At the Xiushan Railway Station freight yard in Chongqing on August 14th, dozens of neatly stacked containers filled with petroleum coke and chrome ore, shipped from Southeast Asia via the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, await the arrival of freight trains to be dispatched to factories across the surrounding region. This scene has become routine for the local area.

Situated deep in the Wuling Mountains, Xiushan County has no border or coastline, which once made developing an open economy a daunting challenge. Today, domestic and international goods converge and flow through this once-remote town, and cross-border e-commerce is rapidly gaining momentum—this inland city has carved out a new path toward openness.

What transformed this mountainous county into a frontier of economic openness? According to Zhang Shunqiu, Deputy Director of the Xiushan County Corridor Economic Development Center, "Opportunities always favor those who are prepared." Xiushan's outward expansion can be attributed not only to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor but also to its earlier efforts in building a logistics network radiating to surrounding areas and the rapid growth of rural e-commerce.

Located at the junction of Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, and Guizhou provinces, Xiushan took a decisive step as early as 2009 by establishing the Xiushan (Wuling) Modern Logistics Park. Since then, the county has gradually developed a logistics network covering the neighboring regions, evolving into a regional trade and logistics hub.

While the logistics network didn't immediately transform Xiushan's open economy, it spurred the rapid development of rural e-commerce. In 2018 and 2020, Xiushan earned the titles of "National Demonstration Logistics Park" and "National E-Commerce Demonstration Base," making it the first county-level logistics park in China to hold both national certifications simultaneously.

The opportune moment arrived in 2020 when Xiushan was designated as a node city on the eastern route of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor as the hub took shape. Zhang Shunqiu recalled that Xiushan then began planning its own route to the sea—directly connecting the Wuling Mountain area to Qinzhou in Guangxi. In October 2021, the first Wuling Mountain freight train, loaded with cement and other building materials, departed from Xiushan, opening a new chapter in foreign trade.

To better serve the surrounding regions, Xiushan took the lead in establishing the Wuling Mountain Cooperation and Development Alliance under the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, consolidating cargo from over 40 enterprises in the area. By leveraging collective volume for better pricing, the alliance secured significant reductions in railway freight rates, lowered container costs for sea transport by 60%, and cut overall regional logistics costs by approximately 20%.

With corridor trains, China-Europe freight trains, and ASEAN cross-border highway routes, Xiushan has now built a multi-directional transport network—reaching Europe in 14 days, ASEAN in 2 days, and radiating to more than 10 surrounding counties and districts. The Wuling Mountain area, once hidden from the world, is now connected to the sea and global markets.

At the Wuling Mountain (Xiushan) International Logistics Hub, the dry port is bustling with neatly arranged containers, trucks coming and going, and seamless multimodal transport operations. The hub, which was completed and put into operation in July 2025, features three functional zones—a highway port, a dry port, and a port-side processing area. It serves as a key project supporting Xiushan's modern collection and distribution system and its development of new logistics formats such as international logistics, multimodal transport, and smart logistics.

"Due to lower freight rates and shorter transit times, more enterprises are choosing the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor for foreign trade," said Tian Jingyou, Deputy General Manager of Xiushan Guanglian Lugang Yunzhi Logistics Branch. He cited the example of a zinc ore producer in Baojing County, Hunan Province. Previously, the company imported zinc concentrate from Southeast Asia, which had to be shipped to coastal ports and then trucked over long distances to the plant, resulting in lengthy transport times and high warehousing and freight costs. In 2025, the company switched to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, with goods first arriving in Xiushan before being distributed to the plant. The results were immediate: transport time was cut from over 20 days to about a week, and overall logistics costs were halved. Tian noted, "Last year, the company imported about 6,000 tons of zinc concentrate through the corridor; in the first seven months of this year, volume has surged to 21,000 tons."

With corridor trains running regularly and bulk commodity imports and exports accelerating, Xiushan's local agricultural products, such as citrus and tea, have also found their way overseas. Zhang Shunqiu shared impressive figures: corridor cargo volume in 2025 grew sevenfold compared to 2023; in the first half of this year, Xiushan completed 1,284 TEUs of corridor cargo with a freight value of 224 million yuan, representing year-on-year growth of 19 times and 48 times, respectively.

While strengthening the corridor economy, Xiushan is also actively expanding its e-commerce industry. On November 7, 2025, the Wuling Mountain (Xiushan) International E-Commerce Industrial Park officially opened, marking a critical step in Xiushan's transition from a rural e-commerce model to an international e-commerce hub city.

"A solid e-commerce foundation, a strong industrial base, and excellent corridor infrastructure"—Sun Wenyi, General Manager of Pangu Xiushan Cross-Border E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (Pangu E-Commerce), used these "three strengths" to explain the company's choice to settle in Xiushan. As one of the first enterprises to join the park, its Pangu Xiushan Cross-Border E-Commerce Cluster Zone has attracted 40 e-commerce companies within just over six months and, through local talent development, has enabled 40 individuals to launch cross-border e-commerce OPC (One-Person Company) projects.

Yang Ding, a 30-year-old Xiushan native with years of domestic e-commerce experience, heard about the cross-border e-commerce initiative in May and signed up for the free training. With guidance from Pangu E-Commerce, his personal store quickly went live. "It's just getting started, and I've already made nearly a thousand yuan in profit. It will only get better," he said with confidence.

"Currently, the industrial park has gathered 668 young e-commerce professionals," Zhang Shunqiu said. Xiushan is building a full-cycle talent cultivation system for cross-border e-commerce to address the challenge of attracting and retaining talent in county-level areas, positioning cross-border e-commerce as a preferred path for young people returning home to start businesses.

Xiushan has also adopted a benefit-sharing model combining "leading cross-border e-commerce enterprises + agricultural cooperatives + farmers" to solve the difficulties of getting specialty products to overseas markets. In 2025, agricultural product exports exceeded 150 million yuan, with billion-yuan-level cross-border industrial clusters in Xiushan's Polygonatum (Huangjing) and tea sectors taking shape. More than 12,000 farming households have integrated into the cross-border industry chain, with an average annual income increase of over 8,000 yuan per household.

Data shows that in the first half of this year, Xiushan achieved online retail sales of 1.18 billion yuan and cross-border e-commerce sales of 110 million yuan. In 2022, Xiushan's total import and export volume was only 73.5 million yuan. From January to July this year, that figure has reached 280 million yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 51.2%.

More than 90 years ago, Red Army soldiers fought their way through the rugged mountains of Xiushan, blazing a revolutionary path that connected Hunan, Guizhou, and Chongqing, and sowing the seeds of revolution across the Wuling Mountains. Today, building on its position as a node on the eastern route of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, Xiushan allows domestic and international goods to converge and flow along this new "Long March." The spirit of breaking through blockades in pursuit of liberation has now transformed into the driving force behind Xiushan's efforts to overcome geographical barriers and open itself to the world.