时间：2022-05-26 09:36:00
The 21century is a brand new era for the global economy, when the world trade is booming, and the trade is facilitated by containerization. We could see container trade growth quite faster than total trade, especially during the past 4 years, the global container trade has been developing at an annual growth rate of over 10%. Containerization has been played a dominant role in global trade where 90% of cargo were transported by shipping and 50% of shipping cargo was delivered containerized.
As we know, containerization has just celebrated its 50 years anniversary in 2006. Could you imagine, 51years ago, the shipping cargo was still literally manhandled, business people took it for granted about the huge timing cost on loading and unloading and even expressed not much surprise if the shipment was delayed. So, in those days, international trade development is heavily restricted due to the high shipping cost and low efficiency. Then in 1956, the revolution era of world trade came to emerge because of the advance of a steel box- container. This technology enabled loose cargo being handled much more efficiently and being typically shipped via several modes of transportation, including truck, railway and ship. In today’s scenario, I will focus on shipping containerization only, especially on china’s role as in this great revolution process.
China started its containerization since 1955 when the state railway department began to handle with small-sized domestic container transportation. Until 1973, China has started its oceangoing container shipping services for the real meaning. Although China’s containerization started out late, the development pace is at extraordinary. Since the first international container was unloaded in Tianjin port in 1973, China has experienced the commencing stages of development in the 1970s, stable development in the 1980s and finally the remarkable achievements in the 1990s that attracted so much attention from international shipping industry. Entering into 21 century, China is getting ready for her full speed development.
In this essay, I would like to illustrate my topic, the role of China in the containerization in four aspects which include China ‘s trade development , ports construction, and the strong container fleet and container production and finally the China ‘s favorite policy towards the industry. These are some basic elements that contribute to china prosperous development in the containerization .
Trade
When we discuss about the world trade today, ‘China factor’ is one of the issue that could not be neglected. Burgeoning trade growth in China has played a pivotal role in Asia’s dominance of container trade in the world. China has become an important driving engine.
According to statistics, China has gained an average economic growth rate of 9.4% in the past 25 years .Base on professional analysis, although China’s GDP only accounts for 4% of the world’s total, the country’s contribution to the growth of world economy is up to 17.5%.
Along with the development of China's economy, both domestic trade and foreign trade are growing significantly Presently, China is the top consumer of iron and steel, copper etc. In addition, the increase in the rate of FDI inflow has fuelled containerization in China. By 2005, FDI amounted to $61 billion in China, and 70% has been invested in the manufacturing sectors, which is known as the “world factory”. Among these, foreign companies accounted for 55% of China’s trade. And freight transport with container becomes increasingly popular because it is not only convenient and safe but also fast. Over 90% of foreign trade logistics volume depends on ports in China and container transport acts as the major form.
As we might conclude as this: the containerization has facilitate, accelerate and enlarge the world trade both in volume and scale, and China has contributed to most of the growth of global container trade.
Ports
After years of fast development, the ports of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Kaohsiung in Taiwan, China are ranked second, third, fourth and sixth, respectively on the world’s top 10 container ports list. In 2006, the container throughput of China’s major ports reached to 93 million teu, as 26% of increase compare to 2005.
In addition, China has set up a set of full functional and high-tech container ports. Which are distributed mainly in China’s three big economic areas. The Pearl River Delta with Shenzhen and Guangzhou Ports as the centre, Yangtze River Delta with Shanghai, Ningbo as the centre, and Bohai bay area with Qingdao, Tianjin & Dalian as representative.
In China’s next five-year plan, China will continue focus on constructing the above mentioned ports, and expect to increase container throughput of 79.60m teu, and the total capacity will increase by 129%. Among those, the Yangtze River Delta will increase 30million teu, Bohai bay and Pearl River Delta will increase 20million teu respectively. Fleets and container production
So far, China has developed a modern container fleet. Also, COSCO, China Shipping, OOCL, Evergreen and Wan Hai Lines are now among the world's top 20 shipping lines.
By 2006, China container box production industry has been maintained its world top sale position for 14 years, and China has become the largest container production and sales centre. In 1993, the production of China container box is 89000 units, and took 24.9% of world market of that time, while the 2006’s annual container production has reached to 2.2 million units, and took 90% of world market.
Since 90s of last century, with the development of China economy and trade, many preferential policies and regulations have been promulgated by the government so as to facilitate China’s shipping industry to be developed under a more efficient & high tech mode. For the next 5 year plan, China government will insist on the same routine and focus on the follow issue. The first is to maintain the steady and fast development of both China economy and ports industry. Secondly, China will continue focusing on port’s infrastructure construction, and the target is to improve the total pass capacity of main ports. To promote the ports’ integrated service capability is the third to be concerned. Finally China will continuously persisting on international communication and cooperation, and develop together with friends from all over the world.