Launching ceremony of the ILSTC and COSCO SHIPPING “Hainan-ASEAN (Singapore)” Liner Route held in Hainan

On December 29, the launching ceremony of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (ILSTC) and COSCO SHIPPING “Hainan-ASEAN (Singapore)” Liner Route, co-hosted by Hainan Provincial People’s Government and COSCO SHIPPING, was held at Hainan Yangpu Xiaochantan Terminal owned by Hainan Harbor & Shipping Holding Co., Ltd.

Chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) Xiao Yaqing , Governor and Vice Governor of Hainan Provincial People’s Government Shen Xiaoming and Wang Lu, Chairman of COSCO SHIPPING Capt. Xu Lirong and Chairman of State Development & Investment Corporation Wang Huisheng, attended the ceremony. Representatives from the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Transport, units directly under Hainan Provincial People’s Government, Haikou Customs, Hainan Maritime Safety Administration, Yangpu Frontier Inspection Station, the Planning and Construction Management Office of Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Zone, Beibu Gulf Port Group, PSA International Pte Ltd (PSA), the Management Committee of Yangpu Economic Development Zone, and related companies in the zone, as well as relevant carriers and ports were present at the inaugural ceremony.

Under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, ILSTC connects the Silk Road Economic Belt in the north with the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the Indo-China Peninsula in the south. With relevant provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in western China, including Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Shaanxi, as key nodes, and through rail, sea and highway transportation, it provides access to major ASEAN countries such as Singapore and further extends to Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and Europe. In addition, it is linked to Northeast Asia and North America in the east and to China Railway Express in Chongqing, Lanzhou and Xinjiang in the north. As an integrated access to the outside world, ILSTC enables the western regions to cooperate with ASEAN and other countries and connect to the Belt and Road.

COSCO SHIPPING has provided strong support for ILSTC construction. Over the past year, it has added ocean-going routes with Qingzhou Port in Guangxi as the port of departure or port of call to boost the opening-up of hinterland areas. In the meanwhile, it has developed key ILSTC nodes in Chongqing, Chengdu and Guangxi, stepped up construction of port and logistics infrastructure to promote rail-sea intermodal transport. In the future, the Corporation will improve and increase routes from Qingzhou and Yangpu to Southeast Asia and South Asia, open routes for transshipping goods from Singapore to large vessels on major routes, so as to cover routes to Australia, Singapore, Europe, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. It has also established a service network spread over Southeast Asia, North America and Central and South America to help with the building of Hainan into a free trade pilot zone and a free trade port with Chinese characteristics, and to bring the central and western regions more fully into international trade.

Before the inaugural ceremony, accompanied by Capt. Xu Lirong, Xiao Yaqing, Shen Xiaoming and Wang Lu watched a display board introducing the connection of Yangpu Port to ILSTC. After the ceremony, they boarded M.V. Xin Fang Cheng and greeted its crew.