At 10 a.m. November 17, a "Qilu" Eurasian train departed from SCODA Jiaozhou Multimodal Transport Center, with 100 TEUs of automotive parts, bicycles and general merchandise on board. The train, bound for Berelarst, Russia, will exit via the railway port of Erenhot.

Eurasian train transport, faster than water transport and more economical than air transport and highway transport, offers more logistics import & export choices. Amid the sustained strain of transport in international trade this year, Eurasian trains have kept tightening transportation network through new lines to build efficient logistics channels for serving domestic cycle and international cycle. "Eurasian trains can save time by 50% compared with shipping, allowing us to deliver goods to customers faster," said Shi Yuqin, Business Manager of Anxin Ruichi Supply Chain Management (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. "Our deliveries to countries along the 'Belt and Road' ('B&R') this year were up more than 40% year on year."

According to Xu Yuejing, Deputy Director of Jiaozhou Customs, Eurasian trains have developed rapidly since the first run in May 2015. The acceleration in "B&R" construction, especially the approval of the framework plan for the construction of China-SCO Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Area (SCODA) in June 2019, has boosted exports to "B&R" countries via Eurasian trains. A total of 1,456 "Qilu" Eurasian trains were dispatched in the first 10 months of this year, up 14.92% year on year, and 50 lines now directly lead to 52 cities in "B&R" countries.

"Qilu" Eurasian trains have cemented trade contacts between Shandong and "B&R" countries. Shandong registered total imports and exports of 748.37 billion yuan with "B&R" countries in the first 10 months of this year, up 42% year on year, including total exports of 419.92 billion yuan, up 39.9% year on year and total imports of 328.45 billion yuan, up 44.8% year on year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on international trade since last year. To overcome the negative impact, Shandong has made coordinated use of its domestic and overseas exhibition resources, developed new exhibition models, and leveraged diverse models such as online exhibition, long-term online display and "offline exhibition + online video link" to develop "B&R" markets. In the first 10 months of this year, Shandong organized 11 online and offline exhibitions for "B&R" countries with the participation of more than 1,800 foreign trade enterprises, reaching agreements of intent worth 490 million yuan.

Aside from trade, Shandong has guided enterprises in integrating into "B&R" construction and convert industrial capacity advantage into cooperative advantage, so as to drive a large number of major industrial capacity cooperation projects. On October 16, Pakistan China Center, Habib Bank Limited Beijing Branch and Qingdao Lulu Agricultural Equipment Co., Ltd. (Qingdao Lulu) entered into an agreement on strengthening cooperation in investment and industrial development. As an enterprise focused on agricultural machinery and equipment development and manufacturing, Qingdao Lulu has maintained longstanding cooperation with agricultural enterprises in "B&R" countries, to help farmers in these countries improve their production levels. "We just signed a cooperative agreement with the Pakistani Embassy in China this June on investing 10 million U.S. dollars in a pepper industry park engaged in pepper machinery production and pepper growing in Pakistan," said Li Zhimin, a head of Qingdao Lulu.

"For example, the tire production bases of Shandong's enterprises like Qingdao's Sailun, Doublestar and Sentury, Yantai's Linglong and Weifang's Haohua in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, as well as the production & processing parks of enterprises like Nanshan Group and Weiqiao Aluminum in Indonesia have been contributing to Shandong's cooperation with 'B&R' countries," said Zhang Xingcheng, Deputy Director General of the Department of Commerce of Shandong Province.

This year Shandong accredited 5 provincial foreign economic and trade cooperation zones, including Cambodia's Kratié Special Economic Zone, to increase the total number of such zones to 13, ranking first in China. As of October 2021, cooperation zones newly included in statistics by the Ministry of Commerce registered a total investment of 5.94 billion U.S. dollars and a total output value of 24.25 billion U.S. dollars, brought in a total of 276 enterprises with 33,000 employees, and contributed total imports and exports of 12.19 billion U.S dollars.

"Integrating into 'B&R' construction has provided a new idea and opened up new markets for the foreign trade development of Shandong," said Zheng Shilin, a research fellow at the Institute of Quantitative & Technological Economics, CASS. "At the next stage, Shandong will move on in the direction of industrial cooperation and leverage its superior location and transportation to develop into a 'B&R' construction demonstration area."