The roadway below the wheels of the light, Japanese-designed Dong Feng trucks loading and unloading at Shenzhen’s shabby Warehouse Number 333 testifies to how goods used to move in this part of southern China. Embedded in the concrete alongside each loading bay at the facility, part of state-owned Sinotrans, runs a long-neglected railway track.

The unused rails signify how the rapid development of manufacturing and the associated logistics services in China has left the country’s railway behind. The system – the world’s busiest, run by the central government’s Ministry of Railways – has long been used to transport military cargo, passengers and priority goods such as coal and food. But the time-sensitive consumer goods coming in and out of Warehouse 333 are mostly moving only a few kilometres between the factory and the warehouse, from where they will mostly move to nearby ports for export. Rail cannot compete over such distances. Over longer distances, the fast-expanding road network and quickly-improving Yangtze River barge services are more reliable and, in road’s case, quicker.