The Silk Railroad of China-Europe Trade

Multinationals operating in China have been setting up factories deep in the interior in search of affordable labor. The drawback: These plants can be more than a thousand kilometers (621 miles) from the coast. For companies exporting to Europe—still one of the largest markets for Chinese goods—shipping by air from Chongqing or other inland cities is too expensive. Trucking or carrying goods by train to the ports of Shanghai or Shenzhen’s Yantian and then shipping them to Western Europe can take 40 days.

For Hewlett-Packard, which produces notebook computers in Chongqing, there’s an alternative: an international freight-train network linking China to Europe. Since 2011, HP has transported 4 million notebook computers along the 11,179-kilometer rail route, inaugurated last year by Chongqing and Chinese train officials. It starts in Chongqing and traverses Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and Poland before reaching Duisburg, Germany. A separate line from China’s northeast links up with the Trans-Siberian Railway, which runs 9,288 km from Vladivostok to Moscow.