A bullet train runs along the China-Laos Railway. File photo: VCG

Northwest China's Qinghai Province ran its first freight train directly to Laos on Tuesday, hauling 1,150 tons of urea produced by Qinghai Yuntianhua International Fertilizer Co out of the Shuangzhai logistics center in Xining and onto the China-Laos Railway for Vientiane. The shipment marks the first time the plateau province has exported its own urea on its own account, and a breakthrough in its drive to open an international logistics corridor into ASEAN, Xinhua News Agency reported. 

The service uses a container through-transport model that effectively compresses logistics costs and improves transport efficiency, providing solid support for Qinghai's salt lake chemical products as they expand into ASEAN markets, said the report. 

Since the start of this year, the Department of Commerce of Qinghai Province has worked with China Railway Qinghai-Xizang Group Co to improve the regular operating mechanism for international freight services and coordinate transport capacity. In the first half of this year, the province ran a cumulative 97 international freight trains, and has successively opened routes from Xining to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and to Balkan in Turkmenistan. Tuesday's departure was the third new international freight route Qinghai has launched this year, according to the report. 

The report said that Qinghai will build on its consolidated strengths in traditional export products while actively pushing used vehicles, copper rods and other new export growth points to deliver results, continuing to optimize its export mix, keeping the outbound channel for Qinghai-made goods clear, and advancing high-quality development of the province's open economy.

Sitting at the junction of China's southwest and northwest transport networks, Qinghai is a key node on the Eurasian Land Bridge. Since it ran its first China-Europe freight train in 2016, the province has worked to put international freight services on a regular operating footing and has taken up multimodal arrangements including rail-sea and road-rail transport to support foreign trade, according to Qinghai Daily.

On May 27, the first container train from Xining to Ho Chi Minh City departed the Shuangzhai logistics center, carrying close to 1,000 tons of PVC. It ran roughly 3,200 kilometers entirely by rail, exited China through the Pingxiang port in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region - a sign, the provincial authorities said, that Qinghai's logistics corridor into Southeast Asia was maturing into something stable, and of an efficient rail channel for the province's competitive products to reach ASEAN markets, said the Qinghai Daily report. 

Global Times