Facts "On the afternoon of November 28, Li Shenglin, minister of the Ministry of Communications and Dai Xianglong, mayor of Tianjin, pressed the button of the crane together, hoisting the 100 000 000th container for ports in the Chinese mainland to “COSCO HELLAS”, symbolizing China’s port and oceanic shipping undertaking has ushered into a new development stage."

(Enorth.com.cn)On the afternoon of November 28, Li Shenglin, minister of the Ministry of Communications and Dai Xianglong, mayor of Tianjin, pressed the button of the crane together, hoisting the 100 000 000th container for ports in the Chinese mainland to “COSCO HELLAS”, symbolizing China’s port and oceanic shipping undertaking has ushered into a new development stage.

Xu Zuyuan, deputy minister of the Ministry of Communications, Huang Xingguo, member of the Standing Committee of Tianjin Committee of CPC and managing deputy mayor and Wei Jiafu, president of COSCO, addressed the hoisting ceremony.

Xu Zuyuan said in his address that the yearly throughput’s surpassing 100 000 000 standard containers is an important milestone in the development of China’s port and shipping undertaking. The water-way communication has provided effective services for the development of global economy, backed up the development of global shipping industry and boosted the development of economic globalization and regional economy. The sustainable high-speed growth of national economy and foreign trade has put forward higher requirements on the development of water-way communications.

Huang Xingguo said under the support of the Ministry of Communications and the common assistance of various shipping enterprises, the construction of Tianjin Port and international container transportation undertaking have obtained key achievements and the port size and construction level are on the rise. Tianjin Port is an core resource and important carrier for the development and opening up of Binhai New Area. By taking the advantage of this activity, we will further accelerate port construction, enlarge port size, further improve port function, develop international container transportation and uplift the modernization and internationalization level of Tianjin Port to make great contributions for the better and faster development of China’s communication undertaking.

In September 1973, China’s first international container liner route opened at Tianjin Port and Tianjin became the port which engaged in container business the earliest in China. In late 1990, 19 coastal ports and 9 freshwater ports dealt with international container loading and unloading operation and the yearly throughput is 1.563 million standard containers.

When it came to 1990s, China’s container transportation ushered into the rapid development stage and container throughput increased from 1.1703 million containers in 1989 to 26.655 million containers in 2001. The yearly container throughput of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Dalian, Ningbo and Xiamen came to one million standard containers successively.

When the new century unfolds, China’s water-way container transportation has entered the sustainably all-round development stage. In 2002, China’s container throughput surpassed that of the US which leads the world for 46 years in a row with a container throughput of 37.21 million containers.

Presently, the container terminals enlisting in top 20 in the world include Shanghai, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou and Tianjin. In late 2007, the number of special container berth in coastal ports will come to 270, the designed passage capacity will be 90 million standard containers and the container throughput will be about 110 million standard containers.

Relevant leaders from the Ministry of Communications, COSCO Group, CNOOC Group, Sinotrans Group etc. attended the ceremony.

中国大陆港口集装箱年吞吐量突破一亿标箱