| Alashankou 阿拉山口 Alataw Pass |
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| — Town — | |
| Tianshan Jie, a main street in Alashankou | |
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Alashankou
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| Coordinates: | |
| Country | China |
| Autonomous Region | Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region |
| Autonomous prefecture | Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture |
| County-level city | Bole |
| Time zone | China Standard Time (UTC+8) |
Alashankou (Chinese: 阿拉山口; pinyin: Ālāshānkǒu) or Alataw Pass is a border town in Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. It is a port of entry by both railroad and highway from Kazakhstan as part of the Eurasian Land Bridge. The town is named after the Dzungarian Gate (Ala Shankou in Chinese), a pass connecting the two countries through the Dzungarian Alatau mountains. West of the pass, the port of entry on the Kazakhstan side is Dostyk. Alashankou is 73 kilometers from Bole, 460 kilometers from Ürümqi, and 580 kilometers from Almaty.[1]
Alashankou is one of China's national first-class ports of entry. The volume of imports and exports passing through Alashankou accounts for 90% of the total for all of Xinjiang, and is second to only Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia among land ports-of-entry in China.[2]
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The agreement between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to connect Kazakhstan with Western China by rail was achieved in 1954. On the Soviet side, the railway reached the border town of Druzhba (Dostyk) in 1959. On the Chinese side, however, the westward construction of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway was stopped once it reached Urumqi in 1962. Due to the Sino-Soviet Split, the railway link was not completed until September 12, 1990. The highway port of entry was opened in December 1995.[2]
The railway networks of the two countries use different gauges (China, like most of Europe, uses the standard gauge of 1,435 mm/4 ft 8 1⁄2 in, but Russia uses the broader Russian gauge of 1,520 mm/4 ft 11 5⁄6 in), so there are breaks of gauge. It is proposed to build a standard gauge Transcontinental Railway to link Europe and China to bypass these two breaks of gauge. This project was signed in 2004.[3]
On July 10, 2010, Bole Alashankou Airport was opened with scheduled flights to Ürümqi.[4]