by Xinhua Writer Tian Ye
BEIJING, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Nestled on the China-Kazakhstan border in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Horgos, which means "camel caravans pass" in Mongolian, stood as a vital staging post on the ancient Silk Road more than 1,000 years ago, bridging trade and cultural exchanges between the East and the West.
Today, the faint jingle of camel bells has long given way to the rumble of freight trains speeding by. This time-honored gateway has re-emerged as a core hub of the China-Europe freight train services, the fast-expanding "steel camel caravans" network that has transformed Eurasian connectivity and brought shared prosperity for previously landlocked regions across the continents.
The transformation began to gather pace since June 2016 when previously scattered cross-border rail services between various Chinese cities and Europe were consolidated under a single brand: the China-Europe Railway Express (CRE), in an effort to boost the Belt and Road cooperation.
Over the past decade, the network has expanded rapidly. Annual trips have surged from 1,702 in 2016 to 20,022 in 2025, now connecting 129 Chinese cities with 236 cities across 26 European countries.
Shuai Bin, a professor in the School of Transportation and Logistics at Southwest Jiaotong University, said the CRE services have helped reshape Eurasian connectivity by building a land-based logistics system anchored in international rail corridors.
"The CRE has drawn global resources and production factors further into inland regions, while fostering a new pattern of opening up featuring highly-coordinated development between coastal ports and inland hubs," he said.
A DRIVER OF SHARED PROSPERITY
On March 19, 2011, a freight train carrying Hewlett-Packard electronic products departed from Chongqing Municipality in southwest China, bound for the German city of Duisburg. It was the first CRE service, a milestone for the municipality that had long relied on the Yangtze River and domestic railways to send its products to the rest of the world.
In the years that followed, that single rail line grew into a vast overland network reshaping trade between the city and Europe. Its economic impact is visible at Tuanjiecun Station in Chongqing's western suburbs, where a sprawling 35.5-square-kilometer logistics park has emerged, as the rail service expanded.
"Previously, it took 35 to 40 days for European cars to reach here, mostly by sea," recalled Gao Dong, deputy general manager of Yuxinou (Chongqing) Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. "Now it takes about 15 days for a Porsche produced in Germany's Stuttgart to reach Chongqing, half the time of sea freight and one-third the cost of air freight."
As CRE services continue to expand and upgrade, Chinese inland cities such as Chongqing, Chengdu, Zhengzhou and Xi'an have risen to the forefront of Eurasian logistics flows, solidifying their status as key nodes in global supply chains.
"Inland Chinese cities have leveraged the CRE to accelerate their integration into global industrial, supply and value chains, while Eurasian inland countries like Kazakhstan and Mongolia have transformed from geographically 'landlocked' states into important logistics nodes linking Asia and Europe," said Shuai Bin.
European cities have also become deeply embedded in this evolving trade artery. Duisburg, a German city on the Rhine River, now handles about 30 percent of total China-Europe rail freight volume, according to Markus Teuber, China affairs commissioner in Duisburg.
Over the past ten years, the number of Chinese-invested enterprises in Duisburg has risen from 40 to over 120, generating more than 20,000 new jobs across the logistics industry chain, he said.
Further east in Poland, container handling and transshipment operations have expanded alongside growing CRE traffic in the city of Lodz.
Roughly six months ago, Polish logistics company Inbap began working with Chinese partners on logistics operations. "We are very pleased to cooperate with Chinese companies. This partnership has brought us many development opportunities," said Malgorzata Biegajlo, container transshipment manager at Inbap.
A BULWARK OF SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE
In recent years, Eurasia's transport arteries have been operating against the headwinds of geopolitical tensions. The ongoing regional conflicts have triggered disruptions to major logistics corridors, with land routes facing sustained pressure and maritime passages suffering disruptions from time to time, laying bare the fragility of global supply chains.
Against this backdrop, the China-Europe freight train services have helped provide more diversified and resilient logistics options for the Eurasian continent, Shuai noted.
For instance, from Horgos, several routes extend into Europe. One of them traverses Central Asia and crosses the Caspian Sea before continuing to Europe either via the overland railway network or by crossing the Black Sea to destinations across the continent.
Freight demand along the trans-Caspian route has surged since the launch of the first regular daily service in July 2024, linking Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, with Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, via Horgos.
From January to March this year, the route handled 85 rail-sea freight train trips, up 150 percent from a year earlier, according to Wu Le, deputy general manager of Xi'an Free Trade Port Construction and Operation Co., Ltd.
Speaking in Duisburg, Irfan Tulan, deputy general manager of Trans-Eurasia Germany GmbH, said that China-Europe freight train services are increasingly valued for their reliability, offering companies a more predictable lifeline in an uncertain world.
Safety matters, as do reliability and the steady flow of goods. Many of the CRE routes trace their origins to Yiwu in eastern China, a city known for being the "world's supermarket" because of its vast small-commodities trade. Since the first train departed from Yiwu on Nov. 18, 2014, the Yiwu-Europe freight train services have involved more than 8,300 trips, reaching over 50 countries and more than 160 cities worldwide.
Over the past decade, the CRE has played a crucial stabilizing role in global supply chains amid a sluggish economic recovery and rising geopolitical complexity, noted Yu Yong, Chinese consul general in the German city of Dusseldorf.
The CRE services have connected economies, facilitated regional cooperation, and served as a bridge between peoples, strengthening the resilience of the Eurasian economy, Yu said.
A MODEL OF CLOSE INT'L COOPERATION
Over the past decade, this vast cross-continental network has been made possible via continuous coordination among the countries along its routes.
A key moment in this process came in April 2017, when railway authorities from China, Belarus, Germany, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Poland and Russia signed an agreement to deepen CRE cooperation.
Zou Bin, an expert on the Silk Road at Xinjiang Normal University, said the move has established shared standards for operations, information exchange, safety and customs facilitation, laying the institutional foundation for today's regularized rail network.
With increased coordination, the CRE services have become more balanced and efficient: not only Chinese products now reach European markets with greater ease, but European machinery, agricultural goods and consumer products also flow steadily eastward. Along the cross-border cooperation corridors, transit hubs, ports and logistics providers of relevant countries have all become part of a system for shared growth.
For Irfan Tulan, the CRE has become an indispensable part of the European logistics landscape. "It is no longer viewed merely as an alternative mode of transport but has evolved into a well-established and trusted solution for international supply chains," he said.
At Duisburg's DIT freight yard, Daniel Thomas has witnessed the ongoing expansion of the CRE services firsthand since joining the facility as a sales manager in 2015. Over the years, his work has enabled him to observe the evolution of trade balance along these routes, with growing volume of cargo loaded in Duisburg and shipped to China.
"China-Europe trade ties have become much closer over the past decade," he said. "I believe the railway services will continue to flourish." Enditem
京公网安备 11010802027341号