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Guangzhou is seeking to make further breakthroughs in its shipping capabilities and reshape new advantages in shipping.

Not long ago, Guangzhou issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for Building Guangzhou International Shipping Hub (2024-2026)"Guangzhou Port"Build a world-class port" and promote Guangzhou to become an international shipping hub, and come up with a new action plan.This is also the fourth "Three-Year Action Plan" successively issued by Guangzhou since 2015.

Why does Guangzhou plan its port development so high-profile and continuously?

As the only port in the world that has been prosperous for more than 2,000 years, if shipping is a barometer of economic development, then this is particularly evident in Guangzhou.

Guangzhou was born and prospered because of the port, and has become an undefeated commercial capital for thousands of years. In recent years, Guangzhou's economy has faced challenges, and the competition with Chongqing for the "fourth city" is particularly fierce; in terms of ports, in 2022, Guangzhou Port's freight throughput and container throughput were bothQingdao PortOvertaken, the ranking dropped to fifth in the country.

The port is the historical gene and city identity of Guangzhou, and is also a foundation that other cities cannot match. In the 2023 Global Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) released by the World Bank, Guangzhou Port ranked among the top in the world and third in China.

For Guangzhou Port, "international shipping hub" remains the goal; but if we examine Guangzhou's development from the perspective of the port, can we find new breakthroughs?

Back in April 2015, the Guangdong Free Trade Zone was officially established, and Guangzhou Nansha was included in the Free Trade Zone. A few months later, Guangzhou launched the first round of action plans, proposing to build the Guangzhou International Shipping Center with the efforts of the whole city. In 2016, Guangzhou proposed to focus on building a hub-type network city, and "international shipping hub" became one of the three major strategic hub construction contents.

In recent years, the development of Guangzhou Port has always been a matter of concern to the public. The most notable discussion was about the choice of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link.

With the implementation of the "East Tunnel and West Bridge" plan, a representative view, such as tunnel expert Wang Mengshu once wrote that this "will limit the development of Guangzhou and the national defense transportation requirements, it will be difficult to adapt to the development trend of large-scale ships sailing in ports in the future, and it will restrict the implementation of the layout of large equipment manufacturing industries such as ships, and limit the entry of large port container machinery."

At that time, the locals were expecting a new round of breakthroughs in Guangzhou Port, which was expected to drive Guangzhou's upgrading. Some people mentioned that Guangzhou was positioned as an international comprehensive transportation hub, and the construction of the bridge should take the overall layout into consideration.

Amid the multi-party game among the cities in the Bay Area, some people believe that how to deal with the relationship between Guangzhou Port and the cross-sea bridge actually stems from how to understand the importance of Guangzhou Port.

According to Lin Jiang, a professor at the Lingnan College of Sun Yat-sen University, although Guangzhou Port set the goal of building an international shipping hub very early on, the construction level is relatively low, the construction method is mostly based on "inertia", and the policy strength is not strong enough.

In the end, the debate over the future of Guangzhou Port came to an end with an official response. In 2019, the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission pointed out in a reply letter to a proposal by a member of the Provincial CPPCC that the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Channel "fully considers the future development needs of large-scale ships, the entry and exit needs of special engineering ships and marine engineering equipment, and can meet the needs of shipping development at Guangzhou Nansha Port."

At present, the issue of the positioning of Guangzhou Port is more pressing.

The port structure of the Greater Bay Area is undergoing a reshaping. From the perspective of changes in the share of port container throughput, from 2010 to 2022, the share of Hong Kong Port in the Greater Bay Area's port container throughput has dropped from 35.2% to 19.9%, Shenzhen Port's share has remained basically stable at 32% to 36%, and Guangzhou Port's share has increased from 18.8% to 29.8%. In this sense, Guangzhou Port has a strong growth momentum and has become the main driving force for the growth of port containers in the Greater Bay Area.

However, from a national perspective, Guangzhou Port’s cargo throughput and container throughput have not only been surpassed by Qingdao Port, but alsoRizhao PortIt is also catching up at an accelerated pace - in the first half of this year, the gap between its cargo throughput and that of Guangzhou Port was less than 10 million tons.

Behind this is the overall decline in Guangdong's port throughput ranking. According to data from the Ministry of Transport, in 2022, Guangdong's coastal port throughput fell by 3.4% to 1.76 billion tons, surpassed by Shandong with 1.89 billion tons, falling to second place in the country.

Lin Jiang analyzed that in the past few years, the throughput of Guangdong ports grew rapidly due to the strong growth of imports and exports. Today, on the one hand, the global trade situation has changed and become more complex, on the other hand, the economic downward pressure is relatively large, and the processing trade industries with advantages in cities such as Guangzhou have shown signs of relocation, all of which have an impact on port throughput.

As the largest port in Guangdong, Guangzhou Port undoubtedly needs to take the lead. To achieve this goal, it is particularly important to reshape its own position and find the right direction.

From a geographical point of view, Guangzhou Port is located at the mouth of the Pearl River and the center of the Pearl River Delta. Connected to the unique water transport resources of the Pearl River Basin on one hand, and backed by Guangdong's developed manufacturing industry on the other, Guangzhou Port has become an important distribution center for raw materials, energy and other fields. The Nansha Port Area, which started construction in 2001, has further moved towards the geographical center of the Pearl River Delta, driving the transformation of Guangzhou Port from an inland port to a seaport.

