Photo: Courtesy of the Silk Road Maritime International Association

Themk Silk Road Maritime Association (SRMA), based in East China's Fujian Province, handled nearly 5 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo in 2024, China Media Group reported on Sunday, citing data released by local transport authorities.

As of the end of 2024, the association had 128 container vessel routes, having completed 4,173 sea voyages and handled 4.96 million TEUs, according to the report.

As China's first maritime shipment-centered international logistics services platform under the Belt and Road Initiative, the SRMA, which was set up in December 2018, has completed 17,633 sea voyages, transporting 20.83 million TEUs.

China's trade with economies participating in Belt and Road cooperation saw rapid growth in the past year, boosted by the improvement in connectivity and the signing of a series of trade enhancing deals.

During the first 11 months of 2024, trade with BRI partners saw a year-on-year increase of 6 percent, while that with ASEAN countries rose by 8.6 percent, outpacing the overall foreign trade growth rate of 4.9 percent, according to General Administration of Customs data released in December.

Sun Chuanwang, a professor at Xiamen University in Fujian Province, told the Global Times on Sunday that by boosting the development of the SRMA, Fujian has given full play to its geographical advantages of being a coastal hub between the northern and southern parts of the country.

By promoting standardized, convenient and intelligent shipping services, Fujian has effectively boosted the expansion of and consolidated the momentum of new growth drivers for industrial upgrades, such as cross-border e-commerce logistics and modern multimodal transport, and it has accumulated advantages in global industrial and supply chains, helping build itself into a core area of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, Sun said.

Global Times