China and Germany on Saturday demonstrated how their growing economic ties can be pushed into a yet more dynamic era in the next five to ten years.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping went to the German city of Duisburg, an industrial hub in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, to welcome a train carrying an assortment of computer hardware from the industrial city of Chongqing, located in the westernmost region of China.

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The train took only 16-days of travel through Central Asia and across Russia, through Belarus and Poland and into Germany. The rail line is dubbed as the "modern-day silk road," in reference to the ancient trade routes that connected Europe to the then kingdom of China.

Several multinational railway companies invested in developing the train line that spanned 11,000 kilometers (24,000 miles). The rail line called the "Yuxinou," formally opened in 2011, is an industrial fete that reduces the usual 20-day transport time of goods from China to Europe by sea.

Duisburg is Germany's center for manufacturing and production for the European transport industry and is ideally linked to Chongqing, which is home to several car parts manufacturers and information technology companies in China.

The Yuxinou line was dubbed as a fete of ages but it lacks the most important component - more traffic of goods.

At present, train from Chongqing leaves for Europe once a week hauling at least 50 containers but will return to China empty. The train line is still short of becoming a profitable endeavor in its nearly three years of operation.

According to industry estimates, nearly 90 percent of goods from China to Europe are moved through the seas. The Yuxinou rail line is still in search of its potential, if and when other goods from China can be brought to Chongqing.

Germany is a very important trading partner of China. As of the end of 2013, bilateral trade volume stood at US$ 161.2 Billion (1.01 Trillion yuan), the largest in the nearly forty years of diplomatic relations of China and Germany.