It is one of the world’s longest railways — an approximately 11,000-kilometre “modern-day silk road” that traverses Russia and Kazakhstan to link a megacity in the heart of China with a key commercial hub in western Germany.
On Saturday, as part of his landmark visit to Germany, Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to visit the last stop on the “Yuxinou” rail line, an industrial feat that promises to revolutionise transport between Europe and Asia.
Duisburg is a steel-making town of around half a million on the confluence of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers that boasts the world’s biggest inland port and is one of Germany’s most important transport and commercial hubs.
Despite the vast distances between them, it takes just 16 days for trains crammed with laptops and electronics to travel to Duisburg from Chongqing, a sprawling metropolitan symbol of rising China with a population of more than 30 million.
Xi is scheduled to welcome a freight train on Saturday afternoon as it completes a journey that has taken it through Central Asia, Russia, Belarus and Poland.
Source: The Economic Times