The wind at the border passes through the Alashankou gate, and a China Europe train loaded with photovoltaic modules and automotive parts smoothly exits the railway passage. In the first eight months of 2026, the port freight volume here will exceed 20 million tons, and the westward opening logistics artery will experience a new acceleration.

Strengthen the core support of railway channels

According to the latest statistics from Alashankou Customs, the cumulative import and export freight volume at the port from January to August reached 21.717 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 9.4%. Among them, the export freight volume growth rate reached 22.2%, significantly higher than the 6.8% growth rate at the import end. The railway port continues to implement the smart railway port plus local fast customs clearance mode, implements parallel operation reform, and reduces the overall customs clearance time by more than 20%. The China Europe freight train achieves efficient customs clearance in seconds.

For the transportation of bulk commodities, the local government has pioneered a joint supervision model of port and unloading locations, which has reduced the clearance time of related goods by more than 50%. By integrating large container inspection equipment with intelligent checkpoint technology, train inspection has shifted towards non-invasive intelligent supervision, with a minimum inspection time of 10 minutes for a single train boarding. As of September 20th, the import and export volume of railway ports has reached 15.44 million tons. In the first eight months, a total of 6108 China Europe Central Asia freight trains were supervised for entry and exit, a year-on-year increase of 21.1%, with an average daily stable operation of more than 25 trains.

Highway channels release vitality of distribution

The construction of smart ports continues to empower, and highway channels undertake small batches of multi category cross-border goods, adapting to diversified real-time trade needs. The local government has fully implemented the road port plus local direct access mode, achieving seamless connection between enterprise declaration port inspection and local supervision, deep linkage between checkpoint identification and logistics monitoring system, and improving the efficiency of goods passage by about 70%.

By relying on the pre appointment pre inspection mechanism, vehicles can be inspected and released upon arrival at the port. Combined with 7 × 12 hour customs clearance guarantee and the comprehensive promotion of TIR transportation mode, the customs clearance process has been reduced by over 80%. As of September 14th, the freight volume at highway ports this year has reached 1.242 million tons, surpassing last year's total volume by 108 days ahead of schedule. The facilitation measures for customs clearance continue to be implemented, and the business volume of local freight forwarding enterprises has increased by 20% year-on-year. The efficiency of cross-border logistics turnover has been greatly improved, and more categories of goods are now traveling to and from the Asian and European markets through this western port. Keywords: China Europe freight trains, cross-border logistics

The lights at the port in the evening breeze stay bright all night, and trains and trucks pass through in an orderly manner. The momentum of Alashankou, as a key hub of the Asia Europe economic and trade corridor, is still being released.Editor/Cheng Liting