This synergy has driven significant growth in the southward corridor, according to data from China Railway Nanning Group. In the first half of this year, the corridor handled 660,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, of goods, averaging 110,000 TEUs per month.

　　Freight volume in the second quarter rose 3.6 percent quarter-on-quarter, reflecting sustained robust market demand. To accommodate surging demand, China Railway Nanning Group is accelerating key infrastructure upgrades, including the construction of the second rail line for the Qinzhou-Fangchenggang section and the route linking Qinzhou East to Qinzhou Port in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

　　Tang Qiang, dean of the School of Geographical Sciences at Southwest University, noted that the corridor has improved freight transportation efficiency and expanded its coverage of goods through innovative multimodal transport. For example, the outbound route from Chongqing to Qinzhou Port takes only 48 hours via rail-sea intermodal transport.

　　Compared with traditional river-sea intermodal transportation via the Yangtze River's main trunk line to eastern ports, the journey time is reduced by 83 percent, and the distance is more than halved from nearly 2,000 kilometers to less than 1,000 km, Tang said. This effectively breaks the geographical constraints that have long hindered the western region's access to rivers and the sea.

　　Such seamless connectivity is playing a vital role in stabilizing industrial and supply chains. In the first half of this year, 72,000 TEUs of raw materials were shipped via Qinzhou Port East Station from ASEAN countries, up 49.4 percent year-on-year.