Photo shows a freight train running on the meter-gauge railway between Kaiyuan, in Honghe prefecture of Yunnan province, and Haiphong, Vietnam. [Photo by Liu Haoliang/For chinadaily.com.cn]
More than 4,260 freight trains have run on the meter-gauge railway between Kaiyuan, Yunnan province, and Haiphong, Vietnam as of Dec 10, carrying a cumulative load of more than 1.68 million tons of cross-border goods, according to China Railway Kunming Bureau Group Co.
Meter-gauge refers to a railroad track that has 1,000 millimeters between the rails.
Since the international freight route was launched in December 2017, it has provided a stable cross-border transportation mode between the two cities. This year, it has been operating steadily with two to four trains per day. It has effectively stimulated the rapid circulation and distribution of various commodities between China and ASEAN countries and injected energy into economic development.
To enhance the efficiency and quality of the service, railway authorities have been steadily optimizing logistics and actively cooperating with customs and border inspection departments to achieve 24-hour clearances.
In the first half of this year, clearances at Yunnan's ports steadily recovered, and the efficiency of customs work in general continued to improve. The volume and import-export value of freight moving through border ports increased by 51.3 percent and 21.8 percent, respectively.
