Earlier this month, more than 80 metric tons of dried chilies from Pakistan arrived at the Chengdu International Railway Port. Packed into eight containers, the cargo entered China through Qinzhou Port in Guangxi, then moved inland to Chengdu via a sea-rail intermodal service operating under the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor.
On the surface, this is an unremarkable agricultural transaction — one spice crossing a border. Yet the shipment carries significance well beyond its weight in chilies.
It was the first consignment to arrive in China under an agricultural cooperation project tied to the Belt and Road Initiative-financed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, and it offers a rare, concrete glimpse of what the next phase of Pakistan-China connectivity might look like.
Chilies destined for southwestern China have traditionally traveled through northern Chinese ports before being redistributed inland — a route that adds handling, storage and time costs.
The Qinzhou-Chengdu link changes that sequence: Cargo now moves more directly from the coast to Sichuan’s provincial capital, cutting delivery time by an estimated seven to 10 days and reducing logistics costs by roughly 1,000 yuan (about US$140) per ton, according to figures cited by the Chengdu port authority.
More than 900 additional tons are reportedly already in transit, with the operator hoping to move the service toward regular, scheduled operation. None of this amounts to a new corridor built from scratch.
It is, more precisely, a new logistics channel threaded through existing infrastructure: Qinzhou’s port facilities, the land-sea trade corridor, and Chengdu’s rail and bonded-warehousing network.
That distinction is noteworthy because it points to where CPEC’s value is likely to be tested going forward. The corridor’s first phase was measured in kilometers of highway, megawatts of power and tons of cargo moving through Gwadar. Those remain necessary foundations, but infrastructure alone does not sell a farmer’s crop in a foreign market.
What the chili shipment demonstrates — modestly, and for a single commodity — is the harder, less visible work of connecting Pakistani producers to Chinese processors, distributors and retail chains. This is the terrain that discussions of “CPEC 2.0” increasingly point toward: not a rebranding of the corridor, but a shift in emphasis from building connectivity to using it.
Chengdu’s role here is not incidental. Sichuan and Chongqing are among China’s most significant chili-consuming markets, driven by hotpot culture, a large condiment industry and a dense concentration of restaurants and food processors. China imported roughly 400,000 metric tons of dried chilies in 2025, with Pakistan, India and Myanmar among the leading suppliers.
Chengdu’s railway port is also positioned as a logistics hub linking the land-sea corridor with China-Europe freight services, combining transport, bonded warehousing, trading and distribution functions in one location.
For Pakistani exporters, the opportunity is not simply a shorter shipping route, but potential proximity to an integrated supply chain — the kind of arrangement that can turn a one-off sale into a recurring commercial relationship.
It would be a mistake, however, to treat the arrival of eight containers as proof that Pakistan’s agricultural export problem is solved. Pakistan produces chilies, rice, mangoes and a range of other agricultural goods in substantial volume; the constraint has rarely been production capacity alone.
The real constraint has been everything that happens after harvest: logistics costs, transit time, inconsistent supply, packaging standards, compliance with sanitary and phytosanitary requirements, and the absence of durable links with Chinese buyers and processors. A faster, cheaper route addresses one piece of that chain.
It does not, by itself, guarantee reliable quality control, consistent volumes across seasons, or the trading relationships needed to convert a pilot shipment into a standing export line. The gap between a successful first delivery and a commercially self-sustaining trade flow is where most such initiatives actually succeed or fail.
It is also worth resisting the temptation to frame this development as competition with Gwadar. Pakistan-China connectivity is not a single corridor to be optimized, but an increasingly multi-route, multi-node system; a new channel through Qinzhou and Chengdu need not diminish the case for Gwadar’s own trade and transshipment ambitions.
Different routes serve different markets, commodities and cost structures. Having more than one option is itself a form of resilience for Pakistani exporters, not a zero-sum outcome.
The real test of this shipment will not be whether the story of Pakistani chilies reaching Chengdu makes for good headlines. It will be whether the route can be repeated often enough, reliably enough and cheaply enough to become a genuine export channel rather than a one-time demonstration — and whether the model, if it works, can be extended to other Pakistani commodities seeking access to China’s interior markets.
That is a considerably harder and slower proposition than moving eight containers once. But it is the proposition on which the next phase of CPEC will actually be judged.
Mujtaba Arshad is a research associate at the Centre of Excellence for CPEC, PIDE.
