Li Bingjun, Vice governor of Jiangxi Province and Mayor of Ganzhou City, Ingvar Törn, governor of Dalana Province in Sweden and Han Xiaodong, Counselor of Commerce at the Chinese Embassy attended the starting ceremony.

Li Bingjun said China-Europe Freight Train is the typical result of the world’s response to Belt and Road Initiative put up forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping, it has been dubbed as the Iron and Steel Caravan.  Ganzhou Port is the 8th of its kind opening to the outside world and the first experimental zone of Quarantine supervision. It has become an important destination of transportation of Belt and Road Initiative.  China has opened 18 railway lines and reached five central Asian countries and European economic zones. He hopes that the operation of the train symbolizes the opening of a new chapter in Sino-Swedish and Ganzhou and Sweden friendly cooperation.

Governor Törn said Sweden enjoys 73 percent of the forest coverage rate with forests industry export accounting for 11 percenet of the total export volume. The annual export turnover reaches 12.7 billion Euro. The export to Asia increased rapidly in recent years. He hopes the operation of the train can lead to further increase of Dalana’s export to China.

Counselor Han Xiaodong said Sino-Swedish economic and trade cooperation has a long history. Sweden, as the head of the European wood industry is the third largest wood export country in the world. Its annual export volume of wood can reach 13 million cubic meters.

Ganzhou is the largest wood furniture manufacturing base with an annual consumption of 15 million cubic meters of wood. There is great prospect for bilateral cooperation. He hopes the train will go to China regularly in order to push bilateral economic and trade cooperation into a new era and achieve new achievements.

The opening of the Sweden-China first freight train has broken the traditional railway to marine transportation model and successfully opened a new passage, substantially increased the transportation efficiency and shorten the transportation time.  This marks another important result in Sino-Swedish economic and trade cooperation and opened a new chapter in cooperation between  Ganzhou and Sweden.

Translated and edited from Chinese Embassy source.