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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 21564228" data-attributes="member: 218596"><img src="http://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/styles/ph3_660_400/public/2017/04/30/902951-1185395468.jpg?itok=Zhk46Vv4" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />BEIJING: The first freight train linking China directly to the UK  arrived in the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu Saturday after a  12,000-kilometer (km) trip, becoming the world’s second-longest rail  route.The journey is the latest effort in China’s drive to  strengthen trade links with Western Europe along a modern-day “Silk  Road” route.The world’s top trading nation launched the “One Belt,  One Road” (OBOR) strategy in 2013, and has since poured millions into  constructing vast infrastructure links.The train — which was also  carrying pharmaceuticals and machinery — departed London on April 10 and  passed through France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia and  Kazakhstan during its 20-day trip before arriving in Yiwu in eastern  Zhejiang province, a major wholesale center for small consumer goods.The  new route is longer than Russia’s famous Trans-Siberian railway but  about 1,000km shorter than the record-holding China-Madrid link, which  opened in 2014.London is the 15th city to be linked to a new freight  network offered by the state-run China Railway Corporation (CRC), which  says its services are cheaper than air transport and quicker than  shipping.The journey should be 30 days faster than moving the goods  by ship, the provincial government had said, but the pilot run took two  days more than the 18 days expected.And the train named the East  Wind, has much less carrying capacity — just 88 shipping containers,  according to the Yiwu government, compared to the 10,000 to 20,000  containers cargo ships can carry. It is unclear how much the venture  cost and some experts have questioned whether the ambitious project  makes economic sense.“It is hard to say at this stage what the  economic return will be, as the economic benefits will come over a long  time,” He Tianjie of Oxford Economics Hong Kong told AFP.“However,  the train is in some aspects more convenient and flexible. It can make  multiple stops, allowing for the pickup and offloading of cargo along  the way. Rail transport is also less affected by adverse weather  conditions. Therefore, there may be a role for such long-haul rail  links,” he said.China already has a regular direct freight train  service to Germany, Europe’s largest economy. One route links the  Chinese megacity of Chongqing to Duisburg, a steel-making town and one  of Germany’s transportation and commercial hubs.The other route links Beijing, the Chinese capital, to Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city.Prime  Minister Theresa May will visit China later this year, with talks  likely to include closer trade ties for when Britain leaves the EU,  according to British officials.“The reality is that there is nothing  new here. Transcontinental rail transit has existed for over a  century,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia,  Europe, Asia Studies (CREAS) in Brussels.The launch of the new rail  route was a bid to show post-Brexit Britain that there were other trade  options than neighboring Europe, she said.Roughly 80 percent of  global trade is shipped by sea as freight train services face technical  and bureaucratic hurdles, which vary according to country.The East  Wind’s locomotive and carriages had to be changed en route because of  the larger gauge on railways in the former Soviet Union. </blockquote>

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