Published by ChinaMNC · Dingyuan

Chuzhou's transport buildout: what foreign founders should know about the Hefei–Nanjing corridor

Chuzhou is positioning itself as a connecting point between the Hefei and Nanjing metropolitan areas, backed by heavy transport investment. Here is what the published figures show and how foreign founders can use them when choosing a location or planning logistics in Anhui.

Why Chuzhou matters to foreign founders

Chuzhou, described in official materials as Anhui's eastern gateway, has been given a provincial role: acting as a key connecting point between the Hefei metropolitan area and the Nanjing metropolitan area. The city's eighth Party congress set this as its new positioning. Separately, the Yangtze River Delta integration implementation plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period listed a Hefei–Nanjing metropolitan area science and innovation linkage zone in the national layout.

For founders registering or operating a company in China, the practical question is not the political framing but the logistics. Chuzhou's answer is a transport network that has moved, over the past five years, from basic connectivity to a connected grid. The published figures below are worth reading as a location and supply-chain checklist.

Road network: scale and access

According to the source, Chuzhou has completed more than RMB 56 billion in cumulative transport infrastructure investment, placing it near the top of Anhui. Key road figures:

• Total road length of 20,851 km.
• Four new expressways totaling 210.5 km, plus two expressways widened from four to eight lanes totaling 143.3 km.
• 790.5 km of open expressway, ranked first in Anhui and third in the Yangtze River Delta.
• 42 expressway interchanges, ranked second in Anhui.
• 2,352 km of first- and second-class trunk roads, ranked second in Anhui.

The city says it was the first in Anhui to achieve expressway access for every county and county seat, and that all major towns in its jurisdiction can reach an expressway within 15 minutes. Two projects — the Chuzhou Avenue section from Hongwu Road to Chuangye South Road, and the Dingyuan–Changfeng section of the Chuhe expressway — received the Li Chun Award, described as China's highest honor for highway construction.

What this means in practice

If your China entity depends on road freight or on staff commuting between Anhui and Jiangsu, the density of interchanges and trunk roads matters more than headline length. The 15-minute access claim is a useful benchmark when shortlisting industrial parks or warehouse sites; verify it on the ground for any specific plot.

Waterways and port capacity

The source describes a shift from short inland feeder shipping to river-sea connectivity. The 87 km Huai River channel has been upgraded to Class II standard across its full length. The revised Chuzhou Port master plan was approved by the provincial government. The Tianchang Baita River channel maintenance was completed, and the Chuhe Chaheji lock, Mingguang Runhui wharf and Zhongmei Xinji wharf are in operation.

Port throughput rose from 12.04 million tonnes in 2021 to 16.08 million tonnes in 2025, an average annual growth rate of 7.5%. Outbound port volume grew from 2.12 million tonnes to 4.37 million tonnes over the same period, an average annual rate of 19.82%. Container throughput rose from 20,400 TEU to 133,600 TEU, an average annual rate of 59.97%. In the first eight months of the year cited, Chuzhou Port ranked first among ports along the Huai River for both container and cargo throughput.

Rail, commuting and the Nanjing link

The Chuning intercity railway, described as China's first cross-provincial intercity rail line, is operating. The Chuzhou section is 44.83 km with 14 stations, running 144 trains per day at a punctuality rate of 99.98%. In the first half of 2026 it carried 1.4655 million passengers, with 149,500 bus transfer passengers.

The adjusted section has completed a key continuous beam closure, and the Nanjing section is advancing in parallel. Once the full line opens, it will connect directly to Nanjing North Station, changing Chuzhou–Nanjing travel from segmented operation to a direct trip, with commuting time reduced to 35 minutes.

On 21 September 2026, a 170-metre, roughly 30,000-tonne bridge section on the Nanzhe Road elevated line rotated into position across the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway. The station building is scheduled for completion by the end of July 2027 as part of a station-city integration project. The Chuzhou high-speed rail comprehensive passenger hub and the Ninghuai high-speed rail Tianchang hub have been included in the provincial transport 15th Five-Year Plan, with the city seeking central and provincial funding.

