February 2012
According to the Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities, a Singapore-registered vessel was hit by a domestic vessel on 15 February while unloading 16,000 tons of palm oil at a terminal privately-owned by China Grain Import and E...
Jiangsu provincial government announced on 16 February that it would spend Rmb5.5bn by the end of this year to help dredge 146km of the Yangtze trunkline, according to reports from the Yangtze River Administration under the M...
At the 3.5km junction of Dongting Lake and the Yangtze, an increasing number of small vessels are collecting and transhipping sand, creating a shipping hazard in the area, said the Yangtze River Administration under the Minis...
CCCC Second Harbour Engineering has won the bid for phase one of the public terminal in the Niutoushan area of Chizhou Port in Anhui province, reported Dredging Today, as well as the reconstruction and extension of Guodian te...
A shortage of water quality monitoring stations is hindering China’s ability to respond to chemical spills in the nation’s waterways, said Hu Siyi, deputy minister of water resources.
In recent years, a large n...
An unidentified chemical worker has died in a tank truck explosion in the northwestern province of Gansu, local authorities said.
The tank trailer, which was carrying 58 cubic meters of liquefied petroleum gas, exploded ne...
Two Beijing-Shanghai high-speed trains were cancelled and others were delayed because of dense fog in Tianjin and Hebei province on 22 February, according to Beijing Railway Administration.
Air traffic was also affected by...
Chongqing has approved the design plan of a new cable-stayed bridge across the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze.
Hongyancun Jialing River Bridge will be a dual-use highway and railway bridge....
A total of 3,500km of new high-speed railways are expected to be put into use this year, despite safety concerns and funding shortages that led to the halting of several rail projects last year.
Yang Zhongmin, director of...
Motorcycle manufacturer Lifan Industry (Group) has announced plans to spend Rmb3.88bn to build a car plant at its headquarters in Chongqing....
Japan’s largest supermarket group Aeon plans to build three large shopping centres in Wuhan, capital of the central province of Hubei, according to city government officials....
Finnair is to launch direct services between Helsinki and Chongqing from May, according to municipal tourism authorities.
There will be four flights every week that will be served by Airbus A340 aircraft....
Peter von Zumbusch, Chairman of the Association of International Chemical Manufacturers (AICM), has agreed to speak at the 2012 Yangtze Business Network conference in Shanghai on 22 March....
A South Korean cargo ship accused of spilling phenol into the lower reaches of the Yangtze River was detained on 11 February....
The death toll following the capsizing of a boat in central Hunan province two weeks ago has risen to 10, reported Xinhua, and another person remains missing.
On 2 February the sand-carrying boat capsized during high winds...
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport gathered nearly 50 major Yangtze port operators and shipping lines on 9 February to discuss their performance in the fourth quarter of 2011 and their business p...
The Yangtze MSA, in charge of the waterway between Anhui and Chongqing, will provide free Automatic Identification System (AIS) equipment to all passenger ferries that are less than 100 dwt, according to its director Mr Wang...
Escorted by pilots from Wuhan Piloting Station, a multi-purpose ocean vessel named Jianglian 28 was delivered safely to its German owners in Shanghai on 6 February....
Logistics costs accounted for 17.8 per cent of China’s Rmb47,160bn GDP last year, compared with 18 per cent in 2010, according to a report issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Bureau of...
More than 3m people in China face a shortage of drinking water because of drought, reported Xinhua....
Singapore Airlines is to start direct flights between Singapore and Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, on 24 April, Xinhua reported....
Accidents involving 21 vehicles on a road in Jiangsu province killed two people and injured six others on the morning of 11 February.
The accidents occurred in heavy fog on an expressway between the city of Changzhou and t...
Canada-based plant nutrient manufacturer Spur Ventures has sold its wholly owned China chemicals subsidiary to a Cayman Islands company for a price of US$9.3m.
The unit had an interest in two joint venture phosphate mines...
The German specialty chemicals company Lanxess is to establish a leather chemicals plant in Changzhou, Jiangsu province....
UKTI, a government department that helps British companies do business overseas, is organising a “Sustainable Cities” mission to Chongqing and Changsha on 19-23 March....
Shanghai port handled 2.62m TEU of containers in January. This was 1.5 per cent lower than in the previous month and 3.3 per cent down on the January 2011 total....
All heavy-metal smelting plants in Hechi, in the northwest of Guangxi province, are to be relocated by 2015 as part of a government response to a cadmium spill in the Longjiang River that was first detected on 15 January....
The number of environmental accidents in China has increased significantly, reported China Daily, in line with the rapid growth of the chemical industry.
Ministry of Environmental Protection data showed that 542 environmen...
The eastern route of China’s massive south-to-north water diversion project will start supplying water in 2013, Sun Yifu, deputy water resources chief in Shandong province, told Xinhua....
A plan to build a hydropower dam on Poyang Lake has been altered after it was criticised by environmentalists and academicians for its potential damage to an already fragile ecology....
Chongqing municipality is to start two new international rail cargo routes this year, reported Xinhua.
Container transport will be authorised for a service that begins in Chongqing and runs via the provinces of Guizhou and...
SI Group, the US-based manufacturer of chemical intermediates, is to construct a US$30m phenolic resin production facility in Nanjing....
The Ministry of Transport has approved a plan to start major repair work at the southern shiplocks of the Three Gorges Dam and No.1 shiplock of the Gezhouba Dam at the same time on 7 March, according to Xinhua....
According to Mr Huang Yong, board chairman of the newly set up Chongqing Helicopter Investment Group, Chongqing has chosen Liangjiang New Zone as the site for helicopter production....
Sichuan provincial governor Jiang Jufeng announced recently that his government will speed up investment in waterway infrastructure so that by 2020, 2,000-3,000 dwt vessels can sail on the Yangtze trunkline and 1,000dwt vesse...
Shenzhen’s status as a major international port is increasingly dependent on container railway services to central China, where many industrial plants have relocated from Guangdong province and other coastal locations...
Toxic metal contamination of a river in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region is threatening the drinking water supply of millions of people....
Environmental activists have criticised a proposed dam designed to tackle a severe water shortage in Jiangxi province’s Poyang Lake, reported South China Morning Post....
Central and local governments in China spent Rmb345.2bn on water conservation projects last year, according to Minister of Water Resources, Chen Lei.
The investments helped provide 20.5m people in drought-hit regions with...
Wuhan’s importance as a car manufacturing centre is set to grow in coming months, according to official media....
Sichuan province in southwest China recorded a GDP increase of 15 per cent in 2011 to Rmb2,100bn, according to the provincial statistics bureau....
The Three Gorges Dam posted a year-on-year increase of 27.3 per cent in 2011 cargo movements to 100.3m tonnes, Xinhua reported.
The site is also becoming an important visitor attraction....
Marine safety officials in Nanjing detained a visiting Panama-registered vessel on 30 January, after on-board checks discovered powerless engines in lifeboats, a broken alarm system for low fuel pressure in the main engines a...
Official statistics show that throughput of general cargo via the major Yangtze ports fell by 8.7 per cent to 115m tons in January, compared with the same month last year, largely due to the timing of the week-long Chinese Ne...
Mr Mu Huaping, Director of Chongqing Municipal Commission of Industries and Information, said that the Chongqing-Europe rail service, connecting the city with Europe via Xinjiang, will increase from the current weekly service...
Hong Kong government officially opened a liaison office in Chongqing on 15 January to promote trade and commerce between the SAR and the municipality....
January 2012
Yangtze Business Services, supported by the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport, is to host a conference on the safe shipping of dangerous cargo on the Yangtze....
Anhui province plans to spend Rmb27bn-30bn on transportation infrastructure construction in 2012, according to a conference held by the provincial transport authorities.
Work is due to start this year on two more bridges c...
China has pledged to significantly improve logistics and promote the use of technology in its grain production industry by 2015 as part of efforts to ensure food security, said Nie Zhenbang, head of the State Administration o...
Global Logistic Properties intends to press ahead with plans to grow its floor space in China by 20-25 per cent annually over the next three to four years despite the economic slowdown....
Moscow-based AirBridgeCargo Airlines has started scheduled all-cargo services to Chengdu International Airport in Sichuan province....
Sinopec is to shut down its 110,000-barrel-per-day Anqing refinery from early February for a six-week maintenance, said an industry source reported by Reuters
The source added that the Anqing plant in the eastern province...
Honeywell Turbo Technologies is to invest in a new turbocharger manufacturing facility in Wuhan that is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.
The US-based company expects sales of turbocharged vehicles in China to d...
Shanghai Eltete Packaging Technology, a subsidiary of Eltete, the Finland-based supplier of transport packaging material, is building a plant in Chongqing....
A panel of experts organised by the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport has conceded after a recent visit that a new facility is needed to solve the increasingly severe shipping bottleneck problem at...
Odfjell of Norway said it plans a joint venture to develop a terminal and facilities for bulk liquid chemicals, petroleum products and gases in Tianjin’s Nangang Industrial Zone.
The company’s Singaporean subsi...
On 16 January, Nantong Yangkou terminal received its 20th international LNG super tanker, Alma Feiya....
The Three Gorges Dam has started releasing more water downstream during the Yangtze River’s dry winter season.
The move aims to ensure water supplies and river traffic safety on the middle and lower reaches of the ri...
The water level in Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, has fallen sharply to 7.95 meters, the lowest level in six decades, according to a Xinhua report.
An official from the Duchang Hydrometric Station said...
In 2011 the Suzhou terminal of Taicang on the Yangtze River handled 45,000 TEU of containers in shipping services to and from Taiwan, an increase of 29.4 per cent on the previous year.
Since it launched cross-strait direct...
Shanghai International Port Group, China's largest port operator, said it experienced a profits fall of 13.7 per cent year-on-year to Rmb4.68bn in 2011....
A new non-government organisation has been set up to protect the Yangtze finless porpoise, reported Xinhua.
The Yangtze Finless Porpoise Conservation Society was founded in the city of Yueyang in Hunan province....
Jade Cargo, China’s first air freight joint venture, has temporarily suspended services due to undercapitalisation and weak demand in the Asia-Pacific market....
Hong Kong-based Kerry Logistics is set to construct a new logistics centre in Zhengzhou, Henan province....
Yuen Foong Yu Paper Manufacturing of Taiwan has decided to spend US$200m to add a third production line at its plant in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province.
The company expects the new production line, which will boost the plant&rs...
Singapore-based real estate company CapitaLand says it will construct a mixed development project in Chongqing worth Rmb21.1bn....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that throughput of general cargo rose by 14 per cent last year to nearly 1.6bn tons and throughput of containers jumped by 23.2 per cent to...
The Director of the Yangtze Maritime Safety Authority Wang Rujun announced at a working meeting on 9 January that electronic patrols will be launched officially by the end of 2012 and as much as 30 per cent of the river withi...
China’s Ministry of Transport has issued a circular stating that senior officials at companies that have been identified as having safety problems will have to explain themselves directly to the ministry in Beijing if i...
December 2011
Shipping traffic remains paralysed along the drought-stricken Xijiang and Xiangjiang rivers in south China as authorities work to preserve drinking water for local households, reported Xinhua.
On 18 December, more than 900...
Chongqing Iron & Steel (Group) has completed phase one of its new logistics base in the city of Jingjiang, Jiangsu province....
Wuhan Tianhe International Airport recorded an international freight volume of 1,018 tonnes in November, a rise of more than 250 per cent compared with the same month in 2010, Xinhua reported....
Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, has started scheduled services between its hub in Abu Dhabi and Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province in southwest China.
The service will comprise four non-...
Railway traffic in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in northwest China was disrupted when strong winds swept through the region on the morning of 20 December, stranding 19 passenger trains.
The gales affected trains to the...
On 18 December, Deputy Minister of Transport Xu Zhuyuan attended a ceremony in Taicang to mark the first time that throughput at the city’s container terminal’s had exceeded 3m TEU....
Nine barge operators and freight forwarders have been awarded subsidies totalling Rmb18.55m from the Chongqing municipal government. Minsheng Shipping and Yangtze National Shipping are among the recipients....
China Eastern Airlines’ cargo and mail throughput for November 2011 increased 1.65 per cent year-on-year to 126,900 tons....
The cargo arm of Singapore Airlines, SIA Cargo, has started a twice-weekly service from Chongqing to Singapore....
German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Shanghai Volkswagen plans to build a new car-making plant in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang autonomous region in the far northwest of China....
The drought in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River is worsening following little recent rainfall in the region. As a result, low water levels have been reported Yichang, Chenglingji and Wuhan....
The State Council recently announced more details of the new vehicle and vessel tax, according to a Xinhua story published on 13 December....
A 176km expressway between Mianyang and Suining in Sichuan province went into operation on 12 December after nearly two years of construction....
According to senior officials from Chongqing Municipal Commission of State-owned Assets, the city will invest US$30bn overseas by the end of the 12th five-year period, setting up five agricultural processing centres and eight...
The Ministry of Transport is to operate a fuel consumption declaration system on 15 December and companies will be able to submit statistics from 5 January....
Deputy Minister of Transport Xu Zuyuan attended a Hunan provincial government work meeting on 2 December where a plan was set out to upgrade its inland waterway system within the next two decades....
The latest official statistics show that Yangtze shipping continued its robust upward trend in November....
The China Yangtze Three Gorges Corporation, the company that builds and operates the Three Gorges dam and shiplocks, announced on 28 November that the cargo volume going upstream so far this year had reached 50.18m tons....
The port of Hefei, capital of Anhui province, has posted a throughput of 40,017 TEU since it opened on 30 December last year, reported Xinhua....
A seminar was held recently in Chongqing to promote shipper awareness of the possibility of regular, two-way commercial rail freight services between Chongqing and the Belgian port of Antwerp.
Karin Duivenvoorden, head of...
AirBridgeCargo Airlines, part of Volga-Dnepr Group and the largest Russian carrier in the international scheduled cargo market, has launched its fifth route to China with three scheduled freighter services a week to Chengdu A...
China Southern Airlines’ cargo service between Chongqing, Shanghai-Pudong and Amsterdam has transported 570 tonnes of cargo since it was launched on 15 September, reported Xinhua....
Exports from China’s central region increased 37.6 per cent year-on-year to US$91.7bn in the first 10 months of 2011, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
However, this growth rate was 15 perc...
The France-based cosmetics giant L’Oreal plans to expand its factory in Yichang, Hubei province, into its largest cosmetics production base in Asia with an investment of Rmb200m.
Covering an area of more than 70,000...
At a working meeting on 5 December, Chongqing municipal government approved a 12th five-year plan to develop the financial sector, according to Chongqing Commerce newspaper....
A five-day event will be held early next year to promote the strengths and advantages that Hong Kong has to offer the shipping industry....
November 2011
The State Development and Reform Commission hosted a meeting on 21 and 22 November to evaluate a feasibility study for the first phase of what is known as the Nanjing 12.5-metre dredging project....
On 18 November, a ceremony was held in Luzhou container port to mark the first train service from its container yard....
According to the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport, the central government has allocated Rmb45bn for Yangtze capital projects between 2011 and 2015....
Over the past six years, China has spent Rmb4.55bn on conservation work to preserve the source of the Yellow, Yangtze and Lancang rivers, a local conservation official said.
The ecological conservation programme, initiated...
China’s railways carried 3.27bn tonnes of cargo in the first 10 months of 2011, up 8.1 per cent year-on-year, reported Xinhua....
Direct flights between Chongqing and Doha started on 28 November, operated by Qatar Airways....
Hubei provincial people’s congress was told on 28 November that the provincial government had received a total of Rmb19.23bn from the State Development & Reform Commission as of mid-November this year....
Construction of the New Energy Auto Zone started on 28 November in Jiangxia district, southeast of Wuhan....
Sinopec and Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut, have signed a framework agreement for the joint development of restaurants at petrol stations and highway services areas across China.
Under the agreement, Y...
Minister of Defence Mr Liang Guanglie visited the Three Gorges Dam and its shiplocks on 14 November. This is one of the most high profile visits from the ministry to the dam in recent years....
The Three Gorges Administration of Navigational Affairs announced recently that a ‘green channel’ has been created for use by eight categories of vessel....
Nanjing Yangtze River Waterway Engineering Bureau, under the Ministry of Transport, is to issue Rmb300m-worth of 366-day unsecured bills on the interbank market on 29 November....
