Changing Track

In the past, freight rail between China and Europe, while technically possible, was sufficiently burdensome to render it uneconomic. The Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s meant that until 1990 only three tracks connected China to its northern neighbor and on to Europe – one single line through Mongolia and two tracks representing the termini of the old China Eastern Railway as it reaches and leaves Chinese territory at Manzhouli and Suifenhe. These routes still exist today and link up to the 10,555 km Trans-Siberian Railway that serves as a land bridge between Moscow and Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast. While minor Sino-Soviet border trade did take place, red tape and low capacity ensured these tracks' irrelevancy to trans-Eurasian trade.

On September 16, 1990, a new track opened across the barren northwestern border of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region through Alashankou connecting China's rail network with Kazakhstan and potentially Russia and Europe. While promising, complex gauge changes, lengthy delays at the border and burdensome customs procedures together with a lack of demand for the route meant it was little used initially. Then China's growth story happened.

In the 1990s, ports along China's coasts gave businesses in its littoral provinces access to world markets and capital while the country's inland regions languished. Around the turn of the millennium, the Chinese government recognized the need to tackle growing income inequality between the country's prosperous coast and less-fortunate hinterlands. This culminated in the "Develop the West" Program, commencing in 2000, a key part of which has been to encourage inland foreign investment and export production. Chongqing, in the very belly of the dragon in far western Sichuan Province, cogently illustrates the success of this program.

Chongqing has been the fastest growing city in China for the last five years. In 2011 it set China's highest provincial GDP target at 13.5 percent and managed even to exceed this, registering 16.4 percent growth. Total exports continue to jump 160 percent year-on-year and in the last 10 years this mega city of 31 million people has become China's inland high-tech capital. Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics supplier, have all set up plants there. Last year the city sold over 15.74 million laptops abroad, accounting for one fourth of the city's total export revenues. Many of Chongqing's electronics exports end up in Europe, the traditional route to which includes a month of shipping preceded by an awkward thousand-kilometer overland journey to the nearest Chinese port, Shekou. Chongqing's exporters have been looking for a more direct route. Enter the trains.

Little progress was made toward China-Europe freight utilizing the China-Kazakhstan Alashankou route until the latter half of the last decade. In 2007, railway administrators from Germany, Poland, Belarus and Russia agreed to German-Russian block train freight documentation valid in all countries. With Kazakhstan railway's intimate ties to Russia's network, the tracks were suddenly clear for ambitious companies to re-establish the overland route between Europe and Asia that had been severed as the Silk Road succumbed to shipping in the middle ages.

In April 2011, Germany's state-owned railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB) sent its first train from Chongqing through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally on to Duisburg, Germany. The train carried laptops and LCD monitors and took 15 days to cover 11,179 km, the equivalent ship route for which takes at least 35 days. Soon after, monthly trips began and freight time was reduced to 13 days. In November last year, a daily service was inaugurated and from 2013 twice-daily departures are planned. Since April 2011, over 1.3 million laptops and 250,000 computer monitors have been transported along the track.

Much effort has gone into ensuring smoothing out kinks in the trans-Eurasia railway as it passes through six national networks. Customs procedures have also been simplified within China itself. According to Ma Zhongyuan, chief of Chongqing customs, containers arriving from Kazakhstan through Xinjiang only require customs declarations once they reach Chongqing, greatly reducing border delays at Alashankou. Ma says this realizes the aim of "one declaration, one inspection, one journey" for the train through China.