Overland corridors as a substitute for ocean freight in China–Europe trade

Overland corridors offer alternatives to ocean freight, but rising railway traffic does not by itself demonstrate maritime substitution. This study evaluates the scale, direction, and commodity composition of reported modal reallocation in China–European Union trade. An original secondary analysis of Eurostat Comext data reconstructs a fixed 27-country European Union panel for 2015–2025 and applies a symmetric commodity decomposition to 2023–2025 observations. In 2024, railway imports from China increased by 40.6% in value and 59.6% in net mass. Rail’s share of combined rail and sea imports rose from 3.665% to 4.824% by value and from 1.919% to 2.815% by mass. Among 92 matched commodity chapters, within-chapter changes accounted for 1.160 of the 1.163 percentage-point increase in the value share. The value-share increase reversed in 2025, while exports to China displayed falling rail value shares alongside rising mass shares. Diverting 10% of 2024 seaborne import mass would arithmetically require railway throughput 4.45 times its observed level. These findings support a selective and reversible role for rail within a maritime-dominated system. They do not identify causal diversion, corridor-specific performance, or spare capacity. Border-mode measurement, unclassified trade, and incomplete commodity coverage constrain interpretation and motivate shipment-level research.