China Railway Container Transport and its wholly-owned subsidiary China Railway International Multimodal Transport have jointly launched a scheduled container rail service from the coastal city of Lianyungang in Jiangsu provi...
Suzuki Motor Corporation plans to build a new car plant in Chongqing that will double the production capacity of its joint venture with Changan Automobile to 500,000 units a year, according to the Nikkei newspaper.
Chongqi...
The Yangtze River port of Taizhou recorded a throughput of 100m tons in the first 10 months of 2011, the first time it has reached this level in any one year according to the local maritime safety authorities....
Chongqing Maritime Safety Authorities announced on 18 November that they are taking measures to tackle the noise pollution along those sections that lie within the city proper....
The 54 high-speed trains taken out of service following the fatal Wenzhou high-speed-rail crash in the summer are to resume operations shortly on the Beijing-Shanghai line once modifications have been made, Xinhua reported....
Investment in China’s railways in the first 10 months of 2011 fell 25 per cent year-on-year to Rmb429bn, said the Ministry of Railways....
The world’s biggest cargo carrier, Cathay Pacific, reported a 17.5 per cent fall in October volumes compared with the same month last year....
PetroChina Southwest Marketing has signed an investment framework agreement to build a non-hazardous chemicals logistics centre in Chongqing Western Logistics Park....
The Three Gorges GPS vessel management system is now capable of sending text messages with a range of information useful to vessels about to pass the shiplocks, including navigational conditions, water levels and weather fore...
Yichang, the city in Hubei province that hosts both the Three Gorges and Gezhouba dams, has vowed to invest Rmb8.2bn in terminal and waterway projects in the five years to 2015 to turn the city into a regional hub.
Most ve...
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Chongqing over the first 10 months of 2011 exceeded US$5bn, up 82 per cent over the same period last year, and ranking first in the country for the fourth year running....
China Yangtze Three Gorges Corporation announced recently that 90.92m tons of cargo passed through the Three Gorges Dam during the first 10 months of 2011, more than the total for the whole of last year....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that container throughput across the Yangtze trunk line reached 1m TEU in October, up 26.4 per cent over the same period last year....
More money needs to be spent on improving the Yangtze River’s navigability, according to Bronson Hsieh, vice-chairman of Taiwan’s Evergreen Group....
Hefei river port in eastern China has recorded a container throughput of 30,971 TEU so far this year, already ahead of its annual target of 25,000 TEU, Xinhua reported.
Following the opening of the port’s multi-use t...
Official statistics show that Nantong’s shipbuilding industry completed 5.31m dwt-worth of orders, totalling a record of Rmb100.5bn during the first three quarters of 2011, up 25.1 per cent year-on-year in terms of valu...
An expert panel organised by Hunan provincial government has approved a plan to invest Rmb170bn over the next 20 years in its inland waterway network including the Yangtze and one of its major tributaries, Dongting Lake....
China’s trains carried 3.26bn tonnes of cargo in the first 10 months of this year, according to Ministry of Railways’ data, an increase of 8.1 per cent year-on-year....
The Wuhan-Yichang high-speed railway, scheduled to start operation by end of November, has been postponed to allow further safety checks....
Air France will become the first airline to offer direct flights between Wuhan and Europe....
Investment in railway construction in China could fall to about Rmb500bn a year, according to an unnamed source quoted by China Securities Journal, down from the Rmb800bn a year proposed in a long-term plan.
The amount of...
More than two million people are facing drinking water shortages in Yunnan, southwest China, due to a continued lack of rainfall, the provincial vice governor said.
On 3 November, the authorities calculated 4.44bn cubic me...
The US-based aluminium producer Aleris has signed a letter of intent to invest US$200m in a plant in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. The facility will make aluminium coil and sheet for the automotive sector....
Japan’s Nippon Steel has announced a 50-50 tin plate joint venture with Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Corp.
The Rmb1.85bn plant is expected to start operation in the summer of 2013....
The Canada-based producer of lifts and escalators, Symax Lift (Holding), is to set up a new manufacturing facility in Wanzhou, Chongqing municipality.
Construction will start this month and end in August 2013....
For the second successive week, China Cargo Airlines has cancelled a scheduled freight service from Shanghai to Lambert-St Louis, reported IFW....
The Ministry of Railways is expected to receive more than Rmb200bn-worth of financial support to pay off bills and continue important railway projects, reported Xinhua....
China’s rail cargo increased eight per cent year-on-year to 2.93bn tonnes in the first three quarters of 2011, Xinhua reported, and by 6.4 per cent to 2,160bn tonnes per kilometre....
The capacity expansion of the railway between Chongqing and Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, is scheduled to be completed in five years, according to the municipal government of Chongqing....
Germany-based chemical company Oxea is to build its first chemical plant for the production of oxo derivatives in Nanjing Chemical Industry Park....
The Sanshan terminal project west of Wuhu city centre on the Yangtze River has recently been approved by the Ministry of Transport....
At 5:00pm on 30 October, the water level at the Three Gorges Dam reached its maximum of 175 metres for the second time in history, according to official reports....
Heavy fog affected the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the early hours of 1 November.
Maritime safety authorities in Nanjing, Zhenjiang and Taizhou suspended traffic at one point to avoid accidents....
Shanghai International Port Group announced a fall in net profit of 9.52 per cent year-on-year to Rmb1.18bn in the third quarter of 2011....
October 2011
Glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the major source of the China’s largest rivers, are melting at a faster rate because of global warming, according to researchers quoted by Xinhua.
Since 2005 experts have been...
China’s total logistics expenses grew 18.7 per cent year-on-year to Rmb5,700bn in the first nine months of 2011, mostly because of rising costs of raw materials, fuel, power and labour, and a higher interest rate, accor...
Shanghai has suspended work on a new metro line due to safety concerns, a month after a train collision in the city injured more than 280 people, state media reported.
The move followed complaints to the municipal governme...
China Development Bank and the National Development and Reform Commission have signed an agreement to jointly support China’s logistics industry, according to the bank’s website.
The NDRC will create favourable...
Toyota Motor is investing US$689m to build an R&D centre in Changshu, Jiangsu province....
Wuhan Iron & Steel Co, one of China’s leading iron and steel makers, achieved a net profit of Rmb413.4m in the third quarter of 2011, reflecting a year-on-year increase of 24 per cent....
Changshu port in Jiangsu province imported 1.502m cubic metres of timber worth US$236m during the first nine months of 2011, a record high in terms of both volume and value, according to China News Services....
Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan has vowed to lift half of the municipality’s 18 poorest counties out of poverty by 2015....
Nanjing will build its first modern tram line in time for the Youth Olympics in 2014, according to local news reports....
A landslide in Chongqing municipality blocked part of the Yangtze River's navigation route on 21 October, forcing the cancellation of a river cruise, Xinhua reported local authorities as saying.
The landslide happened in W...
Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities have issued a special air draught warning as the water level at the Three Gorges Dam rose to near the maximum of 175 metres....
Zhangjiagang Maritime Safety Authority penalised an international container shipping agent with a fine of Rmb30,000 on 18 October for failing to declare six containers of zinc oxide (UN code 3077), a white powder insoluble in...
Vice Minister of Transport Xu Zuyuan announced on 14 October that the sixth phase of Shanghai’s Waigaoqiao terminal had been officially completed and approved for operation....
The water level in the Wanzhou section of the Yangtze River in Chongqing municipality reached 173.87 metres on 17 October, approaching the planned maximum storage water level of 175 metres, according to Chongqing Maritime Saf...
Official statistics show that container throughput in Maanshan Port jumped 80 per cent year-on-year to 60,619 TEU in the first nine months of 2011 and is expected to reach 80,000 TEU for the full year....
Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities issued a public warning on 11 October that vessels passing the middle reaches would need separate permits as the dry season starts and as water level has fallen to as low as 3.5 metres in p...
Chinese authorities have agreed to provide financial support for major railway projects that face cash constraints, China Securities Journal reported.
The move follows a policy instituted earlier in October by the Ministry...
Most toll roads in China suffered losses last year according to traffic authorities in 16 provinces that have released financial reports on their tollways, reported China Daily.
All mainland provinces, municipalities and a...
Wuhan International Expo Centre opened for business on 15 October, hosting the 2011 National Auto Parts Trade Fair....
Siemens is to set up an industrial automation manufacturing and R&D base in Chengdu, Sichuan province....
The Chicago-based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has been awarded a contract to design a redevelopment of a 2km stretch of central Nanjing’s Yangtze riverfront....
Maersk’s newly-launched service Daily Maersk on the Asia-Europe route has given hope to large manufacturers such as Wuhan-based TPV Technology that their call for more reliable barge services on the Yangtze River will g...
On 10 October, the water level at the Three Gorges Dam reached 170 metres, only five metres below the target of 17 5 metres....
China’s port construction levy, now collected by local maritime safety authorities rather than port authorities as before, will be reduced by 20 per cent, according to the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry...
Statistics from Zhenjiang Maritime Safety Authority show that for the first nine months of the year, cargo throughput in Zhenjiang port went up by 25 per cent year-on-year to 82.71m tons....
China’s main ports handled 768.9m tonnes of freight in August, up 11.2 per cent year-on-year, according to Ministry of Transport statistics....
The president and CEO of the San Diego Unified Port District told a logistics conference in Nanjing that competition among China’s many river and sea ports could ruin the environment and reduce economies of scale due to...
Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific is launching a scheduled freighter service between the SAR and Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province....
The amount of cargo carried by China’s railways increased 8 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2011 to 2.92bn tonnes....
Responding to public criticism about high toll fees, China’s transport minister has called for better regulation and more transparent operation of the country’s toll ways, reported Xinhua....
AstraZeneca, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, is to invest US$200m to build a new manufacturing facility in Taizhou, Jiangsu province....
The Three Gorges Administration, in charge of navigational affairs between the Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam, has decided to adopt the normal traffic lane system at the end of this year’s flood season....
Official statistics show that throughput of general cargo on the Yangtze trunk line rose by nearly 14 per cent year-on-year to 132m tons in September, while container throughput increased nearly 20 per cent to 970,000 TEU....
A railway connecting southwest China’s Chongqing and the northwestern city of Lanzhou in Gansu province will be opened to traffic in 2014, Xinhua reported....
Much of the seafood from the waters off Guangdong province in south China is contaminated, according to tests reported by Yangcheng Evening News....
Deputy Minister of Transport Xu Zuyuan announced on 28 September that the minimum guaranteed water level in the 101km section between Nanjing and Wuhu will be raised from 9.0 metres to 10.5 metres in the flood season and from...
September 2011
China’s container throughput in the first eight months of this year rose 12.6 per cent from a year ago to 106.8m TEU, reported Shanghai Daily.
Domestic ports handled dry bulk cargo of 770m tonnes between January and...
Kuehne + Nagel has opened new branches in Fuzhou, Wuxi, Zhengzhou, Taicang, Yangzhou and Yinchuan....
Air cargo services have begun between Shanghai and the US Midwestern state of Missouri. The first Boeing 777 on the route landed at St....
Chongqing Airport Group has signed a cooperation heads of agreement with domestic freight forwarder Sinotrans Air Transportation Development (Sinoair) to develop Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport into a major logistics...
China will further open up its central region to foreign investment, said Vice-Premier Wang Qishan at a business event in Taiyuan, Shanxi province....
PetroChina hopes to produce 1bn cubic metres of shale gas in 2015 from Sichuan basin in southwest China, a company executive said, giving the country its first major commercial production of shale gas....
Wuhan government officials have vowed to speed up investment in infrastructure to turn Yangluo terminal into the shipping centre of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River by 2015....
Work has just begun on the renovation of the Maanshan section of National Highway 205, according to China Transport News....
The Yangtze port of Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu province received China’s first vessel carrying sawn logs from the Gabonese Republic on 26 September. It was carrying 8,900 cubic metres of sawn logs, worth US$6.42m....
Reports from the Yangtze River Administration show that shipping conditions at the intersection of the Yangtze and its tributary the Hanjiang River, continue to deteriorate....
The Ministry of Transport issued a comprehensive plan on 28 September for the shipping industry to reduce emissions by 2015....
Keppel Telecommunications and Transportation has signed an agreement with Sinotrans to jointly develop and operate a river terminal in Wuhu, Anhui province.
The 50-50 joint venture marks Keppel T&T’s first port p...
DHL’s direct rail service between Mongolia and China is now operating on a scheduled basis as a result of strong customer demand since it was launched at the end of May 2011, reports Yangtze Business Services.
The Ge...
TNT Express has announced the successful integration of its Chinese day-definite domestic road network with its Asia road network covering Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore....
The deputy director of Chongqing Port Authority, Yang Dalun, told a leisure industry conference recently that Chongqing government plans to build 11 yachting centres by the end of the current five-year planning period....
Heavy rainfall levels have prompted the Yangtze Maritime Authority to implement an emergency measure of single lane operations at the intersection of the Yangtze River and its largest tributary, the Hanjiang....
Heavy rainfall in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze is causing a rapid rise of water levels in the trunk line and its tributaries, according to Xinhua....
Torrential rain in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River damaged thousands of houses and affected more than 235,000 people in Chongqing municipality....
The Yangtze Ship Owners’ Association, part of the China Ship Owners’ Association, has set up a Liquid Dangerous Goods Transport Committee in an attempt to improve self regulation, according to officials from the Y...
Customs in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region handled 37.1m tonnes of imports and exports in the first six months of this year, 23.7 per cent more than in the same period of 2010, Xinhua reported....
Tianjin Port Group and Xian International Trade & Logistics Park have set up a joint venture to function as an inland port, reported Xinhua....
DHL Global Forwarding is to open five new branch offices in China, two of which are in the country’s interior: Zhengzhou in Henan province and Taiyuan in Shanxi province....
Transport officials from Chongqing’s Yubei district government plan to build Luoqi deepwater terminal within the 12th five-year plan period (2011-15) to facilitate economic growth in the area, according to China Water T...
Shanghai port increased its container throughput in August by 6.2 per cent year-on-year, according to statistics from Shanghai International Port (Group)....
Maersk Line is to start a daily Asia-Europe service from 24 October and will try to avoid cutting rates despite its market forecast that freight rates would remain under pressure for the next year, reported Reuters.
The se...
Twelve people died after a ferry sank in the Fuyi River in the central province of Hunan, and 20 were injured.
Shaoyang county government stated that 50 people were aboard the vessel when the accident occurred on 9 Septemb...
The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Industry and Information announced on 5 September a list of 12 state-designated shipbuilding export centres in China....
After deciding to exit China’s domestic express delivery business in June this year, DHL Express said it could take some time before it returns to the market, reported Cargonews Asia....
Chongqing West railway station should be completed at the end of 2015, according to a municipal website, with construction due to begin in 2013....
The central government has allocated Rmb1.3bn to help with drought-relief efforts in China’s southwest regions, the Ministry of Finance stated....
Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan called on the city’s businesses, both private and state-owned, to seize opportunities in the current worldwide economic downturn by investing overseas to supply the domestic consumer market....
A recent circular from the Three Gorges Administration said that a vessel named Hong Kui 6 has been blacklisted for having a larger draught than stated in its documents....
Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region recorded a 130 per cent growth in port throughput to 107m tonnes in the first half of 2011, Xinhua reported....
Cosco Group said it plans to merge three of its dry bulk freight units − Cosco Bulk Carrier, Cosco Hong Kong Shipping and Qingdao Ocean Shipping....
Shanghai plans a fourfold increase in its storage area for bulk commodities at bonded warehouses to 200,000 sq metres as it strives to become a top bulk commodity trading centre in the Asia-Pacific region.
That area is sim...
Cargo volumes on China’s railway network grew 7.8 per cent year-on-year to 2.6bn tonnes in the first eight months of 2011.
Some 1.49bn tonnes of coal were transported between January and August, 12.8 per cent more th...
China’s high-speed railways experienced 168 problems in July, according to an internal Ministry of Railways report, of which 106 related to the quality of rolling stock.
21st Century Business Herald reported that hig...
A chemical spill on national highway 316 caused the suspension for several hours of services on the Gansu section of the Longhai railway, reported China Daily.
The Ministry of Railways said that a tank truck spilled silico...
