On September 5, Mr. Liu, a lamp seller on Amazon Germany, found out from the official website of China Postal Express & Logistics Co. Ltd. (www.ems.com.cn) that his mail addressed to Germany had arrived in Malaszewicze, Poland. Previously, when mail items departed from Wuhan by China-Europe freight trains, their shipment information couldn’t be accessed until they were received by the destination postal operators abroad. But now the shipment information along the route can be tracked several days after the departure, Mr. Liu said happily. This is achieved through the China-Europe freight train shipment information collection system independently developed by Hubei Postal Branch, which has now been successfully connected to China Post’s new-generation mailing platform.

In recent years, Hubei Postal Branch has actively opened mail routes on China-Europe freight trains and continuously promoted regular mail transportation via such trains, to serve China’s Belt and Road Initiative. On June 20, 2020, it conducted mail transportation tests via China-Europe freight trains, and opened the land transport channel for international mail. With the strong support of the General Administration of Customs, Wuhan became one of the two cities in China with regular mail transportation via China-Europe freight trains in May, 2022. Hubei Postal Branch quickly communicated with the Customs and railway authorities to smooth out customs clearance, transfer, loading and other links, so as to ensure the safe and smooth shipment of international mail via China-Europe freight trains.

By the end of August, Hubei Postal Branch had shipped 18 containers of mail via China-Europe freight trains, carrying more than 40,000 international mail items, weighing a total of 130 tons. These items have been sent to 23 European countries like the UK, France and Germany, and the Belt and Road countries as well.

In the past, however, because of slow update or even inaccessibility of shipment information, many cross-border e-commerce buyers chose to apply for refund on platforms, which resulted in losses to cross-border e-commerce merchants and thus posed challenges to the operations and development of mail transport business via China-Europe freight trains.

In order to solve such problems, Hubei Postal Branch set up a special task force for the project design, focusing on solving such problems as extracting and collecting data elements of the events, and connecting and tracking the shipment data. As the operating company of China Railway Express (Wuhan) was unable to provide synchronous query of shipment data by means of system connection for the time being, Hubei Postal Information Technology Support Center decided to develop a shipment information collection system for China-Europe freight trains independently to connect with China Post’s new-generation mailing platform.

After demonstrating and analyzing various technologies, the center developed the function of collecting shipment data of China-Europe freight trains, making it possible to collect the data elements of tracking events at eight railway stations like Wujiashan in Wuhan and Alataw Pass in Xinjiang and to synchronize the data collected to the official website of China Post Express & Logistics Co. Ltd. and China Post’s mailing platform. Eventually, customers can track the shipment updates of their items along the stations of China-Europe freight trains at www.ems.com.cn or cross-border e-commerce platforms. For customers, their mail items on China-Europe freight trains are now provided with more detailed tracking events, more timely updates and better customer experience, which is conducive to enhancing the competitiveness of Hubei products transported via China-Europe freight trains.