China-built logistics hub in Hungary boosts trade

The Central European Trade and Logistics Cooperation Zone (CECZ) in Hungary's capital Budapest, the first of its kind built by China in Europe, has become a major trade and logistics hub that facilitates trade cooperation between Hungary and China and also between China and the European Union (EU).

Founded in November 2012, the cooperation zone comprises the Vac logistics park for cross-border e-commerce in Hungary and two logistics parks in Hungary's Csepel Port and Germany's Bremen Port, respectively. Now, the Vac logistics park is planning to build a 20,000-square-meter smart warehouse, equipped with intelligent robots, to process 45,000 to 55,000 items per hour for cross-border e-commerce storage services.

"We are very busy today, so we have a lot of things to do. And we invest huge amounts, only in this new warehouse, 27 billion forint (about 74.7 million U.S. dollars) investment for us. Now we have a very important business, also related to e-commerce, and most of the goods come from e-commerce," said Gazso Balazs, president of the CECZ.

According to Balazs, with the alignment of China's Belt and Road Initiative and Hungary's "Eastern Opening" policy, the trade and logistics zone is thriving, with more goods entering the EU market through Hungary via the China-Europe Railway Express, boosting economic cooperation between China and European countries.

"The political level is always working on the most friendly and efficient atmosphere for the companies, and it's very important," said Balazs.

As the first European country to sign a Belt and Road Initiative cooperation agreement with China, Hungary has been a distribution center for China-Europe freight trains and a crucial link in the logistics transport corridor between China and Europe over the past decade.

Last year, trade between China and Hungary hit 14.52 billion U.S. dollars and Chinese direct investment in Hungary stood at 8.2 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 58 percent of Hungary's total foreign direct investment.

China-built logistics hub in Hungary boosts trade

The Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve in northwest China's Qinghai Province has been attracting tourists from across the country recently as Tibetan antelopes have started their annual mass migration in the high-altitude World Natural Heritage Site and local ecological systems continue to improve.

Hoh Xil means "beautiful young lady" in Mongolian. Covering 45,000 square kilometers, the average altitude of the plateau is above 4,600 meters. The place is home to dozens of wild animals like Tibetan antelopes and wild yaks apart from many wild plants found only on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the highest plateau in the world.

As Hoh Xil's ecological environment continues to improve, more and more tourists have come to visit the remote place tucked away high on the plateau.

"We drove all the way from Zhejiang to Hoh Xil. I saw lots of wild animals like Tibetan antelopes, wild kiangs and other wildlife. On our way here, I saw many workers of the national nature reserve who were performing their duty of conserving the environment and natural ecology of Hoh Xil, so the ecological environment here in Hoh Xil is really getting better and better," said Xue Yu, a tourist from east China's coastal province Zhejiang.

In 2017, Hoh Xil was added to the World Natural Heritage List, making it the 51th World Heritage Site in China.

Tibetan antelope migration, improved ecological environment draw tourists to Hoh Xil