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London is the 15th city in Europe to be added to China’s freight train services to the continent as Xi seeks to reinforce commercial links with markets across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In 2013, Xi unveiled his so-called Belt-and-Road initiative, making transport lines the centrepiece of his efforts to create a modern Silk Road.

Brunel is also involved in the operation of a China-Madrid freight train that’s run for more than a year and ranks as the world’s longest rail service, ahead even of the Moscow-Vladivostok trans-Siberian passenger route. The Spanish train carries olive oil back to China, and White said in an interview that the U.K. operation, which will unload in Barking, east London, needs to tap a similar export flow, possibly of British designer goods.

China has initially set aside about $40 billion in a fund to finance roads and railways abroad under the plan, while the nation’s trade with countries along the routes could reach $2.5 trillion in about a decade, Yao Gang, the then vice chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission, said in 2015.

Railways is one of the top priorities of President Xi and only last month, the country announced that it plans to spend 3.5 trillion yuan ($503 billion) to expand the national railway system by 2020.

The high-speed rail network will span more than 30,000 kilometers under the proposal, according to details released at a State Council Information Office briefing in Beijing Thursday. The distance, about 6.5 times the length of a road trip between New York and Los Angeles, will cover 80 percent of major cities in China.