On board the train were 20 million face masks, 45 million pairs of protective gloves, and other epidemic prevention products worth more than € 10 million.
According to the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer (SNCF), France’s national state-owned railway company, as the country has emerged from the worst situation of COVID- 19 pandemic, it chose to change the transport vehicle for anti-epidemic supplies bought in China from aircraft to trains. The cost is 30 times cheaper and the carbon emissions are 15 times lower, said SNCF.
Booming Against All Odds
According to the latest data released by the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd., the number of China-Europe freight trains in operation in May reached 1,033, an increase of 43 percent year on year. The trains shipped 93,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of goods, up 48 percent year on year. In the first five months of this year, China-Europe freight railway saw a total of 3,953 trains carrying 355,000 TEU of goods going back and forth between China and European countries, an increase of 28.5 percent and 32 percent year on year, respectively.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, major economies across the world have been facing downward pressure since the first quarter this year. China’s GDP shrank by 6.8 percent year on year over the period when the country was most seriously affected by the epidemic. Japan witnessed its GDP fall by 3.4 percent, the Eurozone by 3.3 percent, and the entire European Union by 2.7 percent. The pandemic hit European countries and the United States even harder starting from March.
Against such a backdrop, both the number of trains in operation and the total amount of goods shipped along the China-Europe freight lines bucked the downward trend and rebound with robust momentum. What are the reasons behind this?
Advantages of Cross-Border Railway Transportation
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 2020-Ausgabe von China Today (English).
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 2020-Ausgabe von China Today (English).
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