New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor inter-modal freight train service expands to 54 cities in China

Aerial photo taken on Jan. 14, 2021 shows a view of the container wharf of QinzhouPort, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.  (Xinhua/Cao Yiming)

The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, a trade and logistics passage, has expanded its rail-sea inter-modal freight train service to 54 cities in 14 provinces in China by the end of May this year, with its reach to 319 ports in 107 countries and regions around the world, according to the local railway department of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The expansion of the freight train routes of the trade corridor has also increased the categories of goods transported to more than 640 including grain, auto parts, computer accessories, and decorative materials.

The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, a trade and logistics passage jointly built by western Chinese provincial regions and Singapore, has increased its shipping routes from 9 to 12 in the first half of this year, and shipped a total of 379,000 TEUs of cargoes, surging 33.4 percent over the same period last year, according to official data.

In the first half of this year, goods trade from the member states of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) have reached to more than 13 countries and regions through the trade corridor, making it the most convenient logistic channel linking China and the ASEAN countries under the RCEP framework.

To further smooth the rail-sea intermodal freight service, the Guangxi Nanning railway department has lowered the transportation cost by giving a cumulative discount of nearly 450 million yuan for the freight rate of the new land-sea channel project from 2017 to 2021. At the same time, the Nanning railway department vowed to accelerate the construction of key projects.