China is leveraging its massive railway network to ramp up supply of seafood from Southeast Asia into its northern areas, which contain key consumer belts that are projected to soak up supply from the region.
Local government in Guangxi Province, which borders Vietnam, has been celebrating the launch of regular refrigerated train services to northern cities including Beijing and Shenyang. One such train recently took 416 tons of seafood to Beijing from the International Aquatic Products Market at Dongxing, a town straddling the Sino-Vietnamese border, according to a statement of the Guangxi Railway Bureau and Guangxi Coastal Railway Co.
“With rising living standards…ordinary family tables are more bountiful,” said the statement, adding that new services will be added this year for seafood to be shipped to the large cities of Chengdu, Jinan, Shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou.
Massive investments in railway and road interconnections with neighboring states has been part of the ‘One Belt One Road’ – signature foreign policy initiative of Chinese president Xi Jinping, who wants to increase China’s regional trading reach.
