Shanghai Port Has Key Developmental Role
Hong Kong looks secure as the shipping portal to China, one of the world's most dynamic developing economies, but one-time premier-port Shanghai has a key development role, shipping experts say.
They see Shanghai as unlikely to rejoin the ranks of the world's major shipping terminals but it can be a gateway to the huge market of the Yangtze river valley.
With Hong Kong's position unrivalled as it rejoins China on July 1, Shanghai can still prosper as a "head of the dragon", breathing life into the country's more backward centre, the experts said. "The Yangtze river should be the conduit for economic development," said a Shanghai commodities trader. "So Shanghai becomes the head of the dragon, the Yangtze river is the dragon-- and the entire body of the dragon should benefit from that."
"Shanghai and other ports in the region are being developed to serve the industrial hinterland around Shanghai," a shipping industry analyst in the region said. "In terms of big-ticket container shipping, Shanghai cannot compete because southern China has got the logistics of that sewn up," he said. The development of an integrated port and barge system along the river's reaches would open up the economies of China's central provinces, providing them with access to the markets on the coast, analysts said.
"Once you establish the system, then you empower economically the inland provinces that until today have really been ignored," said John Crossman, general manager in Shanghai of Jardine Fleming Securities.
The Yangtze river trickles through the remote southwestern reaches of Qinghai province from Tibet, gathering strength at Chongqing city in Sichuan, and coursing through the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui, finally pouring into the East China Sea at Jiangsu.
With a total population of up to 400 million people, the Yangtze river basin encompasses the abject poverty of the country's undeveloped hinterland, through to its booming industrial eastern seaboard and its richest city.
Shanghai's location at the mouth of the Yangtze gives it excellent access to China's industrial heartland, its most densely populated region and the wealthiest proportion of its 1.2 billion people. Port development is a priority of China's 9th Plan (1996-2000) and the nation is giving Shanghai vastly expanded wharf facilities to commemorate the 50th anniversary in 1999 of the Communist takeover, Chinese officials said.
Shanghai's birthday present from the state will be a two billion yuan ($241 million) development at Waigaoqiao on the banks of the Yangtze with total container capacity of 200,000 tonnes, a Shanghai port bureau official said.
Other container projects were also on the cards, the official said, adding that more money was being spent in Shanghai than anywhere else in the country on port development. (Reuter)
In 1996, the city spent 1.1 billion yuan on port development.
Official figures show Shanghai port's total container throughput in 1996 was 1.97 million tonnes, 29 per cent higher than the previous year.
Authorities projected growth in 1997 of 21 per cent to 2.3 million tonnes, and to three million by 2000.
By contrast, Hong Kong, the world's biggest and busiest container port, recorded total throughput in 1995 of 12.5 million tonnes, compared with 6.1 million for all of China.
Shanghai's waters are too shallow to take the huge fourth, fifth or sixth generation container ships which are Hong Kong's speciality, shipping industry sources said.
The waters of Shanghai port are just four to eight metres (13-26 ft) deep, compared with 15 metres (49 ft) in Hong Kong.
Bulk containers would go instead to nearby Ningbo, a deep water port emerging from its developmental cocoon which has already become the country's major destination for commodities such as iron ore, experts said.
"It could be that there is a natural division (for container exports) depending on the trade," said Nedlloyd Lines (China) managing director S T Poon. "Hong Kong west to Europe; Shanghai, to a lesser extent, east across the Pacific to America."
What was more likely, Poon said, was the ongoing emergence of east China's inland waterways as natural adjuncts to the overburdened road and rail networks, with Shanghai as the central feeder point for that trade. (Reuter)