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Recently, as the "Oriental Chennai" slowly left the Dalian Port container terminal, COSCO Shipping's "Dalian Port-Mexico" container express service was officially put into operation at Dalian Port of Liaogang Group. At the same time, at berth 29 of the New Oriental International Container Terminal of Lianyungang Port, as the container lifting operation of the "COSCO Venice" began, COSCO Shipping's "Northwest Route to the United States" started its maiden voyage...

It is reported that COSCO Shipping's "Dalian Port-Mexico" container express service is the fourth foreign trade container route opened by Liaogang Group this year, building a stable and convenient new foreign trade channel between China's northeast hinterland and Latin America; the stable operation of the "US Northwest Route" will further promote the deep integration of Lianyungang Port and the North American market, and create more opportunities for cooperation between the two sides in the field of trade.

The reporter learned from COSCO SHIPPING that COSCO SHIPPING has opened 180 container routes to connect the countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, it has opened up a number of routes to RCEP member countries, weaving a dense network of foreign trade routes from China to South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and extending to the Middle East, Africa and other markets, further strengthening its global layout.

Wang Yuxi, head of the operations department of COSCO SHIPPING Lines, told the International Business Daily that based on the continuous improvement of the global layout, COSCO SHIPPING Lines and COSCO SHIPPING Ports have fully leveraged the advantages of the integrated operation services of "shipping + ports + logistics" in recent years and successfully created "end-to-end" supply chain solutions for many brands.

Among them, COSCO Shipping performed particularly well in serving the international trade of "new three products", home appliances, chemicals, etc. From January to June, COSCO Shipping achieved a year-on-year growth of 7.6%, 22.8% and 27.6% in cross-border e-commerce freight volume of automobiles, lithium batteries and photovoltaics respectively. Wang Yuxi said that the creation of new business models and the upgrading of logistics solutions have accelerated the "going global" of foreign trade enterprises' products, effectively improving the overseas market competitiveness of Chinese products.

In recent years, the dominant position of maritime transport in China's foreign trade has continued to strengthen. The latest data from China's Ministry of Transport shows that international shipping accounts for more than 95% of China's import and export volume, and container liner routes travel to more than 100 countries and regions around the world. China's maritime connectivity has ranked first in the world for many years.

The "China Port Operation Analysis Report (2024)" recently released by the Ministry of Transport Planning and Research Institute also shows that the total global shipping volume in 2023 will be 12.37 billion tons, and China's foreign trade shipping volume will exceed 3.7 billion tons, accounting for 30.1% of the global shipping volume, an increase of 2.2 percentage points from 2022, highlighting China's status as a major foreign trade country. At the same time, the influence of the "China factor" in world shipping is still prominent. Specifically, China's ore, coal, crude oil and container shipping volumes account for 75.4%, 27.2%, 24.7% and 23.3% of the world respectively, up 1.4, 8.2, 1.8 and 0.2 percentage points respectively from 2022.

In the view of Zhen Hong, director of the Academic Committee of the Shanghai International Shipping Research Center, shipping plays an important role in strengthening economic and trade cooperation between China and other countries in the world and promoting the mutual promotion of domestic and international dual circulations.

Zhen Hong further analyzed that the proportion of high value-added goods in China's foreign trade shipping has increased year by year, and foreign trade goods have gradually developed towards lightweight and high value, reflecting that the global industrial chain and supply chain that China participates in are undergoing profound changes. At the same time, energy and raw material trade also maintains an important position in China's foreign trade.

At the same time, China's port throughput capacity continues to increase. The report shows that there will be 23 Chinese coastal ports with a cargo throughput of more than 200 million tons in 2023. Among them, Ningbo-Zhoushan Port has a throughput of 1.32 billion tons, ranking first among coastal ports. The cargo throughput growth rate of Beibu Gulf Port, Zhenjiang Port, Shanghai Port, Zhanjiang Port and Fuzhou Port exceeded 10%.

In terms of regions, the throughput pattern of coastal ports in various regions remained stable. The throughput of coastal ports in the Yangtze River Delta accounted for 40% of the national coastal ports, ranking first among all regions; Shandong coastal ports, Tianjin-Hebei coastal ports and Pearl River Delta coastal ports ranked in the second echelon, with throughput accounting for 15%, 15% and 12% of the national coastal ports respectively; Liaoning coastal ports and southeastern coastal ports were in the third echelon, with throughput accounting for about 6% of the national coastal ports.

According to the "Liner Shipping Connectivity Index" released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in the first quarter of this year, the world's 10 best connected ports (port areas) were Shanghai, Ningbo, Singapore, Busan, Qingdao, Hong Kong, China, Shekou, Klang, Rotterdam and Nansha, with Chinese ports occupying six seats, fully demonstrating the core position of Chinese ports in the global liner shipping network.

Looking ahead to 2024, the report believes that the impact of trade frictions, the Ukrainian crisis and the escalation of tensions in the Middle East on the global economy will continue, and the complexity, severity and uncertainty of China's external environment will continue to increase. However, the basic trend of China's economic recovery and long-term improvement has not changed. Based on the judgment of the above macroeconomic situation, it is expected that China's port cargo throughput will show a stable growth trend in 2024, and the total throughput of coastal ports and foreign trade cargo throughput in the country will be around 13.6 billion tons and 5.1 billion tons respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of around 3% and 3.2%. In terms of shipping, global shipping demand is expected to maintain positive growth. Affected by the delivery of a large number of ship orders in 2024, the overall supply of shipping capacity will increase significantly.

■ Our reporter Li Ke