A X9216 China-Europe freight train departs from the Jindong platform in Jinhua on Sept 1. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]
A X9216 China-Europe freight train carrying goods such as daily necessities, garden crafts, hardware, and home appliances departed from the Jindong platform in Jinhua on Sept 1 for five Central Asian countries.
The number of China-Europe freight train trips departing from the Jindong platform reached 1,700 on Sept 1, five year after the platform starting operating.
The first China-Europe freight train departed from Jinhua on Aug 31, 2017 for Almaty, Kazakhstan. Since then, the China-Europe freight trains have been able to depart from both Yiwu and Jinhua.
So far, the Jindong platform of the China-Europe freight train has operated 1,700 trains carrying 133,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit containers of goods worth a total of 30 billion yuan ($4.34 billion).
With 22 routes, the trains now travel to 160 cities in over 50 countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and five Central Asian countries.
China has made strong efforts to increase the transport capacity of the trains by upgrading domestic transport channels and coordinating infrastructure improvements with overseas railways.
In 2022, the average daily freight volume of the eastern route of the China-European freight train surged 41.3 percent from 2020, and those of the western and central routes rose 20.7 percent and 15.2 percent, respectively.
