On August 14, at the Chongqing Xiushan Railway Station freight yard, dozens of neatly stacked containers held petroleum coke and chrome ore shipped from Southeast Asia via the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, awaiting freight trains to carry them to factories in surrounding areas. This scene has become routine in the region.

Tucked deep in the Wuling Mountains, Xiushan County borders no coast and no frontier, leaving its open economy struggling for years. Today, domestic and international goods converge and flow through this town, while cross-border e-commerce accelerates its rise—this small inland city has carved out a bold new path toward openness.

How did this mountainous town transform into a frontier of openness? In the view of Zhang Shunqiu, deputy director of Xiushan County's Corridor Economy Development Center, "Opportunities always favor those who are prepared." Xiushan's outward breakthrough owes much to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, as well as its earlier efforts to build a regional logistics network and rural e-commerce ecosystem.

Situated at the junction of Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, and Guizhou, Xiushan took a critical step as early as 2009—establishing the Xiushan (Wuling) Modern Logistics Park. From that point on, the county progressively built a logistics network radiating across the region, maturing into a regional trade and logistics hub.

While the logistics network did not immediately transform Xiushan's open economy, it fueled rapid growth in rural e-commerce. In 2018 and 2020, Xiushan secured the "National Demonstration Logistics Park" and "National E-Commerce Demonstration Base" titles, becoming the country's first county-level logistics park to hold both national designations simultaneously.

The right opportunity arrived at the perfect moment. In 2020, as the eastern hub of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor took shape, Xiushan was designated a node city on the corridor's eastern route. Zhang Shunqiu recalls that Xiushan began planning its own access to the sea—a direct route from the Wuling Mountains to Qinzhou, Guangxi.

In October 2021, a 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 region, Xiushan spearheaded the formation of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor Wuling Mountain Cooperation and Development Alliance, consolidating cargo from over 40 regional enterprises. By aggregating volumes to negotiate lower rail freight rates, the alliance cut container costs by 60% and reduced overall regional logistics costs by roughly 20%.

With corridor trains, China-Europe freight trains, and ASEAN cross-border highway trucks, Xiushan now operates a multi-directional transport network—reaching Europe in 14 days, ASEAN in 2 days, and serving over 10 surrounding counties and districts. The once-remote Wuling Mountains are now connected to the sea and the world.

At the Wuling Mountain (Xiushan) International Logistics Hub, containers are stacked in neat rows at the dry port, freight vehicles shuttle without pause, and multimodal transport runs with efficient precision—activity pulses through the summer heat. The hub, completed and operational in July 2025, features three functional zones: a highway port, a dry port, and a port-side processing area. It stands as a key project for Xiushan to build a modern collection and distribution system and develop new logistics models such as international logistics, multimodal transport, and smart logistics.

"Thanks to lower freight rates and shorter transit times, more companies are choosing the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor for foreign trade," says Tian Jingyou, deputy general manager of Xiushan Guanglian Lugang Yunzhi Logistics Branch. He cites a zinc mining company in Baojing County, Hunan, as an example: previously, importing zinc concentrate from Southeast Asia required shipping to coastal ports first, then long-haul trucking to the plant—resulting in lengthy transit times and prohibitive warehousing and freight costs. In 2025, the company switched to the corridor, with goods arriving in Xiushan before being distributed to the plant. The results were immediate: transport time compressed from over 20 days to about a week, and total logistics costs were halved. Tian notes, "Last year, the company imported around 6,000 tons of zinc concentrate through the corridor; in the first seven months of this year, that volume has surged to 21,000 tons."

As corridor trains run on a regular schedule, bulk commodity imports and exports have accelerated, and Xiushan's local agricultural products—citrus, tea, and more—have ridden the wave to international markets. Zhang Shunqiu offers striking figures: corridor cargo volume in 2025 is 7 times that of 2023; in the first half of this year alone, Xiushan moved 1,284 TEUs with a cargo value of 224 million yuan, up 19-fold and 48-fold year-on-year, respectively.

While strengthening its corridor economy, Xiushan has also expanded its e-commerce sector. On November 7, 2025, the Wuling Mountain (Xiushan) International E-Commerce Industrial Park officially opened, marking a key step in Xiushan's evolution from a rural e-commerce benchmark to an international e-commerce hub.

"Strong e-commerce fundamentals, strong industrial foundations, and strong corridor infrastructure"—Sun Wenyi, general manager of Pangu Xiushan Cross-Border E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (Pangu E-Commerce), sums up the company's reasons for choosing Xiushan with these "three strengths." As one of the first tenants, Pangu's cross-border e-commerce cluster has already attracted 40 e-commerce companies within six months and trained 40 local 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 Xiushan's cross-border e-commerce push in May and signed up for free training. With guidance from Pangu E-Commerce, his personal online store quickly went live. "It's just starting out—I've already made nearly a thousand yuan in profit, and things will only get better," he says with confidence.

"The industrial park now hosts 668 young e-commerce professionals," says Zhang Shunqiu. Xiushan is building a full-cycle talent development system for the cross-border e-commerce industry to address the challenge of attracting and retaining skilled workers in a county setting, positioning cross-border e-commerce as a preferred path for young people returning to their hometowns to start businesses.

Xiushan has also adopted a profit-sharing model that links leading cross-border e-commerce companies, agricultural cooperatives, and farming households to solve the dilemma of "hard-to-export, hard-to-sell" specialty products. In 2025, agricultural product exports surpassed 150 million yuan, with Xiushan's polygonatum and tea industries forming billion-yuan cross-border industrial clusters. More than 12,000 farming households have joined the cross-border supply chain, with average annual household income rising by over 8,000 yuan.

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 stood at just 73.5 million yuan. From January to July this year, that figure reached 280 million yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 51.2%.

Over 90 years ago, Red Army soldiers fought through Xiushan's rugged mountains on foot, blazing a revolutionary path connecting Hunan, Guizhou, and Chongqing, and sowing the seeds of revolution across the Wuling range. Today, Xiushan leverages its position as an eastern node of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor to channel domestic and international goods along a new "Long March" route. The spirit of breaking through blockades that once drove the Red Army now fuels Xiushan's drive to transcend its geographic constraints and open itself to the world.