Logistics costs and multimodal projects

Chuzhou says it is working to become the Anhui city with the lowest transport and logistics costs. From January to September of the reporting year, transport investment reached RMB 9.07 billion, up 23% year on year. Sixteen transport projects entered the Ministry of Transport's highway project pool for the 15th Five-Year Plan, with total investment of RMB 28.22 billion, alongside one waterway project at RMB 1.57 billion. Four expressway projects totaling 230 km are under construction or newly started, and three more totaling 66 km are planned; once complete, the city's expressway network is expected to exceed 1,100 km.

The city has planned 169 logistics network projects with total investment of about RMB 61 billion, under a layout described as one core, three belts, six ports, multiple nodes and full coverage.

On the Hefei side, the Hefei–Nanjing expressway carries about 80,000 vehicles daily in both directions between Quanjiao and Hefei. The eight-lane expansion of the Chuzhou sections of the Chuxin and Hexu South expressways is fully open. On the Nanjing side, the Lailiu expressway opened 138 days ahead of schedule, and the G36 Ningluo expressway was widened to eight lanes.

Five expressways under construction — S10 Yanghuai, S64 Mingxu, G0323 Fengding, G9904 Tianyi and S98 Quanlu — are intended to support movement within the two metropolitan areas.

The Chuhe waterway project

The Chuhe–Qingliu River shipping development project has total investment of RMB 730 million and a length of 19 km, with six planned 500-tonne general berths. It began construction in February 2026 and is scheduled for completion in October 2027; once built, vessels would reach the Yangtze after 24 km.

Relying on the Class II Huai River channel, Chuzhou Port runs nine regular custom routes, one premium route and three demonstration routes, and has opened near-sea routes with ports in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong.

The city follows a port-before-production, port-industry integration model. Citing quartzite mineral reserves of about 10 billion tonnes, it has attracted companies including Flat Glass, Almaden and CSG New Energy, and says this reduces transport and logistics costs for those firms by more than 10%.

In 2025, Chuzhou's coal-chemical-grain coordinated transport project was the only one in Anhui selected as a national transport power pilot. Led by Dingyuan Huasu Logistics and relying on the Dingyuan salt chemical industrial park and a dedicated railway line, it builds a road-port-park multimodal hub for bulk coal, chemicals and grain. In the first three quarters of the reporting year, bulk container handling reached 605,000 tonnes, up 17% year on year, and grain shipments reached 17,600 tonnes, up 255%, with grain transport loss down 1% from 2024.

Public transport and cross-provincial access

Chuzhou's county-wide transport integration is rated 5A, and all administrative villages have bus service. New energy buses account for 96.9% of the fleet, and the city met the national green travel evaluation standard. The 2026 Anhui green travel and bus week launch event was held in Chuzhou.

Residents of the Yangtze River Delta can use their social security cards on Chuzhou buses and rail with the same treatment as local residents, and eligible groups — about 420,000 people including older residents, people with disabilities and military personnel and families — can use one card across counties.

Eight cross-provincial bus routes link Chuzhou and Nanjing with 93 vehicles and 576 daily departures. The Chuning transfer center handles about 7,000 transfers daily. The two sides established a cost-sharing mechanism with 50% operating subsidies for extended routes, described as replicable Chuning experience. Tianchang runs routes 106 and 303 to Luhe district, Lai'an runs N01 and N05 to Nanjing Linchang metro station, and the B02 route from Banta town to Zhuzhen town in Luhe opened in 2025.

Practical takeaways for founders

• Site selection: use expressway interchange density and the 15-minute access claim as screening criteria, then verify specific plots.
• Logistics: if you ship bulk goods, the Huai River Class II channel and Chuzhou Port routes deserve a cost comparison against road freight.
• Commuting: the 35-minute Chuzhou–Nanjing target depends on full-line opening; until then, plan around segmented service.
• Incentives: the cited 10% logistics cost reduction applies to specific anchor firms in the quartzite chain, not to all investors.

This summary is based on information published by the relevant Chinese government website and is general information, not legal or tax advice.