SHANGHAI - Shanghai port has become
the world's largest cargo port, with processed
cargo topping 443 million tons in 2005, higher
than that of Singapore's port, according to the
latest statistics of the Shanghai Port Management
Department.
The rapid development of the
Chinese economy and the large industrial and trade
base of the Yangtze River Delta region are the
main reasons underlining Shanghai's achievement.
It only took
Shanghai port five years to
double cargo handling capacity from 200 million
tons to 400 million tons.
However, there
is still a big gap between Shanghai and Singapore
in container handling capacity. The latest
statistics show that Shanghai handled 18.09
million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of
containers in 2005, rising 24.2% over the previous
year and taking the third position in the world.
In contrast, Singapore handled 21.2 million TEUs
in the first 11 months of 2005, rising 8.4%. In
terms of growth rate, the container handling
capacity of Shanghai grew much faster than that of
Singapore.
The economic development of
Shanghai, the Yangtze River delta and Yangtze
River valley has also fueled the development of
Shanghai port. At present, Shanghai has opened
shipping lines around the globe, extending to
Europe, America, Australia, Japan and Southeast
Asia. The number of voyages mounted from the port
amounts to 1,967 monthly, including 942 to
international ports.
Deep-water port
starts operation A deep-water port began
operation at Yangshan Isles of Shanghai in
mid-December. The Yangshan deep-water port, a
mammoth facility 27.5 kilometers from Luchao port
in Shanghai's Nanhui district, is expected to turn
the east China metropolis into an international
maritime shipping center.
The deep-water
port is located in Shengsi county of Zhejiang province at the
mouth of the Yangtze River, about 45 kilometers
from Pudong international airport. The port is
designed to have an annual handling capacity of 25
million TEUs when the entire project is completed
in 2020.
The first phase of construction,
completed in December, put into operation a
1.6-kilometer hydraulic dock with five berths. By
2010, the dock will be extended to 11 kilometers
with around 30 berths, port authorities told
Xinhua. The launching of the port was praised by
Vice Prime Minister Huang Ju as a "major
breakthrough" in Shanghai's building of an
international maritime shipping center.
Huang visited the port in December and
proclaimed a formal start to its operations. At
the launching ceremony, he urged relevant
departments, provinces and cities to speed up port
construction in line with the plans approved by
the State Council so as to ease the country's
transportation bottleneck and boost the steady and
fast growth of the national economy.
"We
should speed up construction of new ports in line
with the long and medium-term plans approved by
the State Council, and further tap the potentials
of existing facilities, too," he said, adding,
"it's important to take full advantage of the
Yangtze waterway and better serve the
socioeconomic development of the Yangtze River
Delta, the Yangtze drainage areas and the entire
country."
Though Shanghai's name literally
means "on the sea", the main part of the city sits
inland on the banks of the Huangpu River, which
runs into the Yangtze, China's longest waterway.
Heavy silting in the Yangtze Delta region has long
prevented it from serving as a deep-water port.
The idea to transform Shanghai port into
an international shipping center was initially
proposed by the government in 1996, but since the
port is only seven meters deep, a new site had to
be located. An eight-square-kilometer bonded area
at the port and the Yangshan Port Customs were
also launched in mid-December.
