China-Europe freight trains serve as lifeline for int’l trade amid pandemic

• For the past decade, China has launched the China-Europe freight train service in over 60 domestic cities and has connected with major European countries.
• The rumbling trains have acted as a carrier for the Belt and Road Initiative in terms of boosting trade exchanges between inland Chinese regions and Europe.
• Despite gloomy international trade prospects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the China-Europe freight train has managed to buck the trend and made more trips thanks to its security and efficiency.

With a loud train whistle echoing through the air, a freight train bound for Duisburg, Germany, slowly pulled out of the Tuanjie Village Station of southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality on Friday morning.

“Exactly a decade ago, I signaled for China’s first China-Europe freight train, the Yuxin’ou (Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe), to depart here,” Zhang Xin recalled while seeing the train disappearing in the distance. Zhang has dedicated himself to 12 years as head of the station.

For the past decade, the rumbling trains have not only put the once-obscure and dilapidated station on the map but also acted as a carrier for the Belt and Road Initiative, boosting trade exchanges between inland Chinese regions and Europe.

China has launched the China-Europe freight train service in over 60 domestic cities and has connected with major European countries.

HOPE AMID PANDEMIC

Trade prospects became gloomy, unexpectedly, in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on the global economy and blocked sea and air transport. In the depth of the pandemic, the backlog of international parcels across China once surpassed 1,500 tonnes.

However, the China-Europe freight train has managed to buck the trend and make more trips thanks to its security and efficiency.

Last year, the freight trains made 12,400 journeys and transported 1.14 million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) of cargo, up by 50 percent and 56 percent year on year, respectively.

During the pandemic, freight trains continued to operate, loaded with not only garments, toys, electronic products, and tens of thousands of cross-border goods but also anti-epidemic supplies that the European countries were in urgent need of.

WORLD MARKET CATALYST

With the world’s largest middle-class consumer group of more than 400 million people, China has become a world market for commodities transported by China-Europe freight trains from other countries.