That's five times the number of containers that reach the EU in 2016. The point of the research was to gauge the impact of the New Silk Road initiative, whose goal is to develop trade between China, Europe and the countries along the route. The idea of creating a new so-called silk road was presented in 2013 by Chinese president Xi Jinping. He's keen to drive his country's economic growth and expand its influence on global markets. Over the past five years, over 70 countries and regions responsible for one-third of global GDP have expressed interest in the project. Poland is one of them and it's positioning itself to become one of the main distribution hubs along the line by using rail power._x000D_ _x000D_ At the moment, roughly 90 percent of all Chinese goods entering Europe are delivered by sea. Once they arrive at one of the western European seaports they are distributed by land to the rest of the continent. Poland is trying to change this by creating new routes for land transport. "We're participating in a project that not only develops railways around Poland, but we're also helping to improve tracks in other countries along the silk road, such as Kazakhstan. In this way, we've already managed to reduce the number of days trains take to go from Asia to Poland from 41 to 38 days," says a Ministry of Transport expert on rail cargo._x000D_ _x000D_ Poland's rail company is planning for a big spike in business, which is why PKP PLK Cargo is expanding its intermodal terminals just outside of Terespol and adding new tracks at the border crossing with Belarus. The company is investing over PLN 250m in Malaszewicze alone, where the state-owned company operates four terminals. This includes the installation of ten new broad-gauge tracks (1520 mm) leading from the border. Due for completion in 2022, the company is financing the work on its own. "We want to be the EU's main logistics center," said Czeslaw Warsewicz, the CEO of PKP Cargo, speaking at the launch of construction works. "We will achieve this by using our location along the New Silk Road. It's not just PKP Cargo that will benefit from this, but our whole economy."_x000D_ _x000D_ Change is already happening, of course. In 2011 Poland welcomed just 17 cargo trains from China. By 2016 the number had jumped to 2,200. And the rapidly growing scale of Chinese exports from China is visible even since then. In 2016, the terminal at Malaszewicze reloaded over 201,000 tons of containers from China. A year later the number rose to 350,000 tons. There may even be potential for Polish exporters to drive business in the vast Chinese market. "We are currently discussing strategies about which goods are produced in Poland, and are not available in China," says a contact within the Ministry of Transport. "What's surprising is the demand for high quality baby products such as cribs, or for office furniture."PKP Cargo experts say that China could become a market for European food exports. The first step, however, is for the new terminals to be completed.