China's national railway achieves record freight volume with enhanced services

China's national railway network has set a new record for freight transportation in the first seven months of 2025, demonstrating strong growth in both domestic and international logistics operations.

According to data released by China Railway Monday, from January to July, the national railway system handled 2.331 billion tons of cargo, marking a 3.3 percent increase year on year and setting a new historical high for the period. The rail-water intermodal container transport volume reached 9.76 million TEUs, up 17.1 percent, while the China-Central Asia freight trains made 8,526 trips, representing a 23.2 percent growth compared with the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the railway authority has introduced several service upgrades to optimize logistics operations. Among them, the "freight loan" program has provided significant relief to logistics companies.

"I used our previous railway shipping records to secure a credit line of five million yuan from China Construction Bank. This program has effectively eased our working capital pressure," said Li Yanbiao, manager of a logistics company in Yunnan with 15 years of operation which has for the first time benefited from the railway freight credit program this year.

So far this year, the program has extended a total credit quota of 21.41 billion yuan to clients in multiple places, including Hubei Province, Chongqing Municipality, Sichuan Province, Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Companies with cumulative freight expenses exceeding 100 million yuan can access a 15-day financing window, reducing logistics costs by approximately 10 percent.

Moreover, the railway system's "door-to-door" logistics services have further facilitated the "road to rail" transportation of bulk cargo, with contracted volume reaching 1.275 billion tons in the first seven months. The 95306 China Railway digital platform has also expanded its services, launching 60 integrated multimodal transport routes with single-bill solutions.

A notable example is the efficient transport of new energy vehicles (NEVs) from Chongqing to Guangxi's Qinzhou Port via specialized rail carriers and roll-on roll-off ships.

"We've reduced the unloading time from 30 hours to just 10 hours per train, achieving smooth and effective coordination in arrival, positioning, and unloading for NEVs," said Zhao Jian, deputy head of the Qinzhou Port East Station under China Railway Nanning Group Co., Ltd.

Official data showed that in this seven-month period, the new western land-sea corridor, an important artery which covers all the provinces, autonomous regions and municipality in western China and leads to ASEAN and the Eurasian continent, recorded 872,000 TEUs transported via rail-sea intermodal services, a remarkable 75.3 percent surge year on year. Meanwhile, the total national rail-water intermodal container volume reached 9.76 million TEUs, up 17.1 percent year on year.

China's national railway achieves record freight volume with enhanced services

China's development has never been a "threat" to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Friday.

Some Western media and think tanks are peddling so-called "China Shock 2.0," saying that "China is achieving fast development in high-tech sectors such as renewable energy and AI and relies on foreign markets to absorb its overcapacity, thus reducing the market share of developed countries and sending more serious shock waves to the global economy compared with the era of traditional manufacture industry," while there are foreign commentators saying that the "China Shock 2.0" argument ignores the genuine innovation occurring within the Chinese industrial ecosystem and that Chinese export is the exact booster of the global economy that is needed in the turbulent period and more indispensable than ever.

Commenting on that, Lin said: "From the world's factory to the world's market and innovation powerhouse, China's development is achieved through strong performance driven by innovation and brings tangible cooperation opportunities and space to the world. High-quality Chinese products represented by the 'old three' of textiles, furniture and home appliances have stabilized the global industrial and supply chain, lowered the living cost of global consumers and eased the inflationary pressure worldwide. China's green production capacity represented by the 'new three' of electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels has bridged the gap between supply and demand in global green development and bolstered the global energy transition and low-carbon development. Moreover, China's high-tech products represented by the 'new new three' of robots, AI and innovative drugs have broken high-tech barriers and monopoly and enabled people in more countries to access affordable new technologies," said the spokesman.

"Openness and cooperation bring about progress and win-win result. China's development has never been a 'threat' to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries. What really creates 'shocks' to the world has never been the innovation of Chinese companies and efficiency of Chinese industrial capacity, but protectionist moves of setting up barriers, decoupling and severing industrial and supply chains. China will stay committed to high-standard opening up, defend the multilateral trading system and provide more certainty and new impetus to the world economy with its own steady development," said Lin.

China's development never a threat: FM spokesman