Xi'an - Almaty cargo train launched

XI'AN - A cargo train service from Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, to the Central Asian city of Almaty, Kazakhstan will begin this month, local authorities said Wednesday.

The service is scheduled to start on November 28 and pass through the cities of Baoji and Urumqi before reaching Almaty, said Li Pingwei, deputy director of Xi'an International Trade and Logistics Park.

It will take six days for the train to travel 3,860 km, cutting the  journey time from Xi'an to Almaty by over 20 days, according to Li.

Shaanxi mainly exports petroleum machinery and heavy-duty trucks to Central Asia with an annual trade volume of $98 million.

The cargo service is expected to further boost bilateral trade between China's western regions along the Silk Road economic belt and Central Asian countries, meanwhile, the goods from China's other regions can also be exported to Central Asia via this way.

Xi'an, known in ancient times as Chang'an, is the starting point of the Silk Road - an ancient land trade route that ran through northwest China's provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and Central and Western Asia, before reaching the Mediterranean.