Singapore: Singapore is set to benefit from the new Belt and Road connections provided by the Southern Transport Corridor (STC), a rail network that connects 10 of China’s inland provinces to its port in Qinzhou.
The STC, which began as a joint project between the two countries in 2017, has made a dozen sea lanes more accessible to regions in China that were previously dependent on a longer route that followed the Yangtze River to Shanghai.
The route upgrades are part of the Belt and Road initiative, a series of overland corridors connecting China with Europe, via Central Asia and the Middle East, and a sea route linking China’s southern coast to east Africa and the Mediterranean.
Cargo that used to have a journey of over two weeks now arrives in Qinzhou two days after leaving its point of origin, meaning that the region’s ports’ estimated annual capacity has jumped from 600,000 TEUs to 3 million TEUs since 2013 — a 35% year-on-year increase in volume.
