Railway links bolster Xiamen’s key position in regional logistics
Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian province, has taken advantage of its geographical position to benefit from the Belt and Road Initiative.
The city now has three regular railway services linking it to Europe and Central Asian countries.
The longest railway service is to Hamburg in Germany, with the others heading to Moscow and Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan.
The Hamburg line passes through Central Asia on its 16-day journey, which stretches a total length of 11,866 kilometers.
Rows of containers can be seen at the terminals of these railway services in Xiamen.
Since the services launched on Aug 16, 2015, the lines have become some of the busiest cross-border railways in China.
By Aug 15 this year, the total number of journeys reached 156, shipping a total of 4,400 containers with goods valued at 2.4 billion yuan ($363 million).
So far this year, the number has reached 52, carrying 1,568 containers with goods valued at 850 million yuan. Most of the goods are clothes and light industry products.
Jiang Jingdong is in charge of the operating platform of the Xiamen China-Europe Express. He said the service has linked the city with the central and western parts of China, as well as Central Asia and Europe.
Goods from Southeast Asian countries can also be shipped to Xiamen’s seaport and then be loaded onto the rail express to Europe, saving a lot of time compared with transporting the goods by sea the whole way, he said. “This makes Xiamen an important link in the route, a transportation pivot.”
In April 2016, a batch of goods from Taiwan was shipped to Xiamen and then transported to Europe through the rail service. In July this year, a second batch of goods from Taiwan also arrived in Europe via the railway. At the
rail services