BEIJING: For veteran Chinese truck driver Li Cishen, crossing the border into Vietnam was nothing new — but this time was different. Behind the wheel of his 18-meter-long freight truck loaded with fresh vegetables, Li wasn’t heading for the border city of Lao Cai, as he usually did. Instead, he was bound for Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi — a 700-kilometer international journey from Kunming to Hanoi that marked his first real foray into the heart of a neighboring country.
“Before this, I only made it to Lao Cai and called that Vietnam,” Li said. “This time, I went all the way to Hanoi. That’s a first for me.”
On May 14, Li and 17 other Chinese drivers set off from Kunming in Yunnan province and Nanning in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, heading south to Vietnam. Their freight vehicles, carrying electronics, fresh produce, flowers and general merchandise and two passenger buses, arrived in Hanoi the following day.
What made this trip historic is not just the destination, but the policy behind it: it was the first time Chinese freight vehicles entered Vietnam’s interior under the Cross-Border Transport Facilitation Agreement (CBTA) — a core initiative of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperation program. It aims to streamline movement of people and goods, boosting regional connectivity.
The trip marks a major breakthrough in regional logistics and trade. Previously, Chinese trucks were required to stop at the border, where goods had to be transferred to Vietnamese vehicles — a process that caused delays, raised logistics costs, and increased the risk of cargo damage.
Under the new agreement, trucks can now travel directly into each other’s territory without transshipment.
“Now our trucks can drive directly into Vietnam’s major cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City without having to transship goods at the border,” said Jin Jia, director of international business at a Chinese logistics company, Yunnan Maosheng International Logistics.
“This permit works like a passport for our trucks — domestically, we use the vehicle license, and internationally, we use the GMS permit,” he said.
Jin noted that eliminating the need for reloading saves at least 800 to 1,000 yuan ($111 to $139) per truck, while also cutting delivery times significantly. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
