Volume of road freight traffic in China 2008-2020

China, the largest country in terms of area in the world, has been quick to develop state-of-the-art mobility infrastructure. Its vast network of roads allows for the transportation of billions of tons of cargo each year. However as of 2020, the volume of road freight traffic in China dropped to six billion ton-kilometers, the second year in which the road freight started going downards since the peak in 2018.

 Road travel in China 

Since its peak in 2012, the number of passengers of public road transport in China has reduced drastically, with numbers falling to as low as ten billion in 2020. The volume of public road passenger traffic in that year amounted to nearly 464 billion passenger-kilometers, mostly due to the global pandemic. When combined with the volume of cargo road freight traffic, this has become a burden on the already congested national highways and has posed an adverse impact on China’s air quality.

 Other means of transportation in China 

 Railways present a quicker alternative to roadways when transporting people and goods over long distances. In 2019, the average distance travelled by railway passengers was 419 kilometers while cargo was transported over an average distance of 716 kilometers. Meanwhile, the volume of both passenger and cargo airway traffic spiked to 1.2 trillion passenger-kilometers and 26.3 billion ton-kilometers, respectively, in the year 2019.