First China-Britain freight train arrives in London as Beijing forges closer trade ties with Europe
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The first direct freight train service from China to Britain arrived in London on Wednesday, another leg in Beijing’s plans for closer trade ties with Europe along a modern-day Silk Road.
The 18-day trip saw dozens of containers packed mainly with clothes and household goods transported from the city of Yiwu in eastern China’s Zhejiang province to a freight terminal in Barking in east London, via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and western Europe.
The train entered Britain from France through the Channel Tunnel, completing a journey of some 12,000km.
The yellow and red locomotive bearing a Deutsche Bahn logo arrived at Barking in east London, slowing down as it made its final approach.
It broke through a paper banner reading: “First Freight Train from China to UK – Yiwu to London – January 2017” and was showered with confetti.
The train, which left the industrial city of Yiwu on January 1, is filled with clothes and other retail goods in 24 containers – far less than ships which can carry between 10,000 and 20,000 containers.
The train that arrived was different from the one that left China since the locomotive and the carriages had to be changed because of the larger gauge on railways in the former Soviet Union.
The new service offers businesses a new middle ground between shipping and air freight – it’s quicker than sending goods by sea, and cheaper than transporting by air.
China Railway already has more than 10 freight train services to several European destinations including Madrid and Hamburg. They are part of President Xi Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” policy to revive the fabled Silk Road trading routes to the West, and London is the 15th city to be linked to the network.
Weekly trains will initially be run to assess demand.
Analysts say the service is not yet economically significant, because the volume that can be transported is small compared with using container ships.
There also isn’t yet a return service to transport goods from Britain back to China, though this could be in the works.
Other European countries have used the service to export items like wine and olive oil to China, said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, an international relations lecturer at King’s College London.
“Economically [its significance] is still quite small. But politically it’s very significant because China wants to show it is connecting directly with Europe,” he said.
The European Union is China’s largest trading partner, with Germany and France being the biggest players.
Carsten Pottharst, managing director of Switzerland-based InterRail Group, the train’s operator, said he hoped there would be more such runs between China and Britain.
“This moment was important to show that we can run the train in less than 18 days to the UK,” he said. “It depends also on how much cargo we can get from the UK to China – if we can manage to get more trains eastbound, then there could be more.”
Oscar Lin, general manager at OTT Logistics, the local British booking office for the train, said there had been good interest in the service.
“This is the first train for a test – we want to know what’s the reaction of the UK market,” he said. “But we’ve already received a lot of enquiries ... 50 or 60 in just two weeks, without any marketing.”
Prime Minister Theresa May has said the relationship with China remains “golden” as she seeks to bring in billions of dollars in Chinese investment as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
