Dandong, which lies on the North Korean border, will be able to handle more than 100 million tons of freight annually once the expansion is complete, compared with 60 million tons at present, the report said, citing a government statement.
The Dadong expansion project will "cement its role as a transport hub in Northeast Asia that connects the Korean Peninsula with Eurasia", Xinhua said.
Impoverished and squeezed by international sanctions for conducting a series of nuclear and missile tests from 2006, North Korea has reached out to Moscow and Beijing for help to fill the gap left by the drying up of South Korean and the U.S. economic assistance.
Over the past 16 months, leader Kim Jong-il, who in the past rarely travelled abroad, has visited China four times and in August made his first trip to Russia in nearly a decade.
Kim's visits were mainly aimed at winning economic support, and have raised speculation he may finally be opening one of the world's most closed economies.
China has sought to draw North Korea closer with incentives, and bilateral trade hit $3.1 billion in the first seven months of 2011, an 87 percent increase from the same period last year, according to Chinese customs statistics. Growth was propelled by a 169.2 percent jump in the value of Chinese imports.
The North announced in June it would work with Beijing to make the Rason economic zone work on the east coast , along with a similar zone in the west at Hwanggumpyong island near Dandong.
Beijing has stood by the North as its sole major economic and diplomatic ally, but also sought to revive six-party talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament. (Reuters)
