The Guangzhou Eastern Rail-Road Intermodal Hub, situated in Zengcheng District, stands as a key component of China's national integrated transport infrastructure. In recent years, Zengcheng and Guangzhou Transport Investment Group have pioneered a collaborative development model between local government and municipal state-owned enterprises, driving the deep integration of transport corridors, logistics hubs, and industry. This has led to the construction of a comprehensive multi-modal transport system that systematically reduces overall logistics costs, boosts the efficiency of exporting Guangdong goods, and establishes the region as a core freight engine for the Greater Bay Area.

On August 15th, the inaugural domestic freight train from Zengcheng West Station to Shanghuang, Jiangsu, departed from the Guangzhou Eastern Rail-Road Intermodal Hub. Fully loaded with general merchandise and auto parts from the Greater Bay Area, it headed towards the Yangtze River Delta hinterland. This departure signifies that the hub has entered a new phase featuring both domestic and international freight services, adding a crucial logistics route that supports Guangzhou's deeper integration into the new development paradigm.

This domestic route represents the hub's latest effort in innovating logistics service models. As a nationally designated production-oriented logistics hub, it serves as the core strategic platform for Guangzhou's ambition to become an international comprehensive transport hub, tasked with connecting domestic and international economic loops and linking the Greater Bay Area with the vast inland regions. The hub has been actively exploring new logistics service models to break through bottlenecks in multi-modal transport, ensuring seamless connections between domestic and international logistics channels and fully unleashing the resource aggregation and radiation capabilities of a national-level logistics hub. Through the Zengcheng West Station, the hub has developed dedicated sea-rail and road-rail corridors. International services extend southwards via the China-Laos-Thailand and China-Vietnam rail-sea routes, and westwards through China-Europe and China-Central Asia corridors. Domestic services reach key hub cities such as the Yangtze River Delta, Kashgar, Yiwu, and Xi'an, collectively creating a two-way freight network spanning 19 countries and 66 cities across Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and ASEAN.

The hub has also facilitated the opening of the northern section of the Shenzhen-Guangzhou Intercity Railway and strengthened collaboration with Guangzhou Port, Yantian Port, and Guangzhou Baiyun Airport. This strategic positioning enables cargo to reach Baiyun Airport within 20 minutes, the Huangpu and Nansha ports within 40 minutes, and connect with Shenzhen's sea and air hubs within 50 minutes, creating a "half-day delivery" transport circle that covers the Greater Bay Area. In a pioneering move within Guangzhou, the hub has launched a western European cross-border e-commerce premium train, developing a service model that combines a cross-border e-commerce consolidation warehouse with rail trunk transport. This allows e-commerce goods from the Greater Bay Area to be locally consolidated and shipped directly to Europe, offering transit times that are one-third of traditional sea freight at one-fifth of the cost of air freight. This addresses the critical need for speed and cost-efficiency in cross-border e-commerce, attracting over 10,000 foreign trade enterprises to use this as their primary export channel.

Furthermore, the hub has implemented a "single bill of lading" system for multi-modal transport. By breaking down documentation barriers between rail and road, standardizing data formats, customs declaration rules, and operational standards across different segments, a unified multi-modal document has been created. Enterprises can now file once to cover the entire journey, enabling a service model characterized by single entrustment, one bill of lading throughout, one-time settlement, and end-to-end responsibility. On August 18th, the X8426 China-Europe freight train, carrying daily appliances, clothing, and furniture, departed from Zengcheng West Station. This marked the first time the Greater Bay Area adopted an integrated regulatory model for customs and security inspections on a China-Europe train, demonstrating tangible improvements in customs clearance efficiency. In this model, Zengcheng Customs and the Guangzhou Railway Logistics Center have established a routine coordination mechanism, merging the venues and personnel for railway security and customs inspection. What was once two separate openings and inspections is now a single opening with synchronized checks and one-time release, significantly boosting efficiency through real-time information sharing while maintaining regulatory integrity.

The implementation has cut the pre-departure inspection wait time at the station from four days to two, and reduced the number of containers requiring physical inspection by more than a third, achieving both effective oversight and faster clearance. The hub has also promoted the railway fast customs clearance model. By offering 24/7 appointment-based clearance and advance declaration services, and sharing electronic railway manifest data across departments, enterprises can exchange cargo information in advance and track transport trajectories without applying for transit procedures separately. Border port stations can swiftly process cargo without waiting for transit document verification, reducing port clearance time to as little as 30 minutes and shortening the overall process by 1-2 days compared to traditional methods. Additionally, cross-customs-district collaboration has been strengthened by establishing customs supervision zones adjacent to the hub, moving core functions like declaration review, on-site inspection, and regulatory sealing directly to the export consolidation warehouse.

This allows goods to complete all customs procedures upon arrival, enabling inspection before consolidation and declaration before entry. An automatic customs settlement function has also been introduced for the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan road-rail service, which automatically concludes procedures after cargo transits the border, accelerating export tax rebates and improving capital turnover efficiency for businesses. For high-value-added goods, a "one-product-one-policy" clearance guide has been introduced, offering optimized services for certificate of origin issuance and intellectual property customs protection, thereby facilitating expedited clearance for precision and high-tech products.