China-Kazakhstan Logistics Base in Lianyungang Becomes Two-Way Trade Gateway to Central Asia

LIANYUNGANG, China - A logistics facility opened in eastern China more than a decade ago as the first concrete project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has grown into a multi-service trade hub linking Chinese ports with Central Asia, according to company officials and analysts.

The China-Kazakhstan (Lianyungang) Logistics Cooperation Base, in Jiangsu province, opened on May 19, 2014, with the leaders of both countries present. It now has a 220,000-square-meter container yard with 1,763 berths and a 3.8-kilometer rail spur. Its annual capacity is up to 410,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), said Zhao Duofa, general manager of China-Kazakhstan (Lianyungang) International Logistics.

The base is the only loading and unloading terminal for Lianyungang's international freight trains. Its services reach the five Central Asian countries as well as Türkiye, Russia, Europe and Mongolia. Zhao said the operator has run more than 8,000 trains, out of over 18,000 since the city began international rail services in 1992. He also noted that the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway has been built without major problems.

Zhao said the site began as a transshipment point and has since added container terminals, agency services, warehousing and multimodal transport. Westbound cargo includes electronics, machinery parts, daily necessities, used cars and chemicals. Eastbound trains carry wheat, ferroalloys and potash fertilizer. The base handles more than half of China's westbound transit freight, and he said over 80% of Chinese consumer goods entering Kazakhstan, together with major Kazakh exports such as minerals and grain, pass through Lianyungang Port.

The balance of traffic has shifted, said Bedelov Azilkhan, the company's deputy general manager. Kazakh wheat once went mainly to China and nearby Central Asian markets, because long routes, slow transit and high costs made farther destinations hard to reach. Grain can now travel by the China-Europe (Central Asia) Railway Express to China and then on to third markets by sea. The cargo mix has also changed from clothing and toys to cars, auto parts, home appliances and photovoltaic modules, he said.

The numbers point the same way. Rail freight between Kazakhstan and China hit 18.7 million metric tons in the first half of 2026, up 9% year on year. Kazakhstan's rail exports to China rose 20% to 8.5 million tons, covering ores, grain, metals and petroleum products. Kazakhstan's Ministry of Trade and Integration said bilateral trade totaled $32.4 billion in January-July, up 24.1%.

Gulnar Shaimergenova, director of the China Studies Center in Kazakhstan, said the growth matters because cooperation is shifting from building infrastructure toward joint production and supply chains. She said Kazakhstan now takes part in logistics as an infrastructure partner and operator, not only as a cargo owner, which loosens the constraints of being landlocked. She described the country's approach as a portfolio of corridors: the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor toward Europe, rail links into China's network, north-south routes to Iran and the Gulf, and new southern routes.

Lu Yang, deputy director of the Institute of Economy and Finance at Tsinghua University's School of Marxism, said the base has become a working model for linking Chinese coastal ports with landlocked Central Asian states and is helping them reach global markets. She said its role now goes beyond moving freight. It supports smoother customs, inspection and transit procedures, helps build warehousing, processing and distribution networks, and increases travel by business and technical personnel between the two countries.