By Luo Yuze, Zhang Qi & Gao Qingpeng, Research Department of Foreign Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.395, 2021 (Total 6460) 2021-12-16

Abstract: Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, due to the disruption of sea and air transport, large transport demand has shifted to land service, and the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce has added more load to rail transport. As a result, the proportion of trade volume carried by China-Europe Railway Express has significantly increased, shored up by the strong resilience and vitality of the Belt and Road Initiative and revealing a strong strategic significance. Like a major artery linking up international trade knots across the Eurasian continent, such a rail line backs up the stable operation of important industrial chains, serving as a lifeline for the transport of pandemic prevention supplies for countries along the Belt and Road routes. Since the beginning of 2021, some remaining issues and newly-emerged contradictions have merged into one another. The shortage of overseas channels, the bottleneck restrictions relating to port facilities and political risks faced by China-Europe Railway Express have become all the more prominent, posing threats to China-Europe railway transportation’s time-efficient, economic and stable performance, weakening its brand advantages and competitiveness and exerting a negative impact on the sustainable development of the trade routes to the West. We need to take a comprehensive approach with both short-term and long-term measures, focus on optimizing the layout of transport routes, pool superior resources, overcome bottleneck restrictions in infrastructure, promote cross-border soft connectivity, and jointly enhance the competitiveness of transport routes.

Keywords: China-Europe Railway Express, trade channels by land, bottleneck issues