China Southern Airlines said its inaugural flight from Beijing to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday was a success and marked the launch of the first direct passenger air route from mainland China to Saudi Arabia.

According to the carrier, flights on an Airbus A330-300 airliner will be operated on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The aircraft will depart from Daxing International Airport in Beijing at 15:10 local time and land at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh at 20:10 local time. The flight duration will be about 10 hours.

At the same time, the return flight will depart Riyadh at 22:10 local time and arrive in the Chinese capital at 12:00 the following day. The duration of the return flight will take about 8 hours and 50 minutes.

Zhang Dongsheng of China Southern Airlines' marketing department said that in recent years, cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative has brought practical results: China and Saudi Arabia continue to deepen economic, cultural and tourism cooperation.

He said the opening of a regular direct air route will further promote humanitarian and trade and economic exchanges between the two countries.

At the end of the first quarter of 2024, a total of 802 China-Europe freight trains passed through the border port of Eren-Hoto /Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, North China/, up 7.5 percent from the same period last year, the local commerce department said Tuesday.

Of those 802 trains, 426 departed China, up 0.5 percent year-on-year, while 376, in contrast, arrived there, up 16.8 percent year-on-year.

The Eren-Hoto border crossing is an important land port for Chinese goods exports to Mongolia, Russia and Europe. At present, 71 China-Europe international rail freight routes pass through the port, and a total of more than 15,000 rail trains of this category have already passed through the port in both directions.

At the end of the first quarter of 2024, the total cargo turnover through the shipping locks of the Sanxia hydroelectric project -- the world's largest hydropower project -- amounted to 30.2 million tons. This is evidenced by the official data presented on Thursday.

According to China Three Gorges Corporation, despite difficult weather conditions and temporary closure of the northern shipping lock for scheduled maintenance, navigation through the hydroelectric project remained stable and orderly in the first three months of this year.

A total of 8,080 vessels passed through the Sanxia locks from January to March, according to the corporation.

The Sanxia Dam shipping locks were officially opened for navigation in 2004. For 10 consecutive years from 2014 to 2023, the annual cargo turnover of the project's ship locks exceeded 100 million tons, according to official data.

A freight train left Taiyuan, Shanxi Province /North China/ for Moscow on Thursday, marking the launch of a new route within the framework of China-Europe international rail freight transportation.

Leaving Huanghoyuan station in Taiyuan, this train will cross the state border at the Eren-Hoto checkpoint in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region /North China/ and, having covered a distance of about 5 thousand kilometers, will arrive in Moscow.

This train carries 55 containers with 29 categories of various goods, including kaolin, car parts, washing machines, bicycles and other everyday goods.

According to deputy director of transportation company Huayuan International Land Port Co., Ltd. Wang Xingdong said that 15 regular routes have already been opened from Shanxi Province. Shanxi has already opened 15 regular international rail freight routes, linking the province with 16 countries around the world, giving impetus to the integration of Shanxi Province into the Belt and Road Initiative cooperation.

Yongxiu, People's Daily Online, March 25 (Reporter Shiyu) On March 24, freight ships loaded with containers entered the Gan River here and sailed to the upstream destination port in the waterway of Wucheng Town, Yongxiu County, Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province, on Poyang Lake.

Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China in terms of area, and is an important channel connecting the Yangtze River and the inland water system of Jiangxi Province. With the development of economy, the demand for freight transportation in inland regions is increasing. Waterway shipping improves the transportation efficiency while reducing the cost of goods transportation, strengthens the economic connection and cooperation between regions, promotes the coordinated development of regional economy and forms a wider economic cooperation network.

In recent years, the area along Poyang Lake has been managed by dredging, removing silt and utilizing advanced surveying and mapping technology and information technology to ensure that the depth and width of the waterway meet the requirements of navigation. At present, Jiangxi has formed "two vertical and one horizontal" high-grade waterway network with Yangtze River (Jiangxi section), Ganjiang River and other high-grade waterways as the skeleton, supplemented by other waterways, and the waterway transportation system radiating outward around Poyang Lake as the center.