Resilience analysis of the sino-european trade transportation networks: The role of the New western land-sea corridor

China’s New Western Land-Sea Corridor (NWLC) has developed into an integrated transportation system characterized by multiple transportation modes and the dual support from domestic and international freight markets. Its flexible network structure and stable freight market resources endow the Sino-European Trade Transportation Network (SETN) with resilience attributes necessary to withstand disruptions and rapidly recover. To clarify the resilience of transportation networks between China’s core cities and Europe during the phased development of the NWLC, this study, grounded in the concept of “resilience,” represents its intrinsic attributes by the geometric characteristics of the fluctuation curve of transportation cost. Subsequently, a transportation cost function is given to capture the NWLC’s impact on promoting the Sino-European multimodal transportation. And, a discrete mode choice model is established based on the spatial heterogeneity of shippers’ sensitivity to transportation impedance. Finally, under two disruption scenarios – node disruption and corridor disruption, the fluctuation curves of the transportation cost from China’s core cities to Europe are simulated during the NWLC’s capacity enhancement. These curves’ geometric characteristics are then analyzed to assess the resilience of the SETN across various transportation distance ranges. The results show that the NWLC will significantly enhance the resilience of transportation networks connecting the cities in China’s Southwest and Northwest to Europe, but its impact on the port cities in China’s Northeast and Southeastern remains limited.