BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Running through Eurasia and bridging the Belt and Road countries, the China-Europe railroads have increased the number of trains and expanded scale of goods supply in the five years since the trains started traffic.
Experts suggest China should integrate functions of ports and expand supply of goods through multi-modal transportation to develop transit trade in Asia Pacific and promote land bridge economy with China-Europe trains.
The tight supply of goods has given rise to vicious competition among China-Eruope trains starting from different cities. To deal with the situation, resources integration, scientific planning and market-oriented management should be implemented, but fundamental issue is supply shortage, says Wang Chongju, former president of Chongqing Technology and Business University.
Places such as Chongqing, Liaoning province and Zhejiang province have been actively developing multi-modal transportation and discovering new supply of goods. According to general manager of Chongqing Coffee Exchange Peng De, coffee beans from Vietnam and China’s Yunnan were transferred to Europe through the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railroad since July, and it’s expected that the volume transferred through the route would reach 3,000 containers of coffee products worth 2 billion yuan (about 288 million U.S. dollars) to 3 billion (about 432 million dollars) in 2016.
Li Yong, director of the Regional Economic Research Center of Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences, says through the Eurasian Land Bridge channel build on the basis of China-Europe railroads, Chinese inland cities like Chongqing, Chengdu of Sichuan province and Zhengzhou of Henan province have expanded trade in the Asia Pacific area and continued to find new goods resources.
Although the prospects for China to develop land bridge economy by China-Europe trains are bright, there are still problems in ports planning, rail and sea transportation connection and facilitating policies. Experts make several suggestions to deal with these problems as China pushing ahead the Belt and Road Initiative.
First, experts suggest China should integrate ports resources to prevent disorderly competition. Currently, functions of many coastal ports are overlapping with each other. Resources include large ports and ports connected with China-Europe trains should be integrated as soon as possible to achieve coordinated development and differentiated competition.
Second, standards of railroad transportation and sea transportation need to be unified to improve efficiency. Liao Chenglin, member of China Society of Logistics and professor of Economics and Business Institute of Chongqing University, says as the size of shipping containers is standard and involves customs clearance agreement, it cannot be changed. So the standard of the railway container should better be adjusted to be in line with sea transportation standard.
Third, supporting policies should be improved. To develop international transit trade with China-Europe trains needs to construct a whole set of supporting policies on port, taxes and customs clearance. Places with mature transit trade conditions can set up free ports or free trade area to promote land bridge economy development.
Fourth, experts suggest China should build a national-level platform to serve regional trade. As international trade involves customs clearance, security and other issues, local governments and logistics enterprises need to communicate with foreign customs, railway companies and other government bodies, but usually they lack the experience and ability of international negotiations, and a national platform can help the companies to overcome the barriers in international trade. Enditem (By Yang Qi, Han Zhen, Qin Huajing, kateqiyang@xinhua.org)
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