A train loaded with auto parts, mechanical equipment, lighting items, refrigerators and other products worth about 40 million yuan ($6 million) leaves Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province on May 31, 2022, officially kicking off the "European passage" of the China-Europe freight train route originating from Chengdu. The route traverses the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea to link Chengdu with Europe. Photo: cnsphoto

Fostering transportation cooperation holds special significance in ensuring the smooth operation of the global industrial and supply chains in a world facing rising protectionist headwinds, and many of the best practices by China in developing sustainable transportation can be of great value to the world, said participants to the Senior Officials' Meeting of the Global Sustainable Transport Forum.

Officials from 20 countries and regions met on Tuesday in North China's Tianjin Municipality to foster consensus on sustainable transportation development.

Li Yang, Deputy Minister of Transport of China, said during the opening ceremony of the meeting that while the world faces rising protectionism and unilateralism in recent years, cooperation and achieving win-win results have remained the mainstream of the international community.

Against this backdrop, bilateral and multilateral cooperation are both becoming more important for the improvement of global transportation hardware and software, so as to help trade grow, said foreign delegates attending the meeting.

"The transportation sector accounts for 23 percent of global carbon emissions. To bring this number down, we need to tap the strength of technology and innovation and learn from best practices," Fariz Aliyev, head of the Transport Policy Department of the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport of Azerbaijan, told the Global Times on the sidelines of the meeting on Tuesday.

"China is already doing a great job, and there are loads of technologies and innovations we can import and integrate into our systems… in railways, in urban transport and in port management," Aliyev said. "China will be the global leader, at least for the Global South, in terms of the green transformation of the transport sector." 

China has in recent years contributed to the global transport chain through the Belt and Road Initiative as well as leading the global green transformation in transportation.

In July 2024, China launched the cross-Caspian Sea multimodal freight service to facilitate transportation in the Eurasian landmass. In November, the deep-water Port of Chancay, Peru, which China helped build, became operational to facilitate trade between South America and Asia. Construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway, a key transportation artery winding through Central Asia, began in 2024.

On the domestic front, China pushed for a greener mode of transportation by supporting the development of the electric car industry, with a report by the International Energy Agency released in May declaring that "the more than 11 million electric cars sold in China last year were more than global sales just two years earlier."

In addition to these larger projects, smaller projects jointly developed by China and host countries are also contributing to a more sustainable way of transportation around the world.

Egypt's first electrified light rail transit system, jointly built by Chinese and Egyptian companies, carries nearly half a million passengers daily and has helped local people to travel in a more sustainable way, Ibrahim Bekhit Ragheb, vice chairman of the National Authority for Tunnels of Egypt, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

China has vast experience in every sphere and its development during the past decade shows that China will be able to successfully implement projects in the sphere of sustainable development in transportation - in road, rail, and sea transport, Misak Balayan, an official with the Embassy of Armenia in China, told the Global Times.

At the 2023 Global Sustainable Transport Forum, a total of 25 countries and international organizations supported the Beijing Initiative on Global Transportation Cooperation and Communication, calling for joint efforts by the international community to build a safe, convenient, efficient, green and economically sustainable transportation system.

Stephen Ikua Kariuki, a transport official from Kenya, said on the sidelines of the current meeting that "China has showed the best practices… and whatever is done in China is doable elsewhere, and can be done by any other party around the world."