WORLDWIDE FREIGHT SERVICES
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Focusing on regional industrial characteristics and export demands, the newly built Zigong Base is positioned as a professional international logistics hub serving southern Sichuan’s advantageous industries. Zigong boasts a globally renowned colored lantern industry cluster and a mature high-end equipment manufacturing system, with a large number of high-quality industrial products with independent intellectual property rights and international market potential. For a long time, however, the lack of direct international freight channels has forced local enterprises to rely on coastal ports or distant Chengdu hubs for transshipment, resulting in high logistics costs, long transportation cycles, and unstable supply chain efficiency, which greatly restrict the large-scale export of local specialty products.
The official launch of the Zigong Base completely changes this passive situation. The hub will directly open up dedicated international rail routes connecting southern Sichuan with Europe and Central Asia, realizing direct cargo collection, customs declaration, and shipment locally. This one-stop logistics service effectively eliminates redundant transshipment links, cuts comprehensive logistics costs for local enterprises by a significant margin, and greatly improves the timeliness and stability of cross-border cargo transportation. For Zigong’s colored lantern enterprises, the stable China-Europe rail channel provides reliable transportation support for seasonal overseas exhibitions and global market layout, solving the long-standing pain point of difficult long-distance transportation of large, fragile lantern products.
In terms of high-end equipment manufacturing, rail freight features large load capacity, high safety, and low damage rate, which is highly compatible with the transportation demands of large mechanical equipment, precision manufacturing parts, and industrial supporting components. With the support of the Zigong Base, local equipment manufacturing enterprises can achieve batch and normalized exports to European and Central Asian markets, further expanding overseas market share and enhancing the international influence of Sichuan’s high-end manufacturing industry. Beyond empowering core industries in Zigong, the new base will also radiate and drive surrounding areas in southern Sichuan including Luzhou, Yibin, and Leshan, integrating regional cargo resources and forming a clustered export development pattern.
The industrial-logistics integration model adopted by the Zigong Base realizes the precise matching of logistics resources and industrial demands. The base will tailor personalized freight solutions for different types of export products, optimize cargo loading, scheduling, and customs clearance processes, and improve the overall operational efficiency of cross-border logistics. By linking local industrial parks with international rail channels, the hub builds a complete industrial supply chain ecosystem of “manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, and export”, helping more high-quality “Sichuan-made” and “Rong-made” products break through geographical restrictions and enter the mainstream Eurasian market.
Up to now, Chengdu International Railway Port has successfully deployed nine provincial-level support bases across Sichuan, covering key regional hubs including Leshan, Deyang, Meishan, Ziyang, Dazhou, Luzhou, Yibin, Guangyuan, and Zigong. These bases are scientifically distributed in the Chengdu Plain Economic Zone, southern Sichuan Economic Zone, and northeastern Sichuan Economic Zone, forming a full-coverage, multi-level, and three-dimensional China-Europe rail freight assembly network. The continuous improvement of the network layout marks that Sichuan’s inland international logistics system has entered a new stage of systematic and clustered development.
The sound network construction is rooted in the top-level policy design of Sichuan Province. In August 2025, Sichuan Province officially issued and implemented the Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the Construction of China-Europe Railway Express Assembly Center Hub System, clarifying a provincial overall development pattern centered on the Chengdu Metropolitan Area as the core assembly hub, with coordinated development of multiple support bases including Mianyang, Suining, Dazhou, Luzhou, and Nanchong. The plan aims to break regional logistics barriers, integrate provincial cargo resources, and build a high-efficiency, full-coverage inland international freight channel system.
To fully empower the high-quality development of China-Europe rail freight, the action plan has deployed six special key actions, covering hub capacity improvement, diversified channel system construction, operation quality and efficiency enhancement, railway-suitable industry cultivation, domestic and international cooperation expansion, and train safety risk prevention and control. The six major actions focus on the whole industrial chain of “hub-channel-platform-industry”, promoting coordinated development and benign interaction among logistics infrastructure, transportation channels, open service platforms, and export-oriented industries, and continuously smoothing the export channels for Sichuan local products.
In terms of hub capacity building, Sichuan continues to upgrade the carrying capacity of Chengdu International Railway Port as the core hub, while accelerating the functional improvement of regional support bases to realize differentiated and complementary development of each hub. Diversified channel systems are being actively built to further expand the radiation scope of China-Europe and China-Central Asia rail routes, enrich freight product categories, and meet the diversified cross-border transportation demands of different industries and enterprises. Meanwhile, the province focuses on improving operation quality and efficiency, optimizing train scheduling, customs clearance supervision, and cargo distribution mechanisms, effectively reducing operation costs and improving freight service efficiency.
The plan also attaches great importance to the integrated development of logistics and industries, focusing on cultivating and expanding railway-suitable advantageous industries, guiding local characteristic manufacturing industries to dock with international rail logistics channels, and forming a positive development cycle of “logistics drives industry development, and industry supports logistics prosperity”. In terms of opening-up cooperation, Sichuan will further expand international exchange cooperation, promote the construction of overseas distribution centers, strengthen the brand building of China-Europe Railway Express (Chengdu-Chongqing), and deepen regional cooperation within and outside the province to enhance the overall competitiveness of inland rail freight.
In terms of risk control, a comprehensive safety risk early warning and management system has been established to standardize the operation and management of platform enterprises, improve the cargo transportation safety control mechanism, and ensure the safe, stable, and orderly operation of cross-border rail freight business. With the systematic implementation of the six special actions, Sichuan’s China-Europe rail freight system will realize comprehensive upgrading in infrastructure, service capacity, industrial linkage, and open cooperation.
According to the development goals of the three-year action plan, Sichuan will basically complete the construction of the China-Europe Railway Express assembly center hub system by 2027. By then, the number of overseas cities connected by Sichuan’s China-Europe and China-Central Asia freight trains will exceed 130, and the annual container handling capacity of Chengdu International Railway Port will remain above 1 million TEUs, building a world-class inland railway port and a core hub for Eurasian land trade. Relying on the continuous improvement of the rail network system, Sichuan will further release the development potential of inland open economy, accelerate the transformation of industrial advantages into open economic advantages, and empower more local enterprises to participate in global market competition.
Industry analysts pointed out that the successive settlement of regional support bases including Zigong and Guangyuan demonstrates Sichuan’s firm determination to build a high-quality inland open logistics system. Different from the single-hub development model in the past, the new “core + multi-point” three-dimensional network can effectively integrate scattered cargo resources across the province, reduce empty container rates, improve train loading efficiency, and realize scale benefits of rail freight. At the same time, the close linkage between logistics channels and characteristic industries provides strong support for the transformation and upgrading of Sichuan’s manufacturing industry and the expansion of overseas markets.
In the future, with the continuous advancement of the three-year action plan and the continuous optimization of the provincial rail freight network, Sichuan’s China-Europe Railway Express will achieve more stable operation, wider channel coverage, and higher service quality. The Zigong Base, as an important node in the southern Sichuan logistics layout, will give full play to its regional industrial advantages, continuously expand freight business scale, and become a key bridge connecting southern Sichuan with Eurasian markets. Driven by the integrated development of logistics and industries, Sichuan’s inland open economy will maintain steady growth, injecting lasting power into Sichuan’s foreign trade and industrial high-quality development.
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