Evergreen Group of Taiwan has signed an agreement with Minsheng Shipping to jointly establish integrated logistics projects in Chongqing Liangjiang New Area, according to a municipal government website.
Two modern logistic...
Scheduled air cargo services have started for the first time between Europe and Zhengzhou, capital of the northern province of Henan, reported Xinhua....
The start of shuttle services between Chongqing Cuntan, Luzhou and Yibing is expected to raise the proportion of Chongqing’s transhipments to at least 30 per cent, according to officials from Chongqing Municipal Commiss...
The water level of the Yangtze River in Shashi, Jingzhou city in Hubei province, fell to as low as 2.14 metres on 29 August, well below the 2.5-metre benchmark that officially marks the start of the dry season....
The Hubei branch of the National Development and Reform Commission has approved plans to connect the provincial capital Wuhan to two of China’s cross-national natural gas pipelines....
August 2011
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport will start a campaign from September to select the best vessel models on the Yangtze, according to sources who attended the latest meeting of the Yangtze Vessel...
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities issued a circular on 29 August saying that operations have returned to normal following the completion of maintenance work on the No.1 shiplock of the Gezhouba Dam....
The heavy investment in China’s road and rail infrastructure over recent years has greatly reduced the role of the Yangtze as a means of transporting passengers, but leisure cruising has developed fast, according to the...
Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region aims to quadruple the throughput of its river ports to 150m tonnes by 2015, according to local government sources....
China will invest about Rmb1,270bn to build subways and light rail lines during the current five-year plan ending in 2015 to ease traffic congestion and accelerate urban development, China Securities Journal reported.
The...
The Ministry of Environmental Protection is investigating a chemical company’s alleged dumping of carcinogenic industrial chemicals into water systems in Yunnan province....
Drought conditions since early July in southwest China’s Guizhou province have created a water shortage for 5.5m people and 2.8m livestock, local authorities said....
Air China Cargo has begun a service between Dallas/Fort Worth in the US and Shanghai, reported Aircargo News....
Local media reported that Nanjing airport has raised its security level by two grades at the request of the national civil aviation authority....
United Parcel Service, the US-based package delivery company, will open a new branch in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, according to Xinhua.
UPS will also work with the local government in its attempts to build Zheng...
The market size of China’s logistics industry totalled Rmb88,200bn in the first seven months of 2011, 13.6 per cent more than in the same period last year, according to a report from the National Development and Reform...
The GDP of Jiangsu province in east China grew 11.4% year-on-year to Rmb2,290bn in the first half of 2011, according to Jiangsu Statistics Bureau....
Hong Kong-listed EVA Precision Industrial Holdings has acquired the automotive moulds company Digidie System International (Chongqing)....
The Ministry of Transport has recently approved Tongling’s plan to build its first berth capable of accommodating vessels of 10,000 dwt....
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport says that the suspension of the No.1 shiplock of the Gezhouba dam is causing severe queues upstream of the Three Gorges and downstream of Gezhouba....
Weak demand in the US and Europe could significantly reduce investment in China’s ports during the current five-year plan, according to Chinese officials reported by South China Morning Post....
Officials from the Yangtze MSA have stepped up the number of on-board checks on vessels carrying dangerous cargo in recent days because of the high temperatures, according to the Yangtze River Administration....
A 13,000-ton cargo ship collided with a sand barge in Pudong New Area harbour on 24 August, killing a crew member and sinking the smaller vessel....
Storms damaged part of the track of Nanjing’s No.2 metro line, creating chaos at around 3pm on 22 August, according to China News Service....
According to a story published on 23 August by China Transport News, the Yangtze Waterway Survey Centre has recently completed all training courses for the Yangtze Digital Mapping System, an indication that the centre has acq...
China plans to inspect all of its high-speed railway lines following a crash last month in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, which killed 40 people.
The month-long inspections of 49 projects and 6,000km of lines will last until...
AirBridgeCargo, Russia’s largest scheduled all-cargo carrier, has launched a three-times a week Boeing 747-400 freighter service to Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province.
The company already operates routes from Beiji...
Hong Kong Airlines is to start daily direct flights between Chongqing and Hong Kong from 1 September, raising the total number of direct flights between the two cities to three a day....
Hong Kong-based Kerry Logistics has opened a 20,000 sq metre logistics centre in Hefei to service the growing automotive industry sector in Anhui province....
Heavy rains have caused serious disruption in Hubei, according to the provincial flood control and drought relief office.
Rain-triggered landslides and floods in Xingshan county in the city of Yichang led to the destructio...
Singapore-based resource development company RGE has signed an agreement to invest Rmb20bn in a paper production plant in Chongqing....
The largest Ro-Ro barge on the Yangtze, capable of carrying 1,300 passenger cars, started its maiden voyage on 12 August from Wuhan and was expected to reach Chongqing five days later, according to Wuhan Morning News....
Operation of the No.1 shiplock at the Gezhouba Dam in Yichang, Hubei province, will remain suspended for 20 days until midnight on 29 August, according to the Three Gorges Administration....
The China Waterway Newspaper said on 15 August that Anqing port had recently received approval from the central government to start direct shipping services to Taiwan....
Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan called on his officials attending a meeting of the city’s water transport development taskforce on 11 August to speed up investment in the city’s waterways so as to turn the city into a...
The southwest province of Yunnan plans to increase its shipping lane length to 4,000km by 2015, reported Xinhua, to promote waterway connections between China and countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia.
The province ha...
Kerry Logistics has begun second-phase construction of its Chongqing logistics centre, with work due to be completed in the first quarter of 2013....
China’s State Council has ordered increased safety checks after a fatal train collision in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, on 23 July killed 40 people....
Zhanyun Electronic, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Taiwan’s Quanta Group, has started construction of a laptop chassis plant in Chongqing’s Bishan Industrial Park, according to a local government website.
Phase o...
July 2011
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport has announced that the official guaranteed water level in the Yangtze trunk line between Nanjing and Wuhu has been raised by 1.5 metres as from midnight on 15 J...
The port of Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi province, reported an increase of 21.9 per cent in container throughput to 28,872 TEU during the first half of 2011....
China’s air cargo volume fell 0.4 per cent year-on-year to 2.66m tonnes in the first half of 2011, according to statistics from the Civil Administration of China.
Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific and its subsidiary Dra...
A new highway in Yunnan province collapsed at the end of last month just two days after it opened to traffic, reported China Daily....
A traffic jam stretching nearly 100km has reappeared on an expressway in north Inner Mongolia autonomous region following similar problems last year, reported Xinhua.
The severe congestion occurred as reconstruction and ex...
Hong Kong-based Kerry Logistics has acquired controlling stakes in two Chinese logistics companies, Shanghai Huicheng Logistics and Shanghai Wisdom Group, for an undisclosed sum....
The gross domestic product of Sichuan province in southwest China grew 14.5 per cent year-on-year to Rmb930bn in the first half of 2011, according to the provincial statistics bureau.
Twenty-eight of the 31 provinces on th...
Chongqing Metro Line 1 is scheduled to begin carrying passengers from the end of this month....
The value of Chongqing’s imports and exports totalled US$9.15bn in the first half of 2011, up 78 per cent on the same period of 2010, according to municipal customs data....
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities have issued an urgent warning that the Yangtze has entered its full flooding season following a surge in water volumes in the upper reaches since end of June....
The Wisco terminal in Taicang, Jiangsu province, received its largest ever bulk carrier on 1 July....
Senior government officials from Nanjing and its neighbouring cities Maanshan, Chuzhou, Wuhu, Caohu, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang and Huaian gathered at a summit on 12 July to agree new plans to build an integrated transport system....
China is to allocate funds to promote energy saving and emission reductions in road and waterway transport in the next five years, according to a document jointly released by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transp...
The environmental campaign group Greenpeace has accused major Chinese textile companies of discharging harmful chemicals into the country’s major water systems, reported The Guardian....
China’s rail cargo transportation volume averaged 10.67m tonnes a day in June, representing a year-on-year growth of 6.6 per cent, according to the Ministry of Railways.
The fastest growth rate in the country was rep...
A special IT container rail service will start on 28 July between Shanghai and Chongqing, reported Chongqing Commerce....
Power losses have caused two serious disruptions to the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway since the service began operations on 30 June.
On 10 July thunderstorms disrupted the electrical supply to the railway’s Quf...
The Netherlands-based international express delivery company TNT is striving to increase its share of China’s road delivery market, a senior executive told China Daily.
Marie-Christine Lombard, CEO of TNT Express, sa...
Fourteen people, including three children, were killed in a warehouse fire in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, reported Xinhua.
A spokesman for the fire brigade said most of the victims were trapped on the second-floor of t...
Twenty-six people were killed when a bus and truck collided on the Xiantao section of the Suizhou-Yueyang expressway in Hubei province, reported Xinhua....
Hubei province recorded a year-on-year increase of 114 per cent in its trade cargo volume in the first five months of 2011 to 9.75m tonnes, Xinhua reported....
Chongqing Port and Logistics Group, the parent of Cuntan container terminal, announced recently that starting from 1 July the local government would provide subsidies for all freight forwarders and barge operators using the t...
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities launched its ‘electronic patrol’ in Wuhu on 30 June....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that throughput of general cargo increased by 10.7 per cent year-on-year in June 2011 to 134m tons, while container throughput rose by near...
Statistics from Zhangjiagang Quarantine and Inspection Bureau show that the first six months of the year saw a total of 172,000 tons of imported coal worth US$44.31m, a sharp drop of 81 per cent and 66 per cent respectively o...
The Three Gorges Dam recorded its first flood of 2011 on 30 June, according to a Xinhua report....
A capacity upgrade project on the Liujiang River has been completed, according to Xinhua, enabling 500-tonne vessels to access the waterway to Liuzhou city, in southeast China’s Guangxi autonomous region....
China has allocated Rmb139.45bn from revenues derived from the vehicle purchase tax to fund key transport projects, said the Ministry of Finance....
DHL Express has sold its entire 50 per cent stake in DHL-Sinotrans International Air Courier to Shenzhen-based Uni-top Industry, according to various sources.
The joint venture company will now focus on international servi...
Finnair is to start flights to Chongqing from May 2012. The carrier plans to fly the route four times a week, operating an Airbus A340 aircraft....
Richun Battery Co in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, has found itself in the media spotlight over the past week as it planned to relocate its plant to Vietnam by the end of this year....
A cargo train service between Chongqing and the German city of Duisberg has been launched officially after three test runs since March last year....
Chicony Electronics of Taiwan has begun to build a Rmb2.8bn production base in Chongqing’s Shuangfu New Area. It will mainly produce keyboards, camera modules and other consumer electronic products....
June 2011
After years of heavy spending in terminals and related infrastructure along the Yangtze River, Shanghai International Port (Group) is to take a more cautious approach to future investment, reported South China Morning Post....
The port of Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province recently accommodated its largest ever foreign cargo ship....
Volumes at Shanghai port are expected to grow about 10 per cent annually over the next five years as more manufacturers shift plants to inland China to take advantage of lower labour costs, Bloomberg reported....
An official test run of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway passed off smoothly just a few days before the line is opened to the public on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the 1 July founding of China’s Communist...
Airlines operating services between Beijing, Shanghai and cities between the two cities have been scrambling for ways to prevent passengers from moving to the new high-speed line that will start operation on 30 June, reported...
Imported and exported cargo passing through Chongqing airport increased 391 per cent year-on-year in the first five months of 2011.
The airport now has 30 cargo flights taking off and landing on average every week, includi...
Kerry Logistics, the Hong Kong-based logistics service provider, has started construction of a 26,000 sq metre logistics centre in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, reported Cargonews Asia....
China’s ministries of transport and railways gathered some of the country’s major port groups, shipping lines, rail container companies and research institutes in Beijing on 24 June to discuss how to proceed with...
Deputy General Manager Miao Xiaohua of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Corporation was quoted recently by Xinhua news agency as saying that the Qinghai-Tibet line will become the rail hub of China’s west within the next five...
Two waterways – the Taipingfu and Yuxikou – located between Wuhu and Maanshan in Anhui province will become part of the Yangtze trunk line network from 1 October, according to Mr Tang Guanjun, Director of Yangtze...
Recent rain storms have raised the water level in the middle reaches of the Yangtze to such an extent that the waterway authorities re-opened the shipping channel between Wuhan and Chenglingji to ocean-going vessels from 20 J...
Four planned hydroelectric power stations being built on the Jinsha River will be capable of producing twice as much power as the Three Gorges Dam, according to The China Three Gorges Corporation.
The company said the four...
The Chinese government has responded to widespread criticism of the nation’s tollway system by starting a campaign to remove unauthorised tollbooths and close those that collect fees after the authorised period has expi...
Zhangjiagang air passenger terminal opened for business in May. This is the first county-level terminal to be established by Wuxi Xunan International airport....
Hong Kong-based logistics services provider Kerry Logistics has begun construction of a 42,600 sq metre logistics centre in Xiamen, Fujian province....
The Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Jiangsu province has approved an ambitious programme to double income for residents and improve their sense of happiness and satisfaction....
The international forwarding and logistics services provider Panalpina has opened a second branch office in Wuhan, Hubei province....
According to officials of Wuhan Reform and Development Commission, the country’s largest electric bus production base is being built in the city’s Hannan district....
The design for the world’s third tallest building has been revealed in Wuhan, Hubei province.
The Wuhan Greenland Center, developed by the Shanghai-based Greenland Group and designed by the US-based Adrian Smith and...
Agricultural Bank of China and HNA Group, the parent of Hainan Airlines, will set up a Rmb20bn logistics industry fund in Chongqing municipality, said Xiang Junbo, chairman of the state-owned bank.
According to domestic me...
Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik (AT&S), the largest printed circuit board producer in Europe, has started construction of a US$620m plant in Chongqing’s Yufu Industrial Park, Liangjiang New Area....
Minister of Transport Li Shenglin said at the third meeting of the Yangtze Shipping Development and Coordination Task Force on 13 June that China will spend Rmb150bn in the next five years to 2015....
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport has recently awarded Jiangsu province the title of ‘the most effective promoter of the Yangtze vessel standardisation programme in 2010’....
Maritime safety authorities warned on 15 June that the dramatic change from drought to flood season will affect visibility, currents, the waterway and water levels, and all vessel operators were urged to be extra vigilant whe...
Torrential rain has hit the central and southern provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Zhejiang and Anhui, reported China Daily....
Developing countries will have difficulty in attracting transport infrastructure investment until they give more reassurance to investors, according to a study conducted by the UK-based consultancy EC Harris....
China Southern Airlines will join rivals Air China and China Eastern Airlines in establishing its own freight forwarding subsidiary, reported Aircargo News.
Si Xianmin, chairman of China Southern, said the company will hav...
China’s central government has allocated Rmb32.06bn to set up a special fund to support major transportation projects across the country, reported Xinhua....
The Chinese authorities have unveiled ticket prices for the high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai, due to be launched later this month....
From 1 July several high-speed railway lines, including those linking Wuhan and Guangzhou, Zhengzhou and Xian, and Shanghai and Nanjing, will reduce train speeds from 350kph to 300kph....
China’s State Council has issued eight measures to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the logistics sector....
Chongqing’s foreign trade totalled US$7.4bn in the first five months of 2011, an increase of 79 per cent year-on-year, according to local government statistics. This was the second highest growth rate in China....
Wuhan city government announced on 1 June eight measures aimed at making the Wuhan-Yangshan shuttle service more reliable for shippers....
At 6:50am on 6 June, a 12,000dwt oil barge fleet sailing downstream from Yueyang to Nanjing collided with the Wuhan No.1 Yangtze Bridge in heavy fog, causing a 1.5-metre long and 0.5-metre deep dent in its No.7 pier....
Under the guidance of a senior pilot from the Yangtze Piloting Centre, Hong Kong-registered Rosco Banyan became the largest vessel ever to arrive at Zhenjiang port on 30 May....
The throughput volume of Shanghai’s Yangshan terminal will grow by at least 40 per cent, said Wang Xuan, general manager of Yangshan Tongsheng Port Construction, the company in charge of the terminal’s design and...
Torrential rains in recent days have brought relief to the drought-plagued regions along the Yangtze River, but have brought with them several instances of flooding....
