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Sep 17 2020

Only 5 hubs in China for New Silk Road traffic: a market response

China’s National Development and Reform Commission is investing around 25 million euros to support five cities in becoming New Silk Road hubs. These cities are Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Chongqing, Xi’an and Urumqi. The investment is aimed at promoting a hub-to-hub system for the China-Europe Railway Express service. It was a clear message to the market which cities will have the priority in the near future.

The Chinese authority made the announcements on 6 July this year, however, there has not been much done so far. Nevertheless, the bold step has been a debated topic in the Chinese logistics industry. RailFreight.cn interviewed several industry insiders anonymously to hear their different views.

 

Why these cities?

 

Initially, there were clear standards set out for the selection of the hubs. These were the following:

> the location had to be advantageous and clearly identified as a national hub already;

> there had to be a foundation for infrastructure, including container terminals and railway shunting facilities. It had to be multimodal, have customs supervision and other requested logistics facilities; Read more

 

Source: RAILFREIGHT.COM