China launched a freight train that will connect the port city of Tianjin, near Beijing, to Minsk, the capital of Belarus in eastern Europe. The train carrying 108 containers from the Tianjin Free Trade Zone will arrive at Minsk on December 4.
Scheduled to operate 20 times a year, the train will pass through northern China’s Inner Mongolia and head to the China-Belarus Industrial Park in Minsk. The return trip will carry goods to China, including wood products from Belarus and surrounding countries. The new train service is expected to handle 30,000 tonnes of freight per year, official sources said.
This will be the seventh direct train connection between Chinese cities and Europe. At present, there are freight train links between the Chinese city of Suzhou with Warsaw, Lianyugang to Rotterdam, Chengdu to Lodz, Chongqing to Duisburg, Yiwu to Madrid and Zhengzhou to Hamburg. Over a dozen Chinese cities are linked with nine European cities through goods trains.
European countries and industry bodies have often complained that they have little to gain from the new rail routes because China buys much less of European goods than it sells.
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