A bird's eye view of an overpass in Hai'an. [Photo/haian.com]

Hai'an, a city administered by Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province, has invested heavily to build itself into a transportation hub over the past decade.

For example, the city spent 100 million yuan ($14.74 million) renovating the Hai'an section of the Lianyungang-Shanghai shipping channel and established four 1,000-metric ton berths.

After the Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong railway opened to the public in 2020, Hai'an launched sea-rail combined trains to Yangkou and Ningbo ports, allowing the city's railway logistics base to operate China-Europe trains.

The Hai'an railway logistics base currently has hundreds of clients, and in 2021 the base received 1.4 million tons of cargo, accounting for one fourth of the 14 railway freight stations along the Hai'an-Suqian section of the Xinyi-Changxin railway.

The Hai'an Trade and Logistics Industrial Park has established six cargo distribution centers for non-ferrous metals and plastic raw materials, and each week it sees the departure of a China-Europe train loaded with more than 30 containers to ASEAN.

Convenient roads, railways, and inland waterways have enabled Hai'an to become part of the one-hour economic circle of the Yangtze River Delta, boosting the economic development of the city.

The GDP of Hai'an increased from 48.817 billion yuan in 2012 to 134.309 billion yuan in 2021 with an annual growth rate of 9.3 percent.

The city's industrial taxable sales totaled 237.01 billion yuan last year, making it the first of its kind in Nantong to exceed 200 billion yuan.