BRI trade network gains momentum

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative is demonstrating robust vitality as its westward cooperation with Central Asia deepens and its southward New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor sees surging freight volumes, creating a highly integrated trade network, experts said.

The westward momentum is anchored by the ongoing implementation of an action plan for high-quality Belt and Road cooperation between China and Central Asian countries. The cooperation document in this regard, which was signed during the second China-Central Asia Summit in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in June 2025, marked the first time China signed a comprehensive BRI cooperation document with all countries in a neighboring region.

Through continuous coordination, China and the five Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan — are comprehensively advancing the plan and outlining future cooperation paths.

"China and Central Asian countries firmly support free trade and the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core, and are deepening high-quality Belt and Road cooperation," said Sun Weidong, secretary-general of the Secretariat of the China-Central Asia Mechanism.

With 2025 and 2026 designated as the "Years of High-Quality Development of China-Central Asia Cooperation", Sun noted that pragmatic cooperation has achieved solid progress. Trade is booming, investment is increasing, major projects are advancing steadily, and key items specified in the action plan have been fully implemented, he said.

Last year, the value of trade between China and Central Asian countries topped the $100 billion mark for the first time. The number of freight trains between the two sides reached a new high, the China-Central Asia natural gas pipeline operated smoothly, and cross-border railway construction, including the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway, accelerated.

This westward connectivity is seamlessly complemented by the southward expansion through the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. Together, they form a comprehensive logistics network linking Eurasia with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with China's central and western regions serving as a crucial nexus.

This synergy has driven significant growth in the southward corridor. According to China Railway Nanning Group, the corridor handled 660,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, of goods in the first half of this year, averaging 110,000 TEUs per month.

Notably, the second quarter saw a 3.6 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in freight volume, further reflecting the sustained high market demand.

To accommodate the surging demand and continuously expand the corridor's capacity, China Railway Nanning Group is vigorously advancing key infrastructure upgrade projects. These include the construction of second rail lines for the Qinzhou-Fangchenggang section of the Nanning-Fangchenggang Railway, as well as the railway route linking Qinzhou East to Qinzhou Port in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Tang Qiang, dean of Southwest University's School of Geographical Sciences, noted that the corridor improves freight transportation efficiency and covers a wider range of goods through innovative multimodal transport. For example, the outbound route from Chongqing in Southwest China to Qinzhou Port in South China's Guangxi takes only 48 hours by rail-sea intermodal transportation, he said.

"Compared with traditional river-sea intermodal transportation via the Yangtze River trunk line to eastern ports, the journey time is reduced by 83 percent, and the distance is optimized from nearly 2,000 kilometers to less than 1,000 km," Tang said.

This effectively breaks the geographical constraints of the western region's access to rivers and the sea, he added.

Such seamless connectivity is playing a vital role in stabilizing industrial supply chains. This year, 72,000 TEUs of raw materials were shipped via Qinzhou Port East Station to ASEAN countries, up 49.4 percent year-on-year. It ensured supply chain stability for smart manufacturing industries in Chongqing municipality and Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.

Furthermore, exports of automobile and motorcycle parts manufactured in Chongqing and Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, via rail-sea intermodal transportation reached 38,000 TEUs, up 89.9 percent year-on-year.

To date, the southward corridor's freight categories have expanded to 1,362, covering 76 cities in 18 provincial-level regions across China and reaching 593 ports in 128 countries and regions worldwide, further cementing the global reach of the BRI, data from China Railway Nanning Group showed.