An aerial drone photo taken on March 20, 2024 shows a container ship berthing at the Tianjin Port in Tianjin, north China. (Xinhua/Zhao Zishuo)

China's container multimodal transportation volume has maintained an annual growth rate of over 25 percent for eight consecutive years, entering a new stage of large-scale development, according to an industrial conference held in north China's Tianjin Municipality on Friday.

Notably, in 2023, the cumulative volume of rail-water intermodal transport through the country's ports exceeded 11.7 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of container cargo, up 11.7 percent year on year, according to this international conference on port intermodal transportation.

During the period, China's railway container transport volume reached 33.23 million TEUs, with a year-on-year growth of 5.1 percent, becoming a strong driving force for its multimodal transportation, according to statistics released during the conference.

China is the world's largest manufacturing country, the second-largest consumer market and the top country in terms of cargo trade, with a large total volume of goods and a rich variety of categories.

To reduce logistics costs, optimize the transportation structure and achieve its dual-carbon goal of reaching the peak of carbon emissions and attaining carbon neutrality, the country is exploring a diversified range of multimodal transportation services.

China's multimodal transportation services mainly include rail-water intermodal, road-rail intermodal, international rail intermodal and land-air intermodal.

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of its port infrastructure, China's rail-water intermodal has shown a strong momentum of development. The volume of rail-water intermodal transportation in China posted an average annual increase of 24.5 percent over the past nine years, said Li Muyuan, executive vice president of the China Container Industry Association.