Auto & Transportation

New forces in international trade! The year 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of the initiative of jointly building the "the Belt and Road". As an important hand in promoting the construction of the "the Belt and Road", China Europe Express showed strong development resilience at the beginning of the year, and its operation quality has steadily improved.

Since this year, the China-Europe trains have run out of "acceleration", and the number of running trains and the size of standard containers have increased significantly. For example, in January, the Yiwu platform shipped 240 China-Europe trains and 20140 TEUs, with year-on-year growth of 179% and 172% respectively; Guangzhou Customs supervised the operation of 32 international trade import and export trains and 2852 standard containers, with a year-on-year increase of 190.91% and 159.27% respectively; The China-Europe train "Shanghai" opened seven trains and carried 728 TEUs of containers, an increase of 50% and 130% respectively compared with that in 2022.

Qiu Wenxu, a researcher of the "the Belt and Road" Business School Alliance, told reporters that the freight volume of the China Europe Express is a "wind vane" of China's trade in goods with countries along the route. China is the largest exporter of manufactured goods and importer of industrial goods in the world. The China-Europe train connects the world market with domestic production capacity, and promotes the cross-regional circulation of products. At the same time, it will also stimulate the market demand of countries along the line for China, thus bringing incremental and development momentum to the domestic economy.

On the whole, according to the latest data of China National Railway Group Co., Ltd., in January 2023, the China-Europe train has run a total of 1410 trains nationwide, transporting 147000 TEUs of goods, up 6% and 13% year on year respectively. In response, Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with reporters that the realization of the "good start" of the China-Europe train in many places may be related to the relevant arrangements for the goal of economic stabilization and recovery in various regions.

In order to stabilize and recover the regional economy in 2023, many places have made deployment around the construction of high-level open relations and anchoring the "the Belt and Road" initiative. Among them, Yiwu proposed to take the tenth anniversary of the launch of the "Yixin Europe" train as an opportunity to make greater efforts to open up "Yixin Europe" new routes in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, plan to layout "overseas distribution centers" such as Duisburg, and strive to create the demonstration project of the China-Europe train collection center; Guangdong has made it clear that it supports high growth enterprises to implement internationalization strategies and implement a new round of participation in the "the Belt and Road" construction; Shanghai plans to actively participate in the construction of high-quality development of the "the Belt and Road", create a pilot area for "Silk Road E-commerce" cooperation, carry out the pilot construction of the regional "the Belt and Road" comprehensive service platform in the Yangtze River Delta, and build a number of professional trade platforms and national commodity trading centers at a high level.

"Stimulated by the gradual implementation of relevant plans, China Europe Express showed strong resilience at the beginning of the year." Wang Peng said that, at the same time, China Europe Express, as an important starting point for the construction of the "the Belt and Road", is an important carrier for countries along the line to strengthen economic cooperation. The China-EU train can promote trade and economic exchanges between regions, thus promoting the economic development of countries along the line.

After sorting out the operation of the China-EU train in recent years, the reporter found that the increasing demand for bulk machinery and equipment and the significant growth in the export volume of international trade in new energy vehicles are becoming new features.

"The strong demand for bulk machinery and equipment is mainly due to the promotion of the 'the Belt and Road' construction and the economic development of countries along the route." Wang Peng believes that, at the same time, with the increase in the transportation of related commodities, it will further promote the development of China EU international trade and regional economic growth.

Qiu Wenxu added that China has irreplaceable advantages of quality and price in the field of bulk machinery and equipment.

When talking about how to give full play to the economic driving effect of the China-EU train in the future, Qiu Wenxu said that it is necessary to strengthen the "five links" cooperation model, that is, policy communication, facility connectivity, smooth trade, financial accommodation and popular support, take trade cooperation as the starting point, deepen economic cooperation as the leading factor, fully connect the existing stock capacity of international trade and economic cooperation, deepen the international capacity cooperation model, and jointly create the incremental market and supply capacity, We will help jointly build the "the Belt and Road" with high quality.