However, unlike many world-class ports in China that focus on foreign trade, Guangzhou Port's advantage lies in domestic trade, and its domestic trade container throughput has ranked first in the country for many years.

This seems to be inconsistent with Guangzhou's image as an open frontier. In this regard, the relevant person in charge of Guangzhou Port once explained that Guangzhou has been the largest port for foreign trade in China since the Tang and Song dynasties. Since the 1980s, ships have rapidly grown in size. At that time, the water depth of the Huangpu Port channel was only 9 meters, which could not meet the needs of ships. The ocean-going trunk line had to be withdrawn. It was not until 2004 that the four deep-water berths of the first phase of the Nansha Port were completed and put into operation that a preliminary breakthrough was achieved.

At the same time, foreign trade transportation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen Port continued to develop, which happened to complement Guangzhou Port. In terms of container transportation, Guangzhou Port gradually became a feeder port for Shenzhen and Hong Kong Ports.

Even though Guangzhou Port has been relying on Nansha Port to develop foreign trade and expand shipping routes in recent years, it has not been able to fundamentally reverse the weakness of foreign trade. Some analysts pointed out that an important reason is that most European and American customers useFOB(Designated Port of Shipping) trade terms, customers will form path dependence on the shipping port due to habit.

As the foreign trade environment becomes more complex, more and more people are noticing the importance of domestic trade and Guangzhou’s new advantages as a major domestic trade port.

Previously, Zhang Yansheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomics, told Chengshu that my country is building a dual-circulation development pattern with domestic circulation as the main focus. From the data, my country's foreign trade dependence has dropped to 34% in 2021, and it is likely to drop further to 24% in 2034; the meaning of opening up will also transition from external issues to the internationalization of economy, industry, cities and talents. "In this way, it is difficult to say for the time being whether Guangzhou or Shenzhen is more important in the future."

In other words, relying on its domestic trade advantages, Guangzhou Port is expected to further enhance its "center" status.

Some industry experts pointed out that the focus of Guangzhou’s new policy is to link the port, industry and city, respond to the pressure of external changes, and build up the foundation of port-based industries.

On the one hand, Guangzhou should continue to focus on foreign trade and promote diversified development; on the other hand, its focus should be on building an endogenous driving mechanism, such as how to better utilize different types of berths at the port terminal and how to drive the development of new industrial clusters.

Of course, if Guangzhou Port is to drive Guangzhou towards becoming a center, it is far from enough to rely on Guangzhou itself.

An analysis article published in China Railway in 2022 by Tang Jianqiao of China Railway Guangzhou Bureau Group Co., Ltd. pointed out:

A more direct comparison is reflected in the throughput of rail-sea transport. Data shows that in 2023, Qingdao Port's sea-rail transport volume exceeded 2.2 million TEUs, ranking first in the country for 9 consecutive years; Ningbo-Zhoushan Port ranked second in the country with more than 1.652 million TEUs; Guangzhou only had 436,000 TEUs, with a significant gap.

For most coastal ports, an important role of sea-rail transport is to expand the cargo hinterland to inland areas, while dealing with the possibility of cargo saturation or even decline in the main cargo hinterland.

Taking Qingdao Port as an example, it has built a total of 41 inland ports for rail-sea transport, 34 of which are from the nine provinces (regions) along the Yellow River. Last year, the nine provinces (regions) along the Yellow River accounted for more than 90% of its rail-sea transport container cargo flow areas, all of which have become the effective hinterland of Qingdao Port.

In this regard, Guangzhou Port has already taken action.

According to reports, by February this year, Guangzhou Port had established 32 inland ports and offices in provinces such as Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing. To further transform the "circle of friends" into actual shipping exchanges, as Tang Jianqiao said, it is necessary to further optimize the level of infrastructure, information data, rules and standards, operators, etc., and at the same time promote the expansion and efficiency of intermodal trains, and build a multimodal transport system with sea-rail transport as the main trunk.

Expanding Guangzhou Port’s external influence and resource allocation capabilities also requires effective internal coordination.

In recent years, the Greater Bay Area has been promoting port integration with Guangzhou and Shenzhen as the center to achieve orderly competitive and cooperative development. Zhen Hong, professor at Shanghai Maritime University and director of the Academic Committee of Shanghai International Shipping Research Center, once pointed out that the service objects and hinterlands of Guangzhou Port, Shenzhen Port and Hong Kong Port overlap, and more cooperation is needed in the future. Their integrated development is a solid foundation for building a world-class port cluster in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

One operational idea mentioned by Lin Jiang is that on the basis of developing container terminals in major ports, some ports can develop dry bulk terminals according to their own conditions; in addition, different ports can also be developed in a differentiated manner based on standards such as cargo value, category, and volume.But he also believes that there are still bottlenecks in the construction of the Greater Bay Area port cluster and coordination will take time.

At present, Guangzhou Port is gradually finding its focus. In June this year, Sun Bangcheng, business director of Guangzhou Port Group, mentioned several advantages of Guangzhou Port at a press conference, such as the largest energy loading and unloading port in South China, the second largest automobile hub port in China and the largest in South China. At the same time, based on the largest seaborne import port for cherries, durian and rubber wood in China, it will further build a pulp and cold chain distribution center in South China.

Is this enough for building an "international shipping hub"? Based on the division of labor, how can Guangzhou Port further strengthen itself through the cooperation of the port group? These are the questions that Guangzhou Port needs to answer urgently.

Text | Yang Qifei