BEIJING, Jan. 6 -- China's waterway cargo transport logged steady expansion in the first 11 months of 2023, with the total freight volume rising 9 percent year on year, official data showed.

A total of 8.51 billion tonnes of cargo was transported via waterways in the country during this period, according to the Ministry of Transport.

In November alone, China's waterways handled 850 million tonnes of cargo, up 11.2 percent from a year earlier, the data revealed.

During the January-November period, northwest China's Shaanxi Province led the water freight expansion among provincial-level regions, posting a year-on-year surge of 55.6 percent. It was followed by Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces in northeast China.