“The railways in our two countries are consistently among the top three world leaders in the field of railway transport and together define the character of Eurasian transport links. We therefore attach particular importance to our cooperation with our partners in China”, said Oleg Belozyerov.

For his part, HE Ambassador Li Hui said that cooperation in the railway sector was an important part of the interaction between the countries and noted its significant potential.

The meeting participants stressed that recent years had seen a steady increase in freight turnover between Russia and China. In 2018, freight transportation with China across border crossing points, including transportation via Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and via seaports, increased by 1 million tons as compared to the level of the previous year and amounted to 72.5 million tons. About 1.2 million containers were shipped - one third more than a year earlier. At the same time, the Russian Railways network transported 351,000 transit containers in the East-West-East direction, which demonstrates an increase of 34% as compared to 2017.

The head of the Russian Railways OJSC and the Chinese Ambassador agreed that the digitalization of the transportation process would contribute to the growth of freight turnover and promote the devel­opment of electronic commerce. The parties also discussed the prospects of synchronizing the infrastructure development at border crossing stations.

In addition, the parties considered the creation of a high-speed railway between Moscow and Kazan and its logical extension, the project to create a Eurasian high-speed transport corridor between Moscow and Beijing. According to the meeting participants, this type of freight traffic would create new opportunities for cooperation in continental logistics and contribute to further implementation of the One Belt - One Road Initiative and the expansion of ties between China, Russia, the countries of CIS and the European Union.

The parties also expressed their interest in working together to implement infrastructure projects in third countries.

Russian Railways Holding begins regular container transportation of machine sets from China to Belarus

Russian Railways Logistics JSC, a subsidiary of the Russian Railways OJSC, has begun shipments of container trains loaded with vehicle kits from China to Belarus. The kits will be used at the plant of the BelGi CJSC, a Byelorussian-Chinese joint venture which assembles China’s Geely motor cars. In the end of February the first 4 container trains departed for their destination.

To implement the project, a special timetable was developed for the direct route from Chengdu in China to Zhodino in Belarus. In total, until the end of 2019, it is planned to deliver 50 container trains on a regular basis of one train per week.

Containers with vehicle sets dispatched from Chengdu railway container terminal continued their way through Mongolia (Zamyn-Uud border crossing point), Russia (Naushki border crossing point) and Belarus (Krasnoe border crossing point) to arrive at Zhodino station. The delivery time is around fortnight, which is almost three times faster than by sea.

RZD Logistics is currently working on the possibility of organising similar shipments from other Geely factories in China to Belarus.