- The 1758 Victory of Khorgos, a 1774 engraving by Jacques-Philippe Le Bas (1707-1783), after Jean-Denis Attiret (1702-1768). Musée Guimet, Paris.[16]
- Khorgos Soviet-Chinese frontier post (1984)
- Khorgas port gate
Khorgas, officially known as Korgas[1] (simplified Chinese: 霍尔果斯; traditional Chinese: 霍爾果斯; pinyin: Huò'ěrguǒsī; Kazakh: قورعاس, romanized: Qorǵas), also known as Chorgos, Gorgos, Horgos and Khorgos, formerly Gongchen (拱宸城), is a Chinese city straddling[2] the border with Kazakhstan. It is located in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Korgas
霍尔果斯市 قورغاس شەھىرى | |
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County-level city | |
![]() China–Kazakhstan border crossing at Korgas | |
![]() ![]() Korgas Location in Xinjiang | |
Coordinates: 44°12′45″N 80°24′35″E | |
Country | People's Republic of China |
Autonomous region | Xinjiang |
Autonomous prefecture | Ili |
Area | |
• Total | 1,900 km2 (700 sq mi) |
Population (2014) | |
• Total | 85,000 |
Time zone | UTC+8 (China Standard Time) |
Khorgas | |||||||
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Chinese name | |||||||
Simplified Chinese | 霍尔果斯市 | ||||||
Traditional Chinese | 霍爾果斯市 | ||||||
| |||||||
Uyghur name | |||||||
Uyghur | قورغاس شەھىرى | ||||||
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Kazakh name | |||||||
Kazakh | قورعاس
Qorǵas Қорғас | ||||||
The city on the Kazakh side of the border is also known as Khorgas (Kazakh: Қорғас, قورغاس, Qorǵas; Russian: Хоргос, Khorgos); its train station there is Altynkol (Russian: Алтынколь).
As of 2019, the Khorgos area was a hub of the New Eurasian Land Bridge, 200 km from the Alataw Pass, the historically important Dzungarian Gate, with a cross-border visa-free special economic zone for trade and shopping (ICBC), a dry port for transporting goods and two new cities, one on either side of the border.[3]
The Jinghe–Yining–Khorgos railway was completed in late 2009 and as of 2012 provides train service from Ürümqi and Yining to Khorgas.[4]
Passenger trains from Ürümqi started on July 1, 2010; however, they initially only ran to Yining and not all the way to Khorgas.[5][6] In December 2013, one of the daily Ürümqi-Yining passenger trains was extended to Khorgas. The travel time from Khorgos to Yining then was just over an hour.[7]
In December 2011, a 293-kilometre (182 mi) railway from the Khorgas border crossing to Zhetygen terminal (near Almaty) was completed; on December 2, 2012, the tracks from the Chinese and Kazakhstan sides of the borders were connected.[8] For some months, the railway on the Kazakh side was still operating in a test mode.[9] The railway border crossing (port of entry) at Khorgas became operational in the late 2012;[10]) the first regular trains from the two countries crossed the border on December 22, 2012.[8] Thus, Khorgos, an international dry port, connects land-locked Kazakhstan to the sea port of Lianyungang in China.[11]
The railway border crossing is expected to handle up to 15 million tons of freight per year initially, the volume rising to 30 million tons per year in the long run,[8] opening up the second Europe-China rail link via Kazakhstan.[12]
Khorgas is a major break of gauge interchange. 41-ton gantry cranes are used to move shipping containers between standard gauge Chinese trains and Russian gauge Kazakh trains,[13] connecting to Altynkol railway station on a spur line of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy.
In June 2017, the Ürümqi Railway Bureau of the China Railway started daily passenger service from Ürümqi to Nur-Sultan via Khorgas.[14]
In 2017, robot manufacturing moved to Horgos as Boshihao Electronics moved production to the city from Shenzhen.[15]
Straddling the Kazakh-Chinese border, a collection of cranes, railways, and buildings rises out of a barren stretch of desert surrounded by towering mountains to form the backbone of the Khorgos Gateway
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Cities of Xinjiang | |
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Prefectural cities | |
XPPC cities | |
County cities |