Chongqing - A truck filled with 25 tons of radishes departed from a vegetable base in Tongliang District, Chongqing, on June 6., and it will be loaded onto a train and travel through Guizhou and Yunnan before reaching Lào Cai, Vietnam. 

Thanks to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (ILSTC), a key logistics passage to connect Southwest China with Southeast Asia and allows Southeast Asia to connect to Europe through intercontinental freight railways and the Yangtze River waterway, this is the first time Tongliang radishes have been exported overseas.

The radishes from Tongliang are produced in a vegetable base in Gaolou Town. The terrain here is flat, close to the source of the Fu River, and the sandy soil is very fertile, making it one of the main radish-producing areas in Chongqing. 

In 2022, the radishes from this area were selected for the national list of excellent new agricultural products endorsed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China.

"In addition to radishes, we expect to export 3,000 tons of other vegetables through the ILSTC this year," said Zhang Guisheng, the director of the Tongliang District Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

Zhang said that established in March 2022, the Longxiang Supply and Marketing Cooperative Group Co., Ltd. in Tongliang District is the key to branding high-quality agricultural products and integrating them into the ILSTC trade. 

Supply and marketing cooperatives were popular autonomous commercial organizations in rural areas of China before the reform and opening-up period. They were responsible for purchasing and selling products planned by the state and promoting and selling products to farmers. 

In recent years, the Chinese government has encouraged the operation of such units, leading to a wave of reconstruction of grassroots supply and marketing cooperatives across the country.

"We aim to use this as a starting point and achieve regular export of radishes from November to July each year," said Zhou Yu, the mayor of Gaolou Town, expressing confidence in the prospects of foreign trade development.

According to a report on its national radish industrial development, China's radish production in 2021 was 18.176 million tons, accounting for 43.62% of global radish production. Vietnam is the leading export country for Chinese radishes, accounting for 21.5%, followed by Thailand, South Korea, and others. These countries have a preference for radishes in their diets.