An aerial drone photo taken on Dec. 29, 2025 shows the first freight train from Fangchenggang City of Guangxi to Qijiang District of Chongqing arriving at the Qijiang North railway station in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. (Xinhua/Chen Cheng)

China's New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor rail service handled a record 1.425 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo in 2025, marking a 47.6 percent increase and surpassing the one-million-TEU milestone for the first time, China Railway Nanning Group said on Tuesday.

Of the total, 701,000 TEUs were transported from western regions such as Sichuan, Chongqing, and Yunnan to southern ports including Beibu Gulf Port and Zhanjiang Port, marking an increase of 40.4 percent. Meanwhile, 724,000 TEUs were shipped from ports to inland western areas, a 55.3 percent surge.

To boost competitiveness, China Railway Nanning Group expanded its approved list of cargo types for container transport to over 11,000 items, covering nearly all container-suitable goods. The operator also increased scheduled train routes to 44, 21 more than in late 2024.

The corridor now seamlessly connects with China-Europe Railway Express and China-Central Asia freight trains, enabling regular operations of routes like "Beibu Gulf Port-Chengdu-Poland/Germany" for general merchandise, "Hainan-Qinzhou-Xi'an" for grain and oil, and "UAE-Qinzhou-Lanzhou" for automobiles, forming an efficient international logistics network.

The corridor connects the Silk Road Economic Belt in the north with the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in the south, coordinating with the Yangtze River Economic Belt and playing a crucial role in China's coordinated regional development strategy. Since its pilot run in 2017, it has evolved into a strategic route linking China's inland regions with the markets of ASEAN countries and other areas around the world.