The Yangtze River Delta China Europe (Central Asia) freight train has opened over 350 trains during the Spring Festival travel rush, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 60% in container volume
On March 16th, China Railway Shanghai Group officially released the transportation data for the 2026 Spring Festival travel rush. During the 40 day Spring Festival travel rush, the scale of China Europe (Central Asia) trains in the Yangtze River Delta region achieved a historic breakthrough, with a total of 350 trains exceeding the threshold, reaching 356 trains, and a cumulative shipment of 38000 standard containers, an increase of nearly 60% year-on-year. The number of trains, freight scale, and transportation efficiency were significantly improved, becoming a major highlight of the Yangtze River Delta's opening up to the outside world and stable growth in foreign trade during the Spring Festival travel rush.
As an important logistics channel for the opening up of eastern China to the outside world, the Yangtze River Delta China Europe (Central Asia) freight train has established a modern international intermodal transportation system with stable routes, wide coverage, outstanding timeliness, and concentrated cargo sources. At present, there are 15 regularly operated train routes in the Yangtze River Delta region, covering 36 countries in the Eurasian continent, connecting key regions such as Central Asia, West Asia, and Europe, forming a multi-channel parallel, multi-point origin, and efficient linkage international logistics network in the west, northwest, and southwest directions.
In terms of transportation efficiency, the China Europe (Central Asia) freight train continues to shine in the international intermodal transportation market with its outstanding advantages of stability, speed, and safety. Among them, it can reach Astana, Kazakhstan in 9 days and Hamburg, Germany in 15 days. The overall transportation time is only one-third of traditional sea freight, and the comprehensive logistics cost is about one-fifth of air freight. It effectively balances time and cost, becoming a "golden channel" for manufacturing enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta to expand overseas markets and stabilize the global supply chain.
With the deep integration of regional industrial advantages and train logistics, the supply structure of the Yangtze River Delta China Europe (Central Asia) train continues to optimize and upgrade, with increasingly distinctive, clustered, and high value-added features. Each region relies on its own industrial foundation to form a supply pattern that connects with the international market: Yiwu mainly produces daily necessities, light industry small commodities and other consumer goods to meet the daily consumption needs of many Eurasian countries; Suzhou focuses on high-precision and cutting-edge products such as electronic products, household appliances, automotive parts, and precision components, showcasing the advantages of intelligent manufacturing in the Yangtze River Delta region; Hefei is characterized by white goods, general machinery, equipment manufacturing and other products, continuously enhancing its competitiveness in the international market.
At the same time as the steady growth of export sources, the bi-directional convection and balanced development trend of trains has been further consolidated. The return train focuses on carrying excellent resource-based products and characteristic commodities such as cotton yarn, wood, mineral resources, food and agricultural products, etc., efficiently transporting them back to the domestic market, achieving a virtuous cycle of "goods on the outbound journey and cargo on the return journey", effectively reducing comprehensive logistics costs, improving channel utilization efficiency, and providing solid logistics support for economic and trade exchanges and industrial cooperation between the Yangtze River Delta and Eurasian countries.
During the Spring Festival transportation, the volume of regular trains increased significantly, which not only reflects the good situation of the Yangtze River Delta's manufacturing industry with sufficient capacity and strong foreign trade resilience, but also shows the important role of China Europe regular trains as international public goods in the smooth double circulation, high-level service, opening up, and high-quality joint construction of the "the Belt and Road". In the future, with the optimization of routes, improvement of port efficiency, and coordinated development of multimodal transport, the Yangtze River Delta China Europe (Central Asia) freight trains will continue to expand and improve, injecting stronger impetus into the high-quality development of regional economy and international trade facilitation.