BEIJING - China's port and shipping facilities are to be upgraded to include
two major new regions, the Ministry of Communications has announced.
Communications Minister Li Shenglin said the two additional port groups are on
the mainland side of the Taiwan Strait in southern
Fujian province; and in
Hainan and southern
Guangdong. Li announced the plans in a special interview with China
Daily at a recent sea transport forum in the port city of
Tianjin.
Five port "clusters", rather than the existing three surrounding
Shanghai, Shenzhen
and Tianjin, will be prioritized as part of a new port-development plan. The
plan is part of an effort to match the national 2006-10 social and economic
development program, Li said.
Li said China's seaports and their relatively easy access to containerized
shipping and industrial materials had been a major factor in transforming the
nation's economy. "Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tianjin have already been built into
national ocean transportation hubs," he said.
Shanghai, at the mouth of the Yangtze River, is the largest business city in
China, serving the versatile urban economic network across the Yangtze River
Delta. Shenzhen is becoming an increasingly important support center for
Hong Kong, and is in itself leading many smaller ports on the Pearl
River Delta, where China's largest group of exporting manufacturers are
located. Tianjin, close to Beijing
and a key link of all the seaports around the Bohai Bay, is vital to the
economy of northern China.
However, Li said the two newly planned port clusters would be of no less
importance.
The southeastern port cluster would be built around Xiamen, a business center
of southern Fujian, joined by Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Putian and Zhangzhou. Zhangzhou
will serve as a destination for China's imports of crude oil and natural gas,
and the others will mainly handle containers.
The Fujian port blueprint is part of the central government's scheme known as
the Western Shore Economic Zone of the Taiwan Strait. This plan was intended to
help develop economic ties between the Chinese mainland and
Taiwan. Li said this would anticipate free-trade relations between the
mainland and Taiwan, which he said would benefit business communities on both
sides of the strait, although there has been little progress so far.
Xiamen is already a large port. Mayor Zhang Changping recently expressed the
municipal government's will to boost its annual throughput from 70 million tons
to 100 million tons.
In southwestern China, Zhanjiang, Fangcheng and Haikou will form a system of
container transportation. Zhanjiang, Haikou and other ports will also serve as
places to download and reserve imported crude oil and natural gas. And
Zhanjiang, Fangcheng and Basuo have been designated to become ports to import
mineral resources. Passenger transport infrastructure will also be improved in
Zhanjiang, Haikou and Sanya in the coming five years, according to the national
program.
Li said the newly drafted port-development plan was aimed at "expanding the
transportation capacity of the Chinese coast to match the economy's fast
growth". He forecast that China's ocean-cargo-handling capacity will rise from
3.8 billion tons in 2005 to 5 billion tons in 2010, and that its coastal
throughput of containers, as measured in TEU (20-foot equivalent units), will
grow from 74.41 million in 2005 to 130 million in 2010.
Chai Haitao, a researcher with the International Trade Research Academy of the
Ministry of Commerce, said the plan for the new round of port expansions had
been undertaken to anticipate future economic development in China and the
world. Chai predicted that China's foreign trade would grow at an annual rate
of 15% from 2006-10, so that almost all of China's major seaports would undergo
expansion in the next few years.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has predicted that the world's
economy will grow at an annual rate of 4.2% during 2006-09, relatively higher
than that during the 2001-05 period. The IMF also predicted that over the next
five years, China would continue to be the world's economic engine, with annual
growth of no less than 8%.
China has been the world's biggest cargo producer since 2004, with Shanghai
being the world's largest port in terms of handling tonnage. Ten of the world's
25 largest seaports are already in China.