Yunnan provincial government is going all out to building a modern rail freight network, according to Xinhua news agency. Of the planned 40 rail freight stations, 17 have already been completed....
China has started selling named high-speed train tickets across the country in an effort to improve railway security and eliminate ticket touting.
Passengers must show proper identification, such as passports or residence...
China Southern Airlines has launched a service between Sanya and Urumqi via Chongqing....
Chongqing’s Banan district plans to develop west China’s largest road logistics facility so as to cement the municipality’s status as a regional logistics hub, Xinhua reported.
The Rmb 30bn Chongqing Road...
Serious drought persists in the Yangtze region but weather forecasts predict medium to heavy rainfall between 3 and 7 June in the middle and lower reaches of the river....
Statistics from China Shipbuilders Association show that 313 out of 1,519 major shipbuilding companies in China were in red during the first quarter of 2011, three more than in the same period last year....
Premier Wen Jiabao has told a group of young model workers visiting Beijing’s Zhongnanhai that public transport should be the government’s first priority in planning urban transport infrastructure....
China plans to spend Rmb6,200bn on upgrading its transportation infrastructure during the 12th five-year plan (2011-15), said Sun Guoqing, director of the Ministry of Transport’s comprehensive planning department....
All Nippon Airways is to start direct flights between Tokyo and Chengdu, according to Shinichiro Ito, President and CEO of Japan’s largest carrier....
China National Materials Group or Sinoma, the parent company of China National Materials, has started construction of a major quartz crucible project in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province....
Acer’s first made-in-Chongqing laptop was produced on 26 May, according to a municipal government website....
Chongqing’s head of police, Wang Lijun, has been promoted to deputy mayor of the municipality....
Registration for Euromoney’s Chongqing: Gateway to Western China conference on 14-15 June will close on 8 June.
The line-up of speakers for the event is nearly complete....
The director of Chongqing Municipal Commission for Industries and Information, Mu Huaping, said that the city aims to become one of the world’s most important data processing centres with the help of cloud computing....
May 2011
The Yangtze River Administration claims that the water level in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze is recovering thanks to the emergency release of water from the Three Gorges Reservoir....
The maiden voyage of what is claimed to be the world’s most luxurious inland cruise ship started from Chongqing on 22 May.
The Yangtze River Gold No....
The operator of the Three Gorges Dam plans to overhaul its finances after a government audit found that the world’s largest hydroelectric project faces urgent environmental, geologic and economic problems.
China Thre...
The Chinese government has halted two railway projects in the north of the country, reported China Daily....
The global express transportation group DHL has launched a scheduled rail freight service between Tianjin and Ulan Bator in Mongolia....
MAN Diesel & Turbo, the Germany-based manufacturer of diesel engines for use in ships and power stations, has opened the second section of a new building at its plant in Changzhou, Jiangsu province....
Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile has started building its third assembly plant in China in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province....
China Guodian Corp said it is planning to invest Rmb20bn in building new energy facilities in Chongqing municipality over the next five years, reported People’s Daily.
The company will fund a variety of energy projec...
The severe drought along the Yangtze River is reducing electricity output at major dams in the region, including the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project....
Express delivery enterprises of a designated size and above in China earned combined revenues of Rmb6.18bn in March this year, 31.7 per cent more than in the same month in 2010, according to statistics released by the State P...
Construction of China’s first inland nuclear power station might be postponed for further evaluation of flood risks following the recent devastating earthquake in Japan, China Daily reported.
The Rmb60bn nuclear proj...
The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway began a one-month trial operation on 11 May, according to the Ministry of Railways.
The 1,318km-long line will cut travel time between China’s two major cities to about five ho...
China’s Ministry of Railways said on 13 May that its total investment in 2011 will reach Rmb745.5bn....
A new air cargo service has become operational between China and Europe, reported Xinhua. Operated by Yangtze River Express, the route is Shanghai-Chongqing-Moscow-Luxembourg-Shanghai....
China’s State Council and Central Military Commission have formally approved the construction of Wushan airport in Chongqing municipality....
A museum is being built in Chongqing to remember the 1.35m people who were forced to migrate to give way for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam....
Reports from the Yangtze River Administration say that the water level in the Wuhan section of the Yangtze was 15.54 metres at 2:00pm on 17 May, compared with 21 metres at the same time last year....
Deputy Chief Engineer of the Three Gorges Dam Control Centre Zhao Yunfa confirmed on 18 May that the emergency water release code has been activated for the second time in a month to alleviate the severe drought in the middle...
The development plan for Wuhan New Port Authorities has been revised to include the shorelines of four counties in Huanggang....
Figures from the Yangtze River Administration show that April’s container throughput in Taicang terminal hit a record high of 240,000 TEU, up 24 per cent year-on-year....
About 30 per cent of China’s coastal shipping companies are experiencing losses due to overcapacity and high fuel prices, said Xu Zuyuan, vice minister of transport....
Donggang port area in Chongqing, which is being built by Shanghai International Port Group, has started operation with an annual capacity of 200,000-250,000 TEU....
Air China Cargo, a joint venture between Air China and the Cathay Pacific, has been officially launched having been approved by all relevant authorities....
Yangtze Waterway Bureau announced on 11 May that the shipping channel between Chenglingji and Wuhan, which was opened only 10 days ago for ocean-going vessels, had to be suspended until further notice due to the severe drough...
Chongqing’s proposal to build Wushan Mountain Airport has recently been approved by the State Council, according to a story published by China News Services....
Official figures show that, in the first three months of 2011, Chongqing farmers enjoyed a 28 per cent year-on-year increase in disposable income to Rmb1,991....
Officials from the Three Gorges Administration of Navigational Affairs say that construction will start within a year on a navigational information management system....
Zhangjiagang Quarantine and Inspection Bureau reported that the city’s port imported a total of 210,000 tons of scrap steel in April, worth US$110m, up 200 per cent and 295 per cent year-on-year respectively....
A total of Rmb18bn will be spent on deepening the navigation channel of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River between 2011 and 2015, according to local authorities....
The dredging project on the approach channel of Shanghai’s Waigaoqiao terminal has recently been completed, increasing the water level by two full metres to 12.5 metres, according to China Transport News....
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Administration said discharges from the Three Gorges Dam would increase between 2 and 6 May so as to raise water levels in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze in advance of the rainy season...
China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company, the largest container ship operator in China, is to resume investing in ports....
Shanghai International Port (Group), China’s largest port operator, posted a net profit of Rmb1.27bn in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 24 per cent on the same period last year....
Official statistics show that retail car sales in Nanjing during the first three months of this year stood at Rmb7.95bn, down 36.9 per cent over the same period last year....
Drought conditions continue to affect farming and water supplies across many parts of China.
In the central province of Hubei, for example, about 150,000 people and 50,000 livestock have faced difficulty in getting drinkin...
China may cut its investment in railway infrastructure this year by more than Rmb200bn, the Economic Observer reported....
Shanghai is building a fourth and fifth runway at Pudong International Airport, reported Shanghai Daily....
The Airport Road in Chongqing, which runs from the East Ring Interchange to the Airport Interchange, is being widened from a two-way, four-lane road into a two-way, eight-lane road....
Amazon.com, the US-based online retailer, is to establish a logistics base in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, reported Xinhua.
The 100,000 sq metre base is located in Kunshan Huaqiao Economic Development Zone and the two wareho...
April 2011
According to the Yangtze River Administration under The Ministry of Transport, the water level along the 180km section of the Yangtze within central Chongqing has fallen to a dangerously low level, necessitating an increase i...
A strike by truck drivers that disrupted shipments at Shanghai port has petered out after the municipal government took steps to defuse the situation....
Chongqing municipal government is hosting an investment forum on 8-9 June in partnership with Euromoney....
Jiangsu Maritime Safety Authorities announced on 18 April its ratings for companies and individuals involved in declaring, handling and inspecting containers with dangerous cargo....
Jiangsu Maritime Safety Authorities approved the newly completed approach channel at Nantong Yangkou terminal on 20 April....
China’s total length of railways open to traffic will increase to 120,000km by the end of 2015, including 50,000km of line in western regions, according to an official quoted by Xinhua....
On 20 April Air China Cargo started services between Dalian and Frankfurt, via Shanghai’s Pudong airport. This is the first air cargo service between the city in Liaoning province and Europe....
Chongqing municipal government has approved a plan to further reduce over-capacity in some industrial sectors during the 12th five-year period (2011-2015), according to Chongqing Daily....
According to Mr Gu Qiangsheng, general manager of Wuhan Port Group, all the facilities at the city’s Yangsi container terminal will be moved to Yangluo terminal from 18 May....
China Infrastructure Group, which has an 85 per cent stake in the first phase of Wuhan’s Yangluo terminal, announced via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday 11 April that it has signed a letter of intent with a poten...
Nanjing Port Group, the largest common-user terminal operator in the capital of Jiangsu province, reported a 39.8 per cent growth in container throughput during the first three months of 2011, bringing the total to 405,400 TE...
Shanghai port reported a throughput of 7.28m TEU in the first quarter of 2011, a 12 per cent year-on-year rise, according to the port management authority....
The Containership Company has ceased its transpacific services due to low shipping prices and rising fuel costs, according to various media reports....
China’s imports of iron ore in the first quarter of 2011 stood at 177.17m tonnes, an increase of 14.4 per cent year-on-year, reported Xinhua....
Cargo throughput at Chongqing airport increased considerably in the first quarter of 2011, according to local Customs data....
Dongfeng Automobile, the listed arm of Dongfeng Motor, posted an 80 per cent year-on-year increase in net profit to Rmb571m in 2010. The Wuhan-based company’s revenues increased 38 per cent to Rmb19.8bn....
Household electric appliance manufacturer Sichuan Changhong Electric earned an operating income of Rmb41.7bn in 2010, up by nearly one-third on the previous year....
BASF has officially started construction of its joint venture chemical plant in Chongqing. Together with Chongqing Chemical and Pharmaceutical Holding (Group), the two partners will invest US$5.3bn in the plant....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that throughput of general cargo along the Yangtze River trunkline rose by 12.3 per cent year-on-year in March to 120m tons, while container throughput reached 860,000 TEU...
Three Gorges Corp, the builder and operator of the Three Gorges Dam and shiplocks, announced at the end of March that it is changing the criterion for a suspension of operation....
Shanghai port experienced strong growth in the number of ship arrivals and departures in the first two months of2011, according to a report by Xinhua.
Yangshan deepwater terminal recorded 1,517 cargo and passenger ships ar...
The total value of China’s logistics industry increased 14.5 per cent year-on-year in the first two months of 2011, according to figures released by the National Development and Reform Commission.
During this period...
On 4 April a container train arrived in the German city of Duisburg 16 days after departing Chongqing in southwest China....
All flights linking Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, and Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province in east China, have been suspended since 27 March, according to the General Administration of Civil Aviation...
Sweden-based automotive safety products manufacturer Autoliv has begun construction of a factory to make seat belts in Nanjing, replacing an existing plant in the capital of Jiangsu province....
Construction started at the end of March of the Compass Sat Nav Industry Park in Chongqing’s Two River New Area. This is a local government investment costing Rmb5bn and covers a planned area of about 20 hectares....
PetroChina, China's largest oil producer, will build a refinery in Chongqing municipality with a daily output capacity of 200,800 barrels, according to the company’s vice president Liu Hongbin....
The 14th Chongqing international investment and global sourcing fair will be held from 19-22 May at the city’s International Convention and Exhibition Center....
Planning work on the northern extension of Chongqing’s rail transit line 3 has been completed. This 10.4km overground section will connect the airport industrial zone and low-rent public housing areas in the city....
March 2011
Cargo throughput on the Yangtze River, excluding Shanghai, may exceed 30 per cent in the next two to three years, the managing director of Maersk China will tell delegates at the 2011 Yangtze Business Network conference in Sh...
Chongqing East Port Container Terminal formally went into operation in the town of Guangyang, Nan’an district on 28 March. It will have a predicted annual throughput of 200,000-250,000 TEU....
Spot rates for shipping containers from Shanghai to Europe have dropped below US$1,000 per TEU for the first time since March 2009, according to the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO)....
FedEx Express has opened a new station in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. It is located in Suzhou New District’s high technology zone and is the company’s third facility in the city....
More parts shortages in China are being experienced following the Japanese earthquake on 11 March....
Washing machine manufacturer Wuxi Little Swan will invest Rmb649m in expanding its output, according to a company statement filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange....
BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, has received approval for a 400,000 tonnes-a-year MDI (diphenylmethane diisocyanate) project in Chongqing....
Chongqing-based Lifan Group was China’s top motorcycle seller in the first two months of 2011, with exports valued at US$59.6m, according to a survey of 88 major domestic motorcycle firms conducted by the China Associat...
Two new air cargo services from Chongqing started on 29 March....
Low water levels on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River continue to have an impact on shipping in the region....
Two of China’s biggest toll-road operators are searching for more expressway projects in the country, reported South China Morning Post....
From 27 March Sichuan Airlines is to open three new services between Chongqing and other Chinese cities....
The expansion project of Gonggar Airport in Lhasa is due to be completed in mid June, according to newspapers quoting the Tibet branch of Civil Aviation Administration of China....
Kerry Logistics has opened new logistics centres in Chongqing and Kunshan, reported IFW.
The first phase of the Chongqing Kerry Logistics Centre has a total area of 20,500 sq metres....
Two Sino-Japanese car-making joint ventures in Wuhan could be affected from next month in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami....
The residents of Nanjing have won a battle with the city government over the planned removal of more than 1,000 trees to make way for the construction of new subway lines.
In common with many other Chinese cities, Nanjing...
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has opened a Westin hotel in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province....
According to the Yangtze Waterway Bureau, Taicang’s cargo throughput rose significantly in the first two months of 2011 as a result of the Yangtze Mouth dredging project that has brought the guaranteed minimum water lev...
Container throughput at Nanjing Longtan terminal reached 1.4m TEU last year and is expected to grow to 3m TEU by 2015, according to Nanjing Maritime Safety Authorities....
The throughput of dangerous cargo at Jiangyin port in Jiangsu province has increased significantly over recent years, said Jiangyin Maritime Safety Authorities....
The planned Xiaonanhai dam on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River will destroy the region’s last reserve for rare fish, according to an article in Chinadialogue, a London-based bilingual website devoted to China&rsqu...
China issued its first ship trading price index on 12 March in Beijing....
A stricter vehicle emission standard for Beijing’s 5m motor vehicles will be introduced next year, said Zhang Lijun, vice-minister of environmental protection....
Construction work has been completed in Guangdong province on China’s first underwater railway tunnel, reported Xinhua....
CNNC Nuclear Power, a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corp, said it would strive to establish a nuclear power plant in Chongqing during the current five-year plan (2011-15), the Wall Street Journal reported....
China National Chemical Engineering, which is principally engaged in the construction of chemical and petrochemical infrastructure, said it plans to spend about Rmb4bn to build an industrial park in the Jiangsu city of Qidong...
Asia’s largest refiner Sinopec plans to raise the capacity of its Jinling refinery by a third to 360,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2015, Oil and Gas News reported....
Throughput of general cargo on the Yangtze trunkline totalled 1.39bn tons in 2010, up 22 per cent year-on-year, according to the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport....
According to Zhangjiagang Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, the volume of the city’s imported scrap metal dropped by 18 per cent year-on-year during the first two months to 250,000 tons, but its total value rose by 8 pe...
Nantong Maritime Safety Authorities have issued a new regulation that stipulates that booms must be laid for handling 69 types of bulk liquid dangerous cargo....
China’s new railway minister Sheng Guangzu has pledged to continue the programme of expanding the country’s high-speed rail network despite the removal of his predecessor who is being investigated for “sever...
The blueprint for building a high-speed rail link between Chengdu and Chongqing has been submitted to the State Development and Reform Commission for approval....
A second trial cargo train service connecting Chongqing and Europe via Xinjiang recently departed the Chinese municipality....
The General Administration of Civil Aviation of China said it plans to develop its top 20 second-tier airports to handle the anticipated increase in air cargo demand over the next five years, reported GCTL....
Sichuan Airlines initiated a passenger and cargo service between Chongqing and Hanoi, capital of Vietnam on 5 March. There are two services a week on this route, departing Chongqing on Thursday and Sunday evenings....
