The New Silk Road Tales of the original Silk Road have always fascinated me, and I have been following the developments in the New Silk Road over the past 10 years. I have always dreamed of travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway and the line down to Beijing and when this new route opened up, my thoughts moved in that direction. I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting Mainland China in 1979, just four years after the end of the Cultural Revolution and have longed to go back! I realise that now, the main centres are very different to when I was there – no private vehicles, no motorways, no international hotels and basically no foreign food but I believe that once off the beaten track, things have not changed so much – who knows? - Ed The 19th of March 2021 marked a significant landmark in Eurasian rail transportation. Ten years ago, on the 19th of March 2011, the first train of the China-Europe express departed and started a new era for rail freight. Since then, things have changed, and the service has experienced growth, with many more developments already being on the way. Ten years ago, the first China-Europe freight train left Chongqing in Southeast China, with its final destination being Duisburg in Germany. On its way to Europe, it crossed Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and finally Poland. In the beginning, it wasn’t branded as the China-Europe Express but as the Yu-Xin-Ou train or Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe International Railway, which later developed to the most emblematic Eurasian connection.
Initial course
Many companies had experimented with direct services from China to Europe before 2011. For instance, back in 2008, Foxconn dispatched its first train connecting Shenzhen with Europe and later in 2009, DB Schenker started operating a weekly itinerary between Shanghai and Duisburg. Hewlett Packard should get the credits for the first thoughts of connecting Chongqing with Europe using Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland as transit countries. These initial plans occurred because the hardware company moved its production sites to the Chinese inland and was looking for new opportunities to transport its products westwards. The proposal was well received by Chongqing’s regional government, which saw an opportunity to acquire a central role in trade and supply chains. Simultaneously, the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union between Kazakhstan, Russia 60
GREAT WESTERN STAR MAGAZINE
Spring 2021
The Chinese National Rail Network. The New Silk Road leaves through the top left corner
and Belarus in 2011 facilitated the practical implementation of such plans. Consequently, during the same year, the first trial trips started, and a regular weekly service began the year after, mainly transporting HP’s products. Understandably, the first China-Europe Express train was a block train with a single shipper.
Further development
Later, in 2015, the China Railway Express started taking a more central place in Eurasian transport. During that year, the Chinese government launched the ‘Vision and action to promote the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road in the 21st Century’ programme. The specific plan provided the service with a more active role and its own land-based logistics channel on the New Silk Road initiative. The following year, the China-Europe Express acquired its customised development programme under the name ‘CRE construction and development plan (2016-2020)’. This plan identified the service’s development goals in a five-year timeframe. The service was gradually transforming into a vital component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Starting from 17 yearly trains in 2011, the service skyrocketed to 6,363 trains in 2018. Moreover, during 2017, the train connected 59 Chinese cities to 49 European cities from 15 different countries. By March 2019, these numbers had become even more impressive since the train made around 14,000 trips during this year connecting 60 Chinese cities to 50 European ones.
China-Europe Express and the pandemic
Despite the initial fears of a total collapse due to the
