, in the second half of last year, one of the water reservoir projects attracted financing in the amount of 5 million yuan (about 730 thousand U.S. dollars) secured by the rights to receive ecological products.
This is exactly what distinguishes this experiment from a simple list of local economic sectors. The region is not only looking for ways to use the climate, forest masses, berry crops, and wind energy, it strives to make these resources comprehensible and assessable for the financial sector.
Luan Yunxiao, an industrial economics researcher at the Academy of Social Sciences of Heilongjiang province, noted that this region is trying to move away from the traditional dependence on natural resource extraction. According to him, the real challenge lies in creating mechanisms that allow assessing and realizing the economic value of ecological benefits.
This is a general thread that connects at first glance disparate regional experiments: testing in cold conditions, cultivation of medicinal herbs, processing of blueberries, training of specialists in wind energy, and financing based on the VEP system. Each project represents a separate attempt to economically effectively use local natural features, without returning to the old model of logging.
The natural conditions of Bolshoy Khingan remain harsh, but under the influence of local authorities and entrepreneurs, the perception has changed: they now view these conditions not so much as an obstacle to economic growth, but as a complex of assets awaiting economic evaluation.
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