Jiangsu province’s foreign trade value increased 33.9 per cent year-on-year to US$43.61bn in January 2011, according to local Customs statistics....
China’s labour shortage is expected to spread from coastal regions to central and western parts of the country, according to the human resources minister Yin Weimin....
The State Council has approved the blueprint for the creation of a new economic zone in southwest China, reported People’s Daily.
The Cheng-Yu economic zone will include Chongqing municipality and 15 cities in neighb...
The 2011 Yangtze Business Network conference, to be held in Shanghai on 31 March, is attracting a growing number of senior managers from manufacturing companies, shipping lines and 3PLs....
The Three Gorges Administration of Navigational Affairs signed agreements on 25 February with 18 barge operators involved in shipping dangerous cargo that they promise to abide by rules and procedures relating to passing the...
According to statistics from Zhenjiang Maritime Safety Authorities, the number of foreign vessels arriving in Zhenjiang reached 128 in February, compared with 106 in the same month last year and 115 in January 2011....
Chongqing is to invest Rmb28.5bn in its waterways during the current five-year plan (2011-15), according to the local government. The work will include dredging and terminal projects....
China’s cargo throughput at ports above designated size amounted to 735m tons in January, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 13.3 per cent, reported China Knowledge....
Railways Minister Liu Zhijun was officially dismissed from his post on 25 February by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress for alleged ‘severe violation of discipline’....
China will build 45 new airports over the next five years, said Li Jiaxing, the head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China....
Insurance giant Chubb opened an office in Nanjing on 28 February....
Royal DSM, the life sciences and materials sciences company, will build a Rmb500m new facility to replace an existing plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. It will make composite resins targeted at the Chinese market....
Knorr-Bremse of Germany has established a joint venture with Chongqing Machinery & Electronics Holdings in which the Chinese partner holds a 34 per cent stake....
February 2011
Wang Jiefa, director of the Jiangyin-based Yangtze Piloting Centre, has promised to improve its services by implementing eight measures announced at a meeting on 18 February....
January 2011 figures show that container throughput in Taicang terminal reached 175,200 TEU, up nearly 45 per cent over the same period last year. Throughput of general cargo grew by 32 per cent to 7.54m tons....
Nantong city government in Jiangsu province has recently approved an ambitious plan to dredge its inland waterway network, according to the Yangtze River Administration....
Maritime safety officials in Tongling have successfully lobbied the local government to invest in ferry services for residents living in Xuba and Laozhou, two counties on a river island with a population of nearly 60,000 peop...
Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has recently been appointed by the State Development and Reform Commission to pioneer reforms in the services sector, reported Chengdu Daily....
According to a report by China News Services on 23 February, 70 per cent of the drilling work for the Shanghai-Nantong Yangtze Bridge has been completed....
A major state-owned Chongqing cruise operator has unveiled its new models, according to the municipal government’s website....
Hubei province plans to increase Wuhan port’s container capacity to 3.3m TEU by 2015 and overall cargo capacity to 150m tonnes, reported Xinhua....
In an interview with South China Morning Post, the Asia-Pacific chief executive of Agility Logistics, Hans Hickler, predicted continued good growth in China this year....
The removal last week of China’s Ministry of Railways, Liu Zhijun, due to an investigation of possible corruption, has prompted some commentators to predict a slowdown in the country’s fast-expanding high-speed ra...
China exported US$40.3bn-worth of ships and boats in 2010, up 42 per cent on the previous year, according to statistics released by the General Administration of Customs....
Shanghai-based China Cargo Airlines may start flying from Shanghai to St Louis in Missouri in the US from June this year, reported the Kansas City Star....
Taiwan-based TransAsia Airways is to launch non-stop flights between Taipei Songshan airport and Chongqing Jiangbei airport in March 2011....
Following a deal signed last week with Canadian Adriana Resources to qcquire a stake in an iron ore project in Quebec, Wuhan Iron & Steel (Group) has become the steel manufacturer with the most iron ore resources in the w...
A Sino-American joint exploration of natural gas has started in Chongqing, according to a local government source....
Swedish carmaker Volvo, owned by Zhejiang Geely, has finally decided to set up a manufacturing facility in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, according to Reuters....
Jens Eskelund, Managing Director of Maersk China, will make a presentation at the Yangtze Business Network conference next month on accessing China’s interior via the Yangtze....
Wuhu government officials headed by deputy mayor Hong Jianping visited the Yangtze River Administration in Wuhan on 15 February to consult the central regulators over the construction of Wuhu’s No.2 Yangtze Bridge.
A...
On 12 February, an oil tanker carrying 990 tons of No.90 diesel oil set off from Wuhan to Yichang....
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport has recently set up a special task force to speed up the vessel standardisation programme....
Bulk cargo and port infrastructure group PYI Corp has agreed to sell a 50.1 per cent stake in Jiangsu Yangkou port to the investment arm of Rudong county government in Nantong, for Rmb1.51bn....
Jiangsu ports handled 1.5bn tonnes of cargo in 2010, according to provincial data, double the total in 2005. Its container throughput exceeded 11m TEU, Xinhua reported....
The forwarding and logistics services company Panalpina is to open an office in Chongqing, having already opened offices in Wuhan and Chengdu....
According to Chongqing Evening News, Chongqing Customs is to focus on setting up e-commerce infrastructure and an international trade settlement centre to help facilitate the city’s new cargo railway route to Burma and...
China aims to extend its rural road network from 3.45m km to 3.9m km by 2015, said the country’s transport authorities....
Plans have been drawn up to invest some Rmb30bn in new airports in China’s far western region of Xinjiang between 2011 and 2015....
The Sichuan department of the State Statistics Bureau announced on 15 February that among the 19 large and medium-sized cities in the province, Chengdu, Deyang and Mianyang ranked first, second and third respectively in the l...
The Chinese government will spend Rmb6.7bn to combat the severe drought in northern China, reported China Daily....
Property company Dalian Wanda has acquired a plot in Wuhu, Anhui province for Rmb308m to start its first large mixed-use property project in the city....
Japan-based THK is to build an automobile parts production base in Changzhou National Hi-Tech District, Jiangsu province....
The second phase construction of Chongqing’s Cuntan Bonded Port Area is due to start operating by the end of May 2001.
Incorporating both an airport and port, the bonded area covers 8.37 sq km....
APAC Resources, the Hong Kong-listed investor and commodities trader, has signed a framework agreement to build a top-grade paper manufacturing plant in Chongqing, according to a municipal government website....
January 2011
We are pleased to announce a new speaker at the Yangtze Business Network conference on 31 March in Shanghai....
Zhang Wei, deputy mayor of Zhangjiagang city, said on 25 January that the city handled a throughput of 215m tons of general cargo in 2010, up nearly 35 per cent year-on-year and more than any other Yangtze port....
Nantong Inspection and Quarantine Bureau reported an unprecedented increase in seafood imports worth US$175m in 2010, 10 times the value in the previous year....
Statistics from the local Inspection and Quarantine Bureau show that the city of Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province exported a record 1,080 tons of duck and goose down worth more than US$5.6m in 2010, over four times that of the p...
Tianjin port in north China aims to double its container-handling capacity to 20m TEU by 2015, making it one of the world’s top five container ports, reported China Economic Review.
Yu Rumin, chairman and senior engi...
Western China, India and Southeast Asia will be the major low-cost global production bases in the next 15 to 20 years, according to a survey by research firm Transport Intelligence and logistics company Agility....
The AMP Capital Asian Giants Infrastructure Fund has acquired its first asset in China, taking a 19.11 per cent effective equity stake in Qujing Gas....
DB Schenker aims to have a regular rail service in place between China and Europe in the second quarter of 2011, according to Asia-Pacific CEO Steve Dearnley....
A senior Zhejiang province official said that the proposed high-speed maglev train line linking Shanghai to Hangzhou is unlikely to proceed, reported South China Morning Post....
Celanese, the US-based chemicals company, has signed letters of intent to construct industrial ethanol production facilities in Nanjing and Zhuhai....
According to Sichuan provincial government’s development strategy for the 12th five-year plan (2011-2015), the provincial capital Chengdu will lead Mianyang, Nanchong, Zigong and five county-level cities into becoming t...
The US-based power and technology giant General Electric plans to build its first innovation centre in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, People’s Daily reported.
The centre, which plans to recruit 380 employees i...
The world’s leading convenience store chain 7-Eleven is to open two outlets in Chengdu on 17 March, reported China Retail News....
Chongqing has set a 2011 GDP growth target of 13.5 per cent, higher than any other province or municipality in China.
Inland China has been growing at a faster rate than coastal areas in recent times....
SIPG Jiujiang reported a year-on-year 20 per cent increase in container throughput in 2010 to a record 120,600 TEU....
Changshu port reported a more than 27 per cent decrease in waste paper imports last year to 890,000 tons, the first decline in seven years according to China News Agency....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau reported that the new guaranteed water level in the middle reaches of the river has been trialled and sustained safely for the first 70 days....
The New World Alliance is to cut capacity on transpacific services during next month’s Spring Festival, reported IFW. The alliance is made up of APL, Hyundai Merchant Marine and Mitsui OSK Lines....
China’s new ship orders increased 2.9-fold to 75.23m DWT in 2010, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology....
The director of Chengdu Railway Bureau, Wu Yong, told the ongoing provincial people’s congress that by 2015 Sichuan will have 2,500km of high-speed railway lines, accounting for 10 per cent of the national total....
Air China reported a 21.7 per cent year-on-year increase in cargo throughput in 2010 to 1.15m tons....
Wuhan Iron and Steel has reached agreement to pay US$122m for a 60 per cent stake in a joint venture with Adriana Resources of Canada that will develop iron ore resources in Quebec....
Chongqing Changan Automobile has signed a strategic agreement with South Korean chemical product maker LG Chem for the research and development of lithium-ion batteries used in new energy vehicles....
A building in central Chongqing that was originally intended to be the tallest in southwest China is set to be demolished because of financial problems that have stalled construction for four years, said a municipal governmen...
Chongqing is to set up more than 300 fixed and mobile traffic checkpoints over the Spring Festival....
Shanghai International Port Group’s profits jumped 44 per cent year-on-year to Rmb5.4bn in 2010 as sea transport picked up with the recovery of global trade, Shanghai Daily reported....
Shanghai was the world’s largest container port in 2010, handling 29m TEU compared with Singapore’s 28.4m TEU....
China’s 2010 iron ore imports dropped 1.4% year-on-year to 618.6m tons, the first decline in a dozen years....
The Three Gorges Dam northern shiplocks were closed down between 9:00am and midnight on 10 January for routine maintenance, according to the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport....
Visitors to the Three Gorges Dam totalled a record 1.45m last year, according to a local tourism company reported by Xinhua....
On the morning of 11 January, 44 high speed trains originating from Shanghai Hongqiao and heading for Hefei, Anhui and Wuhan, Hubei, passed over Nanjing Dashengguan Yangtze Bridge, signalling the start of operation for the ne...
Chongqing is to build the 500km rail line between the city proper and Wanzhou by the end of 2015, according to governor of Fuling district, Shen Xiaozhong....
Chongqing is finalising plans for imposing a new tax on high-end residential property, according to Xinhua....
According to Chengdu Evening Daily, the city’s exports during the first 10 months of 2010 exceeded US$11.2bn, up 42 per cent year-on-year....
Auchan has recently opened a 9,284 sq metre store in Huayang, Chengdu, the first large supermarket in the area, reported ChinaRetailNews....
Mr Zhang Tongbin, director of Jiangsu Maritime Safety Authorities, announced at a recent press conference in Nanjing that the MSA has completed integrating the entire supervision system for the Jiangsu section of the Yangtze...
According to the Yangtze River Waterway Bureau, waterway officials have received compensation for the money they spent on repairing the shipping channel in Jiujiang that was caused by a vessel collision....
Anhui provincial government said that within three years of 2011, some 4,500 vessels registered locally will be withdrawn on a compulsory basis as part of the Yangtze River vessel standardisation programme....
Following a visit to Jiujiang early last month, we have updated our investment profile of the city....
Phase six of Shanghai port’s Waigaoqiao terminal started operation in late December....
Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate, will spend US$733m to raise its controlling stakes in terminals in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, reported the Wall Street Journal....
Two shipping insurance centres were established in Shanghai in the last week of December. The centres, for Pacific Insurance (Group) and PICC Property and Casualty, both gained regulatory approval in August 2010....
The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway will start operations in mid-June 2011, said Chinese Railways Minister Liu Zhijun....
China will invest Rmb700bn in 2011 in building railways, People’s Daily reported, citing a meeting of the national railway work conference. The money will be used for 70 new intercity projects....
A railway linking Kashi and Hotan in Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in northwest China opened on 30 December for cargo transportation, reported Xinhua....
Air China Cargo plans to double the number of its cargo flights between Shanghai and Narita airport in Tokyo to four a week starting this month....
Germany-based transport and logistics company DB Schenker told IFW that it plans further expansion in China this year....
Jiangsu provincial government has approved a plan to raise minimum wage by an average of more than 18 per cent from 1 February, according to China News Services....
Xinxing Ductile Iron Pipes, which specialises in the manufacture of centrifugal ductile cast-iron pipes, plans to spend Rmb3.33bn on building a large production base in Wuhu, Anhui province....
Hilton international Management has agreed with Hong Kong Zhongzhen Investment to set up a Hilton hotel in Yichang, its first in Hubei province....
According to Wuhan Evening News on 5 January, local congressman Liu Yuan’s idea to introduce property incentives to attract and retain HR talent will be one of the major proposals to be discussed in the coming plenary m...
China South Industries Group Corp, a state-owned investment conglomerate, is to invest Rmb4.4bn to build a photovoltaic base in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province....
Chongqing Changan Automobile has signed an agreement with Kunming municipal government to invest Rmb10bn in an auto production base in Yunnan province....
Chongqing government reported total revenues of Rmb199.1bn in 2010, up 71 per cent over the previous year....
December 2010
Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities recently issued its 2010 Trustworthy Award to 23 vessels, which allows them to enjoy preferential treatment in different areas including simplified reporting procedures and priority for dep...
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport has announced the timetable for completing its vessel standardisation programme....
The Yangtze River Administration has activated an Emergency Response Code at the Three Gorges Dam in an attempt to deal with a growing backlog of vessels waiting to pass the shiplocks....
Container throughput at China’s coastal ports increased 21 per cent year-on-year in November 2010 to 11.82m TEU, reported China Knowledge....
According to Shanghai Shipping Exchange, a severe lack of specialist maritime lawyers is fast becoming a bottleneck for Shanghai’s ambition to become East Asia’s international shipping centre....
Air cargo services have begun for the first time between Pakistan and China, linking Islamabad with Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region....
China Eastern Airlines, the country’s third-largest carrier, recorded a 31.5 per cent increase in its cargo and mail throughput in November 2010 to 124,900 tons....
Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway company, and China’s Ministry of Railways have signed an MOU to cooperate more closely in rail freight transport and in expanding China’s railway infrastructure....
Ground has been broken in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, for what will become the world’s third tallest building....
Chongqing Foreign Trade Commission reported a 54 per cent rise in the municipality’s foreign trade in the first 11 months of 2010 to US$10.5bn....
Taiwan’s largest private enterprise, Formosa Plastics, plans to manufacture auto batteries in Chongqing, according to the municipal Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Commission....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that throughput of general cargo passing the Three Gorges shiplocks had reached 71.03m tons in the first 11 months of 2010, up by 30 per cent year-on-year....
Wuhu Maritime Safety Authorities established a dangerous cargo emergency response training centre at Wuhu Ronghui Chemical Company on 30 November....
Jiangyin Maritime Safety Administration officials in Jiangsu province said on 6 December that nearly 100 vessels including more than 20 ocean liners were forced to anchor due to strong winds in the Jiangyin section of the Yan...
A direct container service between Nanjing and Ulsan, South Korea was opened on 1 December....
Logwin, the Germany-based logistics company, has opened a 2,000 sq metre logistics centre in Shanghai, according to IFW....
Track-laying has begun in the Xuchang, Henan province, section of the Shijiazhuang-Wuhan high-speed railway....
