Shipping Routes from China

Transport Systems are fundamental to economic and social activities such as commuting, manufacturing, distributing goods, or supplying energy. Each route in the system has a purpose, including an origin, a potential set of intermediate locations, and a destination.

Here’s the page showing main shipping routes from China to the worldwide, including the Silk Road, the ocean shipping routes, main ports of each sea route, with the main container shipping companies which you can consider to choose as an importer or ecommerce business owner.

One Overland Shipping Route
Three Ocean Shipping Routes

Overland Shipping Route – The Silk Road

The Silk Road was the most enduring trade route in human history.

Although it is suspected that significant trade occurred for about 1,000 years beforehand, the Silk Road opened around 139 BCE once China was unified under the Han dynasty.

The Silk Road

It started at Chang’an (Xi’an) and ended at Antioch or Constantinople (Istanbul), passing by commercial cities such as Samarkand and Kashgar.

Caravans did not travel for the whole distance since the trading system functioned as a chain with merchants shipping goods back and forth from one trade center to the other. In addition to silk, major commodities traded included gold, jade, tea, and spices.

Since the transport capacity was limited, over long distances, and often unsafe, luxury goods (spices, silk, tea, porcelain, etc.) were the only commodities that could be traded.

The beginning of the 21st century has brought renewed interest in a long-distance rail connection between Asia and Europe, especially with the booming Asian trade and the increasing pressure to ship containerized freight in a time-sensitive manner over long distances.

These connections came to be known as

Trans Asian Railway
Northern East-West Corridor
Eurasian Landbridge
New Silk Road
OBOR (One Belt One Road; a term used between 2014 and 2017 )
BRI (Belt and Road Initiative; a term used since 2017)

At present, China-Europe Express trains reach 223 cities in 25 European countries and connect more than 100 cities in 11 Asian countries. The logistics service network basically covers the entire Eurasian region. Rail freight is faster than sea freight, and cheaper than air freight. Contact us to learn more.

Three Sea Shipping Routes

There are seven critical points in the global ocean shipping supply chain:

the English Channel
the Malacca Strait
the Northern Sea Passage
the Singapore Strait
the Panama Canal
the Strait of Gibraltar
the Suez Canal

In general, total three different routes for made-in-China products transport to the world via the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean.

shipping-routes-from-China China Shipping Routes

When taking the Pacific route, the ships will go through the south of the East China Sea. Then they go northward through the Sea of Japan through the Okhotsk to enter the North Pacific Ocean. Via this route the ships can reach the west of Latin America, the west of the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and western Canada.

In addition, numerous vessels will take the Atlantic route. In this case, the ships will go in a southern direction from China, and sail via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope. Consequently, the ships can set direction to Western Europe, the East Coast of the U.S., the Suez Canal, the Gulf and the Mediterranean area.

A third route the ships are often taking is the Indian Ocean. This lane is often used for oil transport. The lane enables China goods to reach the Persian Gulf, East Africa, Western Europe and North America by setting sail towards the Cape of Good Hope.

Now let’s divide into different countries or regions.

Shipping by Countries or Regions