With the resonant sound of sirens, a China-Europe freight train loaded with 55 TEUs of goods worth RMB 30.88 mln pulled slowly out of the Fuzhou Jiangyin Railway Logistics Park on July 17. The northbound train will leave China via Erenhot for Eastern Europe. It is far more than cross-border transportation of goods, but marks China-Europe freight train services (Fuzhou) have been smoothly launched for four years, and achieved high-quality development at a fast pace.

Over the past four years, Fuzhou has started to develop its freight train services by relying solely on the single China-Russia route, helped open the China-Laos route, and adopted new sea-rail combined transport models to launch many featured routes, including “Kaohsiung in Taiwan-Jiangyin in Fuzhou-Moscow in Russia”, “Manzanillo Port in Mexico-Jiangyin in Fuzhou-Moscow in Russia”, and “Fuzhou or Xiamen-Vladivostok-Moscow in Russia”. It is particularly worth mentioning that the return freight train from Tashkent to Fuzhou was successfully launched in May 2025. This put an end to the history of having no international return freight train between Fuzhou and Central Asia, and provided a new land-sea channel between Central Asia and southeast coastal areas in China.

According to data from Fuzhou Customs, since the first train in July 2022, Fuzhou has seen the departure of a total of 77 China-Europe freight trains that transported 7,918 TEUs of importing and exporting goods worth more than RMB 1.6 bln. In the first half of 2026, Fuzhou saw the departure of 10 China-Europe freight trains, which were loaded with 1,090 TEUs of goods worth RMB 242 mln. The three figures saw a year-on-year surge of 100%, 127% and 136%, respectively. (Text by Jiang Yachen/ Wu Huazhen, Photo by Xue Youxiong)