The Dazhou-Wanzhou railway in southwestern China is now operational as an electrified line. For the past eight years, passenger and cargo trains on the 158km line were drawn by diesel locomotives....
China’s Ministry of Railways has announced that it is working with Bank of China to launch a pre-paid swipe card system for users of the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway service....
Chongqing Jiangbei airport’s second runway will open following a final inspection on 13-14 December. Work on the 3.6km-long runway, which runs parallel to the first runway, began in August 2008....
GlaxoSmithKline has signed an agreement to acquire Nanjing MeiRui Pharma for US$70m, reported Pharmaceutical Business Review. MeiRui is a Chinese pharmaceutical business specialising in urology and allergy products....
The France-based chemicals company Rhodia has acquired amines manufacturer Feixiang Chemicals in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province, for US$489m....
US-based Sensata Technologies is to invest an additional US$30m to expand production capacity at its wholly-owned plant in Changzhou National Hi-Tech District in Jiangsu province.
The company makes sensors and controls tha...
Tsingtao Beer has agreed to invest Rmb50m in a production facility in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, with an annual capacity of 400,000 tons, according to senior inward investment officials from the city’s ETDZ....
Taiwan-based computer maker Acer officially confirmed that it will invest US$150m in Chongqing to build its biggest global IT manufacturing centre and set up its second base on the mainland....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that throughput of general cargo via the major ports along the Yangtze trunkline grew by nearly 20 per cent year-on-year to 122m tons in November....
Nanjing Maritime Safety Authorities announced on 29 November that they are building an oil-leak emergency response terminal in Nanjing Chemical Industry Park in the city’s Liuhe district....
At 4:30am on 29 November, Zhenjiang Maritime Safety Authorities imposed a temporary ban on shipping as heavy fog enveloped the waters of Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province and visibility fell to below minimum safety levels during...
Zhenjiang city’s inspection and quarantine officials discovered common wild-oats among a shipment of imported sorghum. This fast-growing weed spreads quickly and can damage linseed, wheat, beans, corn and other crops....
Major Chinese ports recorded a container throughput of 108m TEU in the first three quarters of 2010, according to a report by ResearchInChina....
China’s Ministry of Railways has approved the timetable of passenger and cargo services on the new Yichang-Wanzhou railway....
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s economic planner and price regulator, has requested local governments to crack down on petrol stations selling diesel above state-set prices....
In an effort to help reduce logistic costs and control household bills, the State Council has issued a circular covering a raft of measures including waiving road tolls for all trucks carrying fresh grocery and live poultry a...
Passenger traffic at Shanghai’s two main airports, Hongqiao and Pudong, rose 29 per cent year-on-year in October to 3.89m, according to Shanghai Airport Authority....
BASF aims to invest more than US$1.3bn in additional plants in China by 2014, according to a report by the Financial Times....
According to Jiujiang Daily published on 30 November, Jiangxi provincial government is going all out to help build Jiujiang’s Gongqingcheng (Youth City) into China’s new production centre for mobile phones....
Wharf (Holdings), the Hong Kong-based property and infrastructure company, said it has won a bid for a piece of land in Wuhan’s Hanyang district for Rmb1.02bn.
The land covers an area of 42,200 sq metres on which Wha...
Singapore’s International Enterprise, a government body designed to promote the overseas growth of Singapore-based enterprises and international trade, has opened an office in Wuhan, its 10th across the world....
According to a local newspaper, Wuhan police have tracked down more than 400 missing public bicycles, with the help of Xinfeida, the company that operates a free bicycle-renting scheme in the city....
South Korea-based Hankook Tire, the world’s seventh-largest tyre maker, is to invest US$950m to build a manufacturing plant in Chongqing, Xinhua reported.
The new plant, located in Liangjiang New Area, will start con...
The US-based Johnson Controls is to establish an auto battery production base in Lidu New Zone in Fuling, Chongqing municipality, according to a local government website....
Hong Kong-listed Nine Dragons Paper has started to build the second phase of its plant in Chongqing....
November 2010
APM Terminals is looking to sign joint ventures with secondary ports in inland China, according to a senior executive of the company, citing high growth rates in the area....
The Ministry of Transport issued an urgent circular on 17 November, calling on all Yangtze ports, the Yangtze piloting centre in Jiangyin and the shiplocks at the Three Gorges Dam to give top priority to vessels carrying refi...
According to statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport, Zhangjiagang terminal reported a throughput of 937,000 TEU in the first 10 months of 2010, up by one-third compared with the same...
An unspecified number of vessels stranded in the low waters of the Xiangjiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze in Hunan province, caused a backlog of some 700 vessels near the Changsha section on 13 November....
A compulsory lightening programme just downstream of the Three Gorges Dam started to have an impact on 12 November when maritime safety authorities in Yichang, Hubei province, ordered 10 coal-carrying vessels to offload some...
Seven containers of sesame seeds imported from Bangladesh and worth nearly US$50,000 were destroyed on 19 November in the Jiangsu port of Zhenjiang by the city’s inspection and quarantine bureau....
Freight management company Geodis Wilson plans to expand its operations in China next year, according to Mathieu Renard Biron, regional VP of the company’s Asia Pacific division....
Tokyo-based Hitachi Transport System has signed a deal with Sinopec to make deliveries to convenience stores at petrol stations operated by the state-run company in Henan province, the Nikkei business daily reported....
Wuhan Iron & Steel Group, China’s third-largest steelmaker, is in talks with Canada-listed Adriana Resource to jointly develop an iron ore project in Quebec, according to a senior executive reported by China Daily....
Chinese property firm Shui On Land and Redevco Asia, the Amsterdam-headquartered real estate developer, have started construction of a Rmb1.8bn shopping mall Wuhan, capital of Hubei province....
Chongqing’s minimum wage will increase by Rmb190 a month from the start of 2011, according to a municipal government website.
The new monthly rate in the nine main urban districts will rise from Rmb680 to Rmb870....
Official statistics from Zhangjiagang Inspection and Quarantine Bureau show that coal imports during the first 10 months of 2010 dropped by 31.5 per cent year-on-year to 1.09m tons....
The director of the Yangtze River Administration, Mr Tang Guanjun, and the director of Gansu province’s transport commission signed an agreement on 15 November to co-ordinate the development of the Yangtze and Yellow ri...
Chinese ports, including Yangshan deepwater terminal in Shanghai, are struggling with overcapacity because global demand has not kept pace with capacity expansion, said Su Xingang, vice-president of port operator China Mercha...
The first Chinese-owned ethylene chemical carrier has completed its maiden voyage, reported Seatrade....
The central province of Hunan has started releasing more water from upstream reservoirs to boost near record low water levels in the middle and lower reaches of the Xiangjiang River, according to the Ministry of Water Resourc...
Kuehne + Nagel plans to expand its China operations in 2011, especially in the areas of inland ports and trucking, reported IFW....
The final tracks have been laid on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, state media reported. When it opens in 2012, the 1,318km line will be the world’s longest high-speed railway....
Chongqing Evening News reported that some Chinese airlines are offering discounted tickets to win back passengers they lost due to a rise in fuel costs.
Airlines in the country have doubled fuel surcharges for adult passen...
Chongqing’s total import and export value in the first 10 months of 2010 reached US$9.12bn, up 49 per cent compared with the same period in 2009....
Construction has begun on a Rmb100bn rail transport industrial park in Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area....
In an effort to accelerate the growth of regular container services to and from Nanjing, the local government announced a raft of measures on 2 November with immediate effect....
Suzhou port, the administration umbrella for Taicang, Changshu and Zhangjiagang terminals, reported a throughput increase of 36 per cent to 2.98m TEU in the first 10 months of 2010....
The Three Gorges Fanba expressway was completed 18 months ahead of schedule, according to the Yangtze River Administration....
Zhangjiagang Maritime Safety Authorities released statistics on 9 November that showed that the terminal recorded a dangerous cargo throughput in the first 10 months of the year of 11.04m tons....
The control of water pollution has been included in China’s 12th five-year plan (2011-15), the first time the subject has featured in a five-year plan, reported China Daily.
Wang Bin, deputy director of the departmen...
China Southern Cargo has joined the SkyTeam Cargo alliance, whose other members include Aeromexico Cargo, Air France Cargo, Alitalia Cargo, Czech Airlines Cargo, Delta Cargo, KLM Cargo and Korean Air Cargo....
The Chinese government plans to invest Rmb3,500bn in railway construction during the 12th five-year plan (2011-15), reported China Economic Review quoting an unnamed official from the Ministry of Railways....
The Ministry of Railways is conducting a review of China’s high-speed rail plans after a report by the China Academy of Science raised questions about their affordability and practicality.
In the report submitted to...
Between January and October 2010 the volume of cargo carried on China’s railways totalled more than 3bn tons, an increase of nearly 12 per cent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Railways....
Local governments have pledged to provide Rmb15.6bn to fund the construction of the Guangan-Chongqing-Luzhou expressway by 2015, according to a Chongqing government website.
Connecting the Sichuan cities of Guangan and Luz...
China Central Radio has started a daily traffic report on the channel Beijing FM106.1....
Advanced Micro Devices, the US-headquartered microprocessor manufacturer, will expand output capacity at a plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, reported China Knowledge....
ArvinMeritor, the US-based automobile component maker, has started to build a new R&D centre and manufacturing plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province....
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China’s largest oil and gas producer, is to invest Rmb11.6bn on constructing a gas storage base in Chongqing municipality....
Chongqing Longxin Engine was the largest exporter of motorcycles in the first nine months of this year with a total export value of US$290m, according to a report released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers....
Taiwan-based personal computer maker Acer has selected Chongqing as the location for its second major manufacturing centre in mainland China. The company has already established a major operations centre in Shanghai....
Chongqing Iron & Steel has completed the acquisition of a 60 per cent stake in Asia Iron Holdings for Rmb1.8bn, according to various sources. This follows the signing of a framework agreement last November....
A major dredging programme started on 1 November to increase the water depth of the Yangtze to 12.5 metres all the way up to Nanjing....
The Three Gorges GPS vessel management programme, promoted by the Three Gorges Navigation Administration, has been adopted by an increasing number of shipping lines and their vessels, according to the administration....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that the throughput of general cargo at the major ports on the Yangtze trunkline jumped by 14.4 per cent year-on-year in October 2010 to 118m tons, while that of container...
The Bahamas-registered ‘Clipper Trader’ arrived at Zhangjiagang port on 2 November, carrying 27,804 tons of iron ore worth US$3.66m. This was the port’s first ever shipment of iron ore from Honduras....
Shanghai International Port Group is to own phases two and three of Yangshan deepwater terminal, reported Shanghai Daily....
The forwarding division of DHL in China has signed a partnership agreement with the state-owned Shanghai Lingang Free Trade Port Economic Development Co, reported IFW....
A shortage of warehouse space in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai will lead to a continuation of higher rental rates in the coming year, according to an executive from CB Richard Ellis quoted by China Economic Review...
Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan chaired a government meeting recently that approved the city’s rail construction plan for the 12th five-year period (2011-15)....
The 377km Yichang-Wanzhou railway, one of the most technically challenging ever to be built in China, has started the track testing phase. Trains departed Yichang at a speed of 80-160kph to collect track data for analysis....
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, the largest contract chip maker in mainland China, has signed a cooperation agreement with Wuhan East Lake Hi-Tech Development Zone Administrative Committee to jointly invest in...
FAW-Volkswagen Automobile intends to spend around Rmb15bn to build a plant in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, with an annual output of 600,000 autos, various sources reported....
Lenovo Group is to build a new business centre in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province as part of its efforts to expand business in western China.
China Daily reported that the country’s largest PC maker plans to inv...
October 2010
Premier Wen Jiabao visited Wuhan Yangluo terminal on 22 October....
Changhe Suzuki, the world’s leading fibreglass producer Jushi Group, solar energy competent specialist Sornid Hi-Tech and cellulose manufacturer Sateri International are just some of the companies that will be visited d...
On 24 October, a strong cold front from the north and Typhoon Megi from the south caused the first severe weather of the autumn in the Changshu section of the Yangtze Mouth....
At 11pm on 24 October, Nantong Waterway Rescue Centre received a fax from a shipping agent saying that a Korean crew member on board one of its vessels suffered a stroke and needed emergency treatment....
The water level in the Three Gorges reservoir rose to its maximum level of 175 metres on 26 October, raising electricity output to capacity at the world’s largest hydropower plant for the first time, said Cao Guangjing...
No-frills carrier The Containership Company (TCC) has decided to expand its current services from China to Los Angeles to include a call at Qingdao, in addition to Ningbo and Taicang....
International express delivery company FedEx has called on the Chinese government to speed up Customs procedures to help improve supply chain competitiveness, reported IFW....
On 26 October China increased retail petrol and diesel prices by Rmb230 and Rmb220 per tonne, respectively, said the National Development and Reform Commission on its website....
The first phase of Chengdu’s Rmb8bn No.1 metro line has started operation. The 18.5km-long line has 17 stops and runs in a north south direction through the centre of the city....
On 26 October high-speed trains began travelling between Shanghai and Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province....
On the afternoon of 16 October, a fault in the Zhenjiang section of the Shanghai-Nanjing express railway caused delays to more than 10 train services and the cancellation of four Shanghai-bound services....
Container throughput at Shanghai port increased 14.3 per cent year-on-year in September to 2.54m TEU, according to the Shanghai Custom Inspection Department....
Carmaker Volvo will probably establish a plant in Chengdu, Sichuan province, according to company executives quoted by Xinhua....
GD Midea Holdings, China’s leading household appliance producer, has started building a Rmb1bn kitchenware plant in Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone....
The South Korean Consulate General in Wuhan opened on 25 October, its eighth consulate in China and its first located in the centre of the country....
Chongqing’s GDP grew 17.1 per cent in the first nine months of 2010 to Rmb563.17bn, according to the municipality’s statistics bureau....
Wuhan Waterway Bureau announced on 14 October that vessels sailing downstream now need to pass under the No.7 arch of the Wuhan Yangtze Bridge rather than the No.6 arch so as to make way for engineering work on the city&rsquo...
Maritime safety authorities have recently mobilised extra manpower to escort vessels that carry cotton pickers across the Jingzhou stretch of the Yangtze....
Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities have published for the first time a list of 33 safe locations in the Three Gorges Reservoir for vessels in distress....
China-based Orient International Logistics has officially opened a logistics centre in Shanghai’s Yangshan deepwater terminal following a four-month trial period....
China’s railways transported 2.72bn tons of cargo in the first nine months of this year, up 12.1 per cent year-on-year....
China has begun research and development on a new ‘super-speed’ railway technology, an official with the Ministry of Railways was quoted as saying by Xinhua....
Travellers on a Nanjing-Shanghai high-speed train experienced a delay of nearly two hours on 17 October, according to Shanghaiist.com....
Burma plans to construct a railway that will link the deep-sea port of Kyaukphyu with Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, according to Weekly Eleven News.
The line is targeted to be completed in 2015, when it will be expe...
Air traffic in China continued to soar in September, according to figures released by two of the country’s largest carriers....
Caterpillar is to produce mini hydraulic excavator models at a new facility in Wujiang, a city located to the south of Suzhou in southern Jiangsu province....
Construction started on 18 October on the biggest flyover in China’s interior. Located in Chongqing’s Liangjiang (Two Rivers) New Zone, the Rmb390m Yuzui flyover is scheduled to be completed by end of next year....
Jiangsu’s foreign trade value increased 42 per cent year-on-year to US$338.37bn in the first three quarters of 2010, according to the provincial Customs office....
Dow Coating Materials plans to invest US$25m to expand capacity in the China market by the end of 2011, especially in second- and third-tier cities, said the company’s Asia-Pacific general manager Bruce Hoechner....
Texas Instruments has established its first manufacturing plant in Chengdu, Sichuan province, according to China Knowledge....
The Chongqing-based auto and motorcycle manufacturer Lifan Industry Group has won approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission to list in Shanghai, reported Bloomberg....
The provincial government of Jiangxi has decided to proceed with its ambitious plan to withdraw old vessels, starting from October....
Statistics from Nantong Maritime Safety Authorities (MSA) show that the amount of dangerous cargo handled by the city’s port during the first three-quarters of 2010 exceeded the total for the whole of last year....
Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifang has officially declared the beginning of phase two construction of Guoyuan terminal, the largest intermodal container terminal in China’s interior....
Wuhan-based Qingshan Shipyard, part of Sinotrans Yangtze Shipping Group, has finished building the 57,000 dwt ‘Guangzhou Development 4’, the largest dry bulk carrier ever built in a Yangtze yard....
Output from China’s shipbuilding industry totalled Rmb424.8bn in the first eight months of 2010, up 23.4 percent year-on-year....
The average area of glaciers in western China might shrink by 27 per cent by 2050 because of global warming, according to a report released at the recent UN climate talks in Tianjin....
A collision between an intercity bus and a cement truck on a foggy highway outside Nanjing in Jiangsu province killed at least 17 people, according to state media....
The Yichang-Wanzhou railway in southwest China is expected to be open to traffic in mid-to-late November, said a local government website....
Johnson Controls, the world’s largest supplier of automotive batteries, is to invest US$118m to build a plant in Chongqing, its third in China....
Chongqing Iron & Steel produced 324,300 tons of steel in September, 49 per cent more than in the same month in 2009....
Pfizer has officially opened a global research and development centre for radiation biology and drug development in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province....
Fixed assets investment in Chongqing between January and August 2010 increased 30 per cent year-on-year to Rmb365.58bn, Chongqing Statistics Bureau announced....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that throughput of general cargo on the Yangtze trunkline increased by 15.2 per cent year-on-year in September to 120m tons, while container throughput rose nearly 20 per...
Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities have begun a month-long inspection programme of terminals and vessels....
Officials from Wuhu Maritime Safety Authority are working with the local fishery department to warn local farmers and fishermen against catching crabs in or near the Yangtze shipping lane....
Taicang is to invest Rmb150m in an expansion project that will increase the port’s annual timber-handling capacity to 4.5m cubic metres, said Mr Li Rurong, general manager of Taicang International Containers Terminals....
China expects to have invested a total of Rmb140.5bn in its south-to-north water diversion project between 2006 and 2010, the country’s water diversion authority has announced....
Wärtsilä, the Finland-based manufacturer of diesel and gas engines for use in powering ships and electricity generation, has signed an agreement with Zhenjiang CME to invest €12m in a new propeller-manufacturin...
Odfjell, which specialises in the transportation and storage of bulk liquid chemicals, has cancelled three out of six chemical tankers it had ordered from Chongqing Chuandong Shipbuilding Industry at the beginning of 2008....
Steel demand growth in China is set to slow, according to a report published by the World Steel Association....
A Rmb2.51bn highway connecting China and Mongolia is expected to be built jointly by the two countries, Xinhua reported.
Some 245km long, the new road will run from the southwest of Mongolia to Ganqimaodu, a border town in...
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has confirmed that the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China has approved up to 36 additional direct cross-Strait frequencies, to be operated by Taiwan airlines....
Nantong in Jiangsu province has become one of the 25 cities chosen to pilot new energy-powered vehicles. This is part of an ambitious plan by the central government to promote new energy fuel across China....
Construction of Chongqing airport’s second runway has been completed, according to a municipal government website....
September 2010
The Yangtze Dry Bulk Index, compiled by Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport, declined 2 per cent in September to 805.87. One sub-category of the index, coal, slumped 5.22 per cent to 767.62....
Sources from Jiangsu government revealed that, during the first eight months of 2010, the province’s major shipyards secured orders for new vessels totalling nearly 2.5m dead weight tons, accounting to 35 per cent of th...
Central government policies designed to speed up the development of China’s interior are having a major impact on the lives of rural households, according to a Xinhua report....
Senior officials in some of the poorest provinces in China’s interior admit that their battle against extreme poverty remains tough despite the progress made over the past 10 years, according to an article on the State...
The first phase of Chengdu’s No.1 metro line started operation on 29 September after more than four years of construction....
Construction work began on 26 September on an extension of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, AFP reported....
UPS plans to apply this week for a domestic parcel licence from China’s State Post Bureau, according to a report by the Financial Times....
Changan Ford Mazda Automobile is to build a new engine manufacturing plant in Chongqing at a cost of US$500m....
Logistics companies claim that China has stepped up customs inspections of goods shipped to and from Japan, according to a report by AP....
Construction started officially on 28 September of Gree Electric Appliances’ refrigeration industrial park in Chongqing....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that Yueyang’s container throughput in the first eight months of 2010 increased by 45 per cent year-on-year to 82,000 TEU, while that of general cargo grew by 12 per...
Following the heavy rainstorms experienced this summer, China’s State Council has stressed the importance of improving improve river controls and preventing mountain floods....
Shanghai-listed port operator Wuhu Port Storage & Transportation is to invest Rmb516m to expand handling capacity at its Zhujiaqiao terminal in the Yangtze River port of Wuhu, Anhui province....
From 20 September, daily train services on one of China’s busiest railway lines –the Wuhan-Guangzhou express railway −were increased from 63 to 80 each way....
Italy’s Cargoitalia has started twice-weekly direct scheduled services between Shanghai Pudong airport and Milan, reported Cargonews Asia....
AirBridgeCargo Airlines, part of Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Group, has started a twice-weekly all-cargo service between Zhengzhou airport in Henan province and Frankfurt, via Moscow....
Security cameras are to operate in all taxis in the city of Wuhu, Anhui province, according to a Xinhua report.
The cameras, which will be installed in more than 3,000 taxis, are intended to keep drivers safe....
The first batch of HP notebooks made in Chongqing and flown to Europe has been transported to Belgium in just over 10 hours....
The pilot project of the Digital Waterway programme on the 369km stretch of the Yangtze River between Liuhekou, Taicang and Nanjing was officially completed on 20 September, according to China News Services....
The director of Chongqing Municipal Commission of Foreign Trade Li Jianchun said that local companies will be encouraged to target Africa as a major consumer market, following a recent fact-finding mission to the city by 16 s...
Taicang and Kaohsiung signed an agreement on 21 September to become sister ports....
Yangtze maritime officials warned on Tuesday 14 September that the water level at Zhicheng in Yichang, immediately downstream of the Three Gorges Dam, had risen by two metres....
On the evening of 10 September, the barge ‘Wangang 698’ carrying metal ore capsized after colliding into the navigation wall at the lower end of the northern shiplocks of the Three Gorges dam, the side that vessel...
Anhui provincial government vowed to increase investment in the Yangtze waterway to help facilitate industrial relocation from the coast to the interior, a waterway summit held in Wuhu was told on 13 September....
The Honorable David T....
The Yangtze River port of Taicang has launched two additional direct services to Taiwan, reported Xinhua, bringing a total of four regular weekly services to this route.
The port, situated about 50km upstream of Shanghai...
Shanghai looks set to become world’s busiest container port this year as August figures put it ahead of Singapore in throughput....
Chinese authorities are drawing up a national flood risk map in an attempt to improve disaster control following the worst flooding in a decade earlier this year....
China’s railways carried 162m passengers in August, an 8.1 per cent year-on-year growth, thanks to large numbers of students travelling prior to the start of the academic year, according to a statement released by the M...
TNT is to invest US$216m in its road distribution network in China, reported IFW....
Air China is to launch non-stop flights between Chengdu and Tokyo from 2 September, reported GCTL. The new flights will operate between Chengdu Shuangliu airport and Tokyo Narita airport on Wednesdays and Saturdays....
An official investigation in China has discovered that more than 200 pilots lied about their qualifications or employment history, reported Aircargo News....
China’s leading airlines continued to show improvements in the amount of cargo carried, reported Shanghai Daily....
Yuanda Ruihua Electric Automobile has signed a contract to invest Rmb3bn to establish China’s first electric automobile industrial base in Wuhan, reported People’s Daily....
Chinese automaker Geely and its newly acquired Volvo plan to build three assembly plants in the country to make Volvo cars, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing Li Shufu, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group....
Chongqing’s No. 1 light rail section from Chaotianmen to Shapingba and the No. 3 light rail section from Ertang to Jiangbei airport will open for trial operation in 2010, according to the municipal government....
According to official statistics, Chongqing attracted 133 foreign invested projects during the first eight months of 2010, with a realised foreign direct investment of US$2bn, up by 54 per cent year-on-year.
Zhang Tingting, Managing Partner at Yangtze Business Services, will speak at the Chaina ’10 Live event in Shanghai in November....
Statistics released by the Yangtze River Administration, Ministry of Transport showed that container shipping prices rose in August as a result of surge in foreign-related traffic....
The water level of the Three Gorges Dam will be raised to 175 metres for the first time from 10 September, according to the Yangtze Waterway Bureau....
Sources from the Yangtze River Administration say that bunkering services for liquefied natural gas will soon be available on the Yangtze....
Concern over the poor environmental condition of the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges reservoir area was raised by officials at a recent press conference organised by the State Council Information Office, reported China Dai...
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan helped commemorate the official opening of NOL’s Global Service Centre in Chongqing on 7 September....
On 5 September, the 22082 container train service carrying 112 TEU departed Wuhan Rail Container Hub, signalling the beginning of its full operation....
The Chinese government has unveiled plans to encourage low-end industries to relocate from coastal areas to inland provinces, reported Xinhua....
Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, best known by its trade name Foxconn, is to change the way it conducts business on the mainland as it shifts its focus to the interior, said company chairman Terry Gou in an intervie...
China Airlines, Taiwan’s largest carrier, is to start all-cargo flight services between Taoyuan airport, situated about 40km from downtown Taipei, and the mainland cities of Xiamen, Nanjing and Fuzhou to meet rising dem...
China’s third largest steel producer, Wuhan Iron and Steel, posted a 90 per cent rise in first-half net profit compared with a year earlier, Xinhua reported....
The Hong Kong-listed Guangzhou Shipyard International has leased a yard in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, as it looks to alleviate a logjam of orders....
The Yunyang-Wushan expressway in Chongqing municipality will be opened to traffic on 20 September, 10 months ahead of schedule, according to a local government website.
The 209km-long road, involving an investment of Rmb...
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao chaired a State Council meeting on 25 August that focused on the development of the Yangtze and other inland rivers....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration, the Ministry of Transport show that cargo throughput reported in the major Yangtze trunkline ports increased by 10.7 per cent year-on-year to 110m tons in August....
The inaugural Yangtze Mississippi Strategic Cooperation Forum will take place between 17 and 19 October in Chongqing....
China Shipping Container Lines has reported a first half net profit of Rmb1.17bn, reversing a Rmb3.41bn net loss in the same period last year, Shipping Gazette reported....
A 30km traffic jam on 27 August brought traffic to a standstill in a Hebei province section of the Beijing-Tibet expressway....
Starting from 28 August, Wuhan has added a new direct air service to Taiwan, bringing the weekly total of services to eight....
Air China and Cathay Pacific Airways have received permission from the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission to establish an air cargo joint venture, reported IFW....
In a review of its operations in the first half of 2010, Chongqing Iron & Steel Group confirmed that it has closed its manufacturing operations in Dadukou district and moved to a new facility in Changshou district....
Sinopec has said that its subsidiary China Petroleum and Chemical Corp plans to increase annual crude oil processing capacity of Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical by 56 per cent to 12.5m tons, or 251,000 barrels a day....
China will boost its installed hydropower capacity by 90 per cent to 380m kW by 2020 in an effort to meet the country’s pledge at last year's Copenhagen climate conference to generate 15 per cent of its power from non-f...
July 2010
Maintenance work has started at the Three Gorges shiplocks, according to the Yangtze River Administration....
The ex-chairman of Tongling Port Group, Wu Zhaolai, has told Yangtze Business Services that the sale of his former company to a local conglomerate Tongling Chemical Industry Group may not be the best way forward for the devel...
Shanghai may overtake Singapore to become the world’s busiest container port in 2010, according to an article in Straits Times....
China Shipping Development expects its first-half 2010 net profit to rise more than 50 per cent from a year earlier, because freight rates and container volume are recovering from the global financial crisis, reported Dow Jon...
The Chinese and Canadian governments have reached a trade agreement that should stimulate demand in China for logs from British Columbia, reported Seatrade.
From the start of this month, British Columbian logs can be shipp...
The 377km Yichang-Wanzhou railway project has reached the final stage of its track laying. Tracks were laid down on the Yichang Yangtze Bridge by 11 July and now stretch to Ershi, to the west of Yichang in Hubei province....
The Asian Development Bank is making a $US100m loan to finance an environmental improvement project in Wuhan, Hubei province, which bank officials say could act as a template for the whole of China....
Wuhu-based Chery Automobile, one of China’s leading carmakers, exported 38,107 units in the first half of 2010, an increase of 154 per cent year-on-year. This was more than any other domestic car manufacturer....
Foreign trade in Chongqing totalled US$5.14bn in the first half of 2010, an increase of 49 per cent year-on-year....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that a total of 7.27m tons of cargo passed the Three Gorges Dam shiplocks in June, the highest monthly volume since operations began in Jun...
The biggest crackdown on overloaded vessels across the Yangtze and its major tributaries started on 1 July and will last for the remainder of 2010....
Jiujiang Maritime Safety Authorities started to impose new shipping restrictions from 1 July in an effort to safeguard the riverbank area under its jurisdiction....
Authorities will push ahead with pollution control measures along the eastern route of the south-to-north water diversion project, which has sparked widespread concerns over its poor water quality since construction began eig...
Boosted by an upturn in trade levels, Shanghai port posted a container throughput of 11.4m TEU between January and May 2010....
Equipment shortages could impact the container shipping sector for up to two years, a major logistics company told IFW....
The 1,165km Changsha-Kunming railway will start construction this year, according to the State Council Go West office....
NYK Logistics (China), a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s NYK, has opened two branches in Yangtze River locations....
Anhui Conch Cement Group has started operations at a 5,000 tons a day plant in Chongqing....
A former senior justice official in Chongqing was executed on 7 July, the city’s higher court said....
June 2010
The Yangtze Marine Safety Authorities have announced a night sailing ban on vessels of 300 dwt and below in the Huangshi section of the Yangtze River, about 150km downstream of Wuhan....
Shuifu port, the furthest upstream port on the Yangtze trunk line, restarted operation on 25 June after three years of construction work....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that general cargo volumes continued their upward trend in June, rising 34.5 per cent year-on-year to 128m tons....
The Yangtze Maritime Authorities issued a high alert on 29 June warning that more than 1,000 drums were floating downstream towards Jiujiang in Jiangxi province....
China Shipping Container Lines, China’s second-largest container carrier, said it will impose additional surcharges on transpacific shipping from 1 July due to a global shortage of containers....
China Shipping-Jumbo Heavy Lift, a joint venture between Jumbo Shipping and China Shipping, has opened a representative office in Beijing, according to Heavy Lift & Project Forwarding International.
The company, which...
Train ticket prices on the new Shanghai-Nanjing high-speed line have been set at Rmb146 for standard class and Rmb233 for first-class travel, according to shanghaiist.com....
DHL’s recently established domestic express delivery subsidiary in China is likely to grow organically rather than through acquisition, a senior executive told IFW....
Wuhan Iron and Steel has signed an initial non-binding agreement for US$800m with Australian miner Riversdale Mining to develop a coking coal project in the southeast African country of Mozambique....
Dongfeng Motor Co has started to build an engine plant in Wuhan, capital Hubei province, with production due to begin in the second half of 2011....
The final construction phase has begun on the Chongqing-Hunan expressway, with the road expected to open in October, said Chongqing Expressway.
The expressway will employ traffic signs powered by solar energy, designed to...
The Hilton Hotel in Chongqing was cleared to reopen on 29 June after its operations were suspended nine days earlier for alleged involvement in prostitution and gang-related activities, local police said....
DHL has announced the launch of a direct less than container load (LCL) weekly service from Shanghai to Keelung in Taiwan....
Statistics from Changshu Inspection and Quarantine Bureau show that for the first five months of the year, a total of 5,120 tons of vessel steel plates were exported via Changshu, a Yangtze port city in Jiangsu province....
The Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed passenger railway will run up to 65 train services each way from the current daily total of 33 from 1 July, reported the Wuhan-based Yangtze Daily....
The Ministry of Railways has urged local railway authorities to prioritise coal transport to alleviate China’s electricity shortage in the lead-up to the peak electricity-consumption period.
Xinhua reported the minis...
