(Yicai Global) May 28 -- Efforts have intensified to build a southbound freight channel connecting China, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, and the rest of the region, while the development of China-Europe rail line to the west progresses with the cooperation of countries along the route. With China connecting the southbound channel with the China-Europe freight train services, a pan-Eurasia international trade and logistics network is gradually taking shape.

The first train on the Yibin–Qinzhou container railway line of the Sichuan–Guangxi–Hong Kong-Malaysia southbound channel left Yibin, the southwestern Sichuan province, on the morning of May 22 to reach Hong Kong and Malaysia via Qinzhou port, the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The first rail-sea foreign trade train departed from the neighboring Luzhou in Sichuan to Qinzhou a week earlier.

The new Luzhou–Qinzhou and Yibin–Qinzhou train services offer the shortest routes for shipping goods from Sichuan to overseas markets. The Sichuan–Guangxi part is 1,642 kilometers long, and a one-way trip lasts about two days.

For many years, Chinese exports were mostly transported by sea, and goods from inland areas such as Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi, in particular, had to travel long distances before they could be dispatched at an eastern port in Shanghai, Guangzhou in the southeastern Guangdong province, or Tianjin, significantly affecting economic opening and development in inland cities.

Since last year, Chongqing, Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, Guiyang, capital of Guizhou, and Lanzhou, capital of the northwestern Gansu province, have unveiled freight trains to the Qinzhou port for delivery to ASEAN countries, South Asia and the Middle East.  

Editor: Mevlut Katik