The fate of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of global exports were put in limbo last week after a Japanese-owned container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, with all efforts to dislodge it proving futile. Lloyd’s List estimates that the ship is holding up a whopping $400 million in goods every hour that it remains trapped in the canal.
China has dramatically increased the shipment of goods to Europe using the railway infrastructure in Russia and Central Asia, with freight train transport doubling in the first two months of this year after seeing a similar surge in demand between 2019 and 2020, the Financial Times reports, citing official data cited by Chinese media.
According to the data, over 2,000 freight trains ran between China and Europe in January and February of 2021, about double the rate seen a year earlier during the same period.
Freight train shipping reportedly also saw a fifty percent jump in 2020 compared to 2019, and has climbed a whopping 700 percent since 2016, amid the implementation of China’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative to expand trade and integrate the Eurasian space.