The provincial government of Xinjiang autonomous region signed an agreement with the Ministry of Railways on 10 June to speed up construction of the region’s rail network....
The express delivery company TNT is examining the feasibility of cross-border trucking services between India and China, reported IFW....
The proposed merger of the cargo operations of Air China and Cathay Pacific has been given the green light by the European Commission to fly in Europe’s air space....
Heavy rain across much of southern China over the last week has killed at least 199 people and left 123 missing.
Economic losses currently stand at around Rmb42.12bn, with more than 1.6m hectares of farmland flooded and ab...
The administration committee of Wuhan Bund announced on 22 June that trees along the river banks in Hankou, Hanyang and Hanjiang districts are now open to the public for adoption....
About 196 drainage outlets in the downtown Chongqing and Three Gorges Reservoir areas are to be rerouted this year to flow into sewage treatment plants....
The Hilton Chongqing has been closed indefinitely by the police....
Container throughput at China’s ports reached a record monthly high of 12.4m TEU in May, up 21.9 per cent year-on year, according to Alphaliner, the Paris-based container shipping consultancy....
According to Shanghai International Port Group figures reported by the Yangtze River Administration, Shanghai recorded a throughput of 2.56m TEU in May, up 22.6 per cent over the same period last year....
A total of 30.46m young fish were released into the Yangtze River in Jiangyin on 12 June in a bid to increase fish stocks....
Senior officials in charge of preventing land disasters in the Three Gorges area announced on 15 June that they would start large-scale land inspection before the onset of the flood season.
The length of both river banks i...
Construction of a coal port started on 12 June in Jinzhou, a city in northeast China’s Liaoning province. The port is designed to boost the transport of coal from Inner Mongolia autonomous region to southern China....
DB Schenker, the transport and logistics arm of Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, has launched four new weekly less-than-container-load services from Guangzhou in Guangdong province....
Germany’s Lufthansa Cargo has started its first air route between Europe and northern China....
Passenger flights have been inaugurated between Songshan airport in Taipei and Hongqiao in Shanghai....
Wuhan Shan De Xin Mining Investment said that it had won the right to explore a major chrome mine in the Philippines, after four years of investigating sites in South Africa, Turkey, India and the Philippines, according to a...
Carlsberg, the world’s fourth-largest brewer, has signed a deal to increase its stake in Chongqing Brewery by 12.25 per cent for US$379m.
The purchase of the shares from Chongqing’s municipal government will in...
Three people died and two were injured when rocks falling from a mountain hit a car and a truck on 12 June in Chongqing municipality, the local government said.
The accident happened in Wulong county on State Highway 319...
France-based Accor is to open two Novotel hotels in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province....
Statistics from the Nantong MSA show that 2,319 international vessels arrived and departed Nantong port in the first five months of 2010....
The port of Taicang, located close to Shanghai in Jiangsu province, handled 192,700 TEU in April....
Lloyd’s List reported that Shanghai International Port Group has formed a domestic shipping subsidiary with total assets of around Rmb10bn....
Germany-based logistics provider Logwin is upgrading and expanding its facilities in Shanghai as demand grows in China for value-added logistics services in the fashion retail sector, reported CargoNews Asia.
The company h...
Air freight prices out of Shanghai in April jumped 18.4 per cent over the previous month to their highest level so far in 2010, according to an index compiled by Drewry Shipping Consultants....
The International Air Transport Association’s e-freight standard became operational in China when Tianjin Binhai International Airport became the first airport to implement the international e-freight standard....
Truckers in south China who are seeking higher earnings reportedly blocked a main road leading to terminals in western Shenzhen on 3 June, according to Journal of Commerce....
According to a recent story published by Chongqing Evening News, Chongqing government will spend Rmb177bn this year on 650 renovation projects to improve the appearance of the downtown area, an increase of Rmb40bn over last y...
Main work on the Tangxihe Bridge in Chongqing was completed on 7 June, according to the municipal government....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that cargo throughput on the trunk line rose 28.3 per cent year-on-year to 121m tons in May 2010, an increase of 5.8 per cent over the previous month....
Chinese ports recorded a container throughput of 11.08m TEU in April, up 23.2 per cent year-on-year, according to Ministry of Transport statistics quoted by Xinhua....
The monthly Yangtze Dry Bulk Index edged up 0.99 per cent in May to 814.51. Due to lower prices of steel, demand for iron ore was suppressed, resulting in a continued downward trend in the commodity’s shipping price....
A Ministry of Transport task force for the vessel standardisation programme convened for the first time on 27 May, vowing to build a fleet of standardised vessels for rivers within 10 years....
PetroChina said it plans to complete construction of China’s largest liquefied natural gas wharf in Dalian, Liaoning province, by the end of 2010....
Nanjing government signed an agreement on 26 May to buy China Railway Construction Co’s 80 per cent holding of the city’s road tunnel under the Yangtze River....
Chongqing-based Changan Ford Mazda Automobile has started a recall of 236,643 Focus cars because of a problem that causes vehicles to stall, said China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Qua...
Japan’s Isuzu is to establish a global sourcing centre in Chongqing and enlarge production capacity at its joint venture with Qingling Automobile to 120,000 units by 2012 from 40,000 at present, according to a municipal...
May 2010
Yangtze maritime safety authorities have warned of heavy storms this summer....
CentrePort Canada, based in Winnipeg, has signed an MOU with Cuntan container terminal in Chongqing to exploit increasing trade and investment between the two countries....
The blueprint for Nanchong port has recently been approved by Sichuan provincial government, the provincial transport authorities announced on 24 May....
A major landslide in Jiangxi province on 23 May derailed a passing train on the Shanghai-Kunming railway line and caused 19 deaths....
Work has begun to change all sign boards on Nanjing’s three major national expressways, according to the city’s transport officials....
The State Council has approved a plan to develop the Yangtze River Delta into a key international gateway for the Asia-Pacific region, said the National Development and Reform Commission....
The China Civil Aviation Authority has decided to release control over first class and business class airfares....
Mainland China and Taiwan will add 100 direct passenger flights and 20 cargo flights a week to keep up with two-way trade worth an annual US$109bn, according to Taiwanese civil aviation officials quoted by Reuters....
China’s central government is urging the country’s three largest airlines − Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern − to merge their cargo operations so as to compete with foreign carriers...
Goodman Group, the Australia-based logistics property developer, plans to build a 5 sq km logistics hub between Beijing and Tianjin over the next seven years....
China’s third largest steelmaker Wuhan Iron and Steel Group has received approval from the National Development and Reform Commission to acquire two assets in Africa that are expected to contribute nearly 2bn tons of ir...
A railway route dedicated to transporting goods between Chongqing and Shenzhen in Guangdong province has recently gone into service....
Shanghai International Port Group, the operator of Shanghai port, increased its cargo throughput by 17.5 per cent year-on-year to 35.53m tonnes in April, China Knowledge Press reported....
Shenzhen Chiwan Wharf Holding, part of China Merchants Group, has acquired a 40 per cent stake in Zhonghai Port Development, the container operator of Laizhou port in Shandong province....
China’s 10 largest container ports posted an overall volume increase of 26.2 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2010 to 26.02m TEU....
Delta Air Lines has received final approval from the Chinese government to launch non-stop flights between Seattle and Beijing starting from 4 June.
The new route will operate five times a week.
Delta, based in Atlanta...
China’s express industry package volume increased 24 per cent to 470m pieces in the first quarter of 2010, according to statistics published by China Post. Revenues increased 24 per cent to Rmb12.4bn....
Fixed-asset investment in Chongqing municipality increased 31 per cent year-on-year to Rmb128.98bn in the first four months of this year, according to the local statistics bureau.
Investment in manufacturing rose 36.5 per...
Walmart is due to sign an agreement at the end of this month to open its ninth store in Chongqing, according to a municipal government website....
Senior managers of Wuhan South Fuel Shipping Co were summoned before the Yangtze River Administration, under the Ministry of Transport, for an official dressing-down on 12 May after one of its vessels collided with a passenge...
Nanjing port has started a second round of renovation on eight of its rubber-tyre gantries in an attempt to reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions....
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Authorities said that the emergency measure to lighten cargo vessels at Yichang during the six-month dry season has ended....
Experts attending the Nanjing International Shipbuilding Fair believe that China’s shipyards will face a new round of consolidation over the next two years because of a drying up of orders that began with the onset of t...
Chongqing’s plan to develop Liangjiang (Two Rivers) New Area has been approved the State Council, according to China News Services on 17 May....
China Meteorological Administration has set up a station in Wuhan to provide a special forecast for the Yangtze valley region....
Wuhan New Port Administration is to take its first road show to Hong Kong between 17-19 May in an effort to attract foreign investors....
The deputy director of Jiangsu Seismological Bureau Mr Ni Yuewei and three of his scientists in charge of forecasting, emergency response and disaster prevention stated during an online chat show that a major earthquake of at...
At 1am on 11 May, an Anhui-registered self-propelled barge fled the scene after colliding with an anchored vessel in the Changzhou section of the Yangtze River....
In response to increasing trade volumes, CMA CGM has launched an addition to its Asia-Europe network....
Bank of China, the country’s third-largest lender by assets, will invest US$1.1bn in a railway line that will be used to transport coal from central Shanxi province to Shandong province on the eastern coast....
Air services have begun between Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, and Amsterdam....
The US automobile parts maker ArvinMeritor plans to invest US$16m in a new technical centre and production facility in Nanjing....
The first phase of Cuntan bonded area in Chongqing municipality has passed state appraisal....
Increasing exports of calcite and imports of waste metal have led to a record number of international vessels calling at Tongling port in Anhui province....
The Jiangsu port of Taicang near the mouth of the Yangtze River has launched a fourth Japan service that will call at Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya....
China Natural Gas Inc (CHNG) says it is close to completing tests on transporting liquid natural gas (LNG) shipments along the Yangtze River, reported China Oil and Gas Monitor....
AP Moeller-Maersk has sold its minority stake in the southern Chinese port of Yantian to Cosco Pacific, the Hong Kong-listed container port operator....
China Cosco Holdings, the listed subsidiary of Cosco, China’s largest integrated shipping company, reported a much improved performance in the first quarter of 2010....
Following the completion of the first phase of Chongqing Lianglu Cuntan Bonded Zone early this year, preparation work for phase two has reached the final stage, according to Chongqing Evening News....
China Southern Airlines expects a 20 per cent rise in revenue in 2010 thanks to the robust performance of the Chinese economy, Reuters reported. Executive vice president Chen Gang said revenues would rise to US$7.3bn....
China Cargo Airlines, part of China Eastern Airlines, made a profit in the first quarter of 2010 for the first time since 2005, as a result of the upturn in the global air freight market....
Chongqing airport recorded a 53 per cent growth in import and export cargo volume to 2,702 tonnes in the first quarter of 2010, reported Xinhua....
Wuhan’s Human Resources and Social Security Bureau issued a public announcement before the May Day holiday stating that anyone asked to work during the three-day public holiday should be paid three times the worker&rsqu...
A Wuhan land auction lost many of its regular bidders following a new round of government policies designed to cool an overheated property market, according to the Yangtze Daily newspaper....
Chongqing Changan Suzuki Automobile, a minicar joint venture between Changan Auto and Suzuki Motors, expects to increase its annual capacity to 180,00 vehicles this year....
Honda Motor said it plans to buy more parts from Chinese suppliers to cut costs at its auto assembly joint venture with Dongfeng Motor in Wuhan, Hubei province....
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group has been approved to set up a branch in Chongqing, its first branch in western China and its fourth in the PRC.
An increasing number of financial services companies are being drawn t...
April 2010
Heavy rainfall across the Yangtze region over recent days has raised the river water level substantially, and persuaded the management of Three Gorges shiplocks to revert to the five-step operation from 28 April....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that the throughput of general cargo via all the major ports along the Yangtze trunk line rose by 33.6 per cent year-on-year to 120m tons in April, 7.7 per cent up on Marc...
According to Jiangyin Maritime Safety Authorities, shipyards in the city of Jiangyin in Jiangsu province expect to deliver 110 new vessels this year....
Taiwan’s TS Lines is launching a new China-Australia service that will call at Ningbo, Shanghai, Hong Kong Shekou, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane....
Air China is to add nearly 100 new planes to its fleet by 2012 and boost capacity as demand rebounds in China....
China Eastern Airlines has opened a branch in Chengdu, Sichuan province, its 13th across the country....
UPS has opened an 89,000 sq metre Asia-Pacific hub at Shenzhen Baoan International Airport in Guangdong province, reported IFW....
Construction work has formally begun on the Chongqing section of the Chengyu (Chengdu-Chongqing) expressway 'multi-line’, which will be the third expressway between the two cities....
Chongqing government statistics show that direct foreign investment in the municipality rose by 48 per cent to US$4.04bn last year, the biggest growth in the country for the second year running....
The total volume of imported iron ore arriving in Zhangjiagang port during the first three months of 2010 surged by 175 per cent year-on-year to 1.74m tons....
Taicang port opened three international routes in the first 18 days of April, according to China News Services....
A vessel carrying 690 tons of o-Xylene on its way to a bunker fuel facility in the Wuhu section of the Yangtze River collided with an oncoming vessel loaded with 3,000 tons of coal on the morning of 16 April....
Cargo throughput at China’s ports increased 20 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, said He Jianzhong, a spokesman for the Ministry of Transport....
China’s exports of steel products increased 99 per cent year-on-year to 3.33m tons in March, according to the General Administration of Customs....
Shanghai Pudong Airport Comprehensive Bonded Area has passed a government inspection and is now operational, Logistics Week reported.
The facility in the west of the Pudong Airport covers an area of 3.59 sq km....
The closure of European airports because of the Icelandic volcanic eruption has delayed the transportation of air cargo bound for Europe and thrown into disarray just-in-time supply chains across Asia....
The board chairman of Chongqing Urban Rail Transport Group, Shen Xiaoyang, said that the city is speeding up the construction of metro line and light rail projects....
Chongqing government is establishing an airfreight logistics platform to facilitate the export of personal computers made by Hewlett-Packard, according to a municipal government website.
It has agreed to alter the layout o...
Taiwan’s largest tyre company, Cheng Shin Tire, has signed an agreement with Chongqing’s Changshou district to set up the municipality’s largest tyre base in Yanjia Industrial Park....
Liu Xihan, deputy board chairman of Sinotrans Yangtze National Shipping Group and a member of the National People’s Consultative Council, has recently called on the central government to set up a Yangtze Shipping Exchan...
On 9 April, an ocean-going vessel carrying 5,000 tons of iron ore with a draught of 5.2 metres arrived safely in Wuhan port, the first time a loaded ocean-going vessel had ever reached Wuhan during that month, according to Ch...
China imported 59.01m tonnes of iron ore in March, 20 per cent more than in February and 13 per cent up on the same month last year, said the country’s General Administration of Customs....
Nanjing Tanker Corporation (NTC), the listed arm of Sinotrans China Yangtze National Shipping Group, has recently signed a joint venture agreement with Sinopec to set up a specialist fleet for shipping ethylene....
Between 1998 and 2008, a total of 718 accidents occurred in Chinese waters involving oil leakage, totalling 11,749 tons, according to a news story published on 13 April in the National Law newspaper....
Cosco Container Lines is to restore capacity on its weekly North China-US Southwest Express service by bringing back six 7,500 TEU vessels to replace the six current 5,500 TEU vessels....
Grand Alliance revives Central China Express service
Members of the Grand Alliance consortium of container shipping lines will relaunch next month the Central China Express they suspended in December 2009 when it merged wit...
Ceva Logistics’ domestic road transport services unit in China, Ceva Ground, has become the first global 3PL to achieve trucking security validation in the country from the Transported Asset Protection Association (Tapa...
Hong Kong remained the second-largest cargo airport in 2009, after Memphis in the US, with an annual volume of 3.38m tonnes....
China’s growing importance in the aviation industry was reinforced by the recent opening of a new north Asia regional office in Beijing for the International Air Transport Association (IATA)....
From 8am on 15 April, all vehicles entering Shanghai will have compulsory security checks because of the Shanghai Expo (1 May-31October). The checks will end on 15 November....
Shanghai’s 11th subway line started trial operation on 10 April. Metro Line 10, which is 29.6km long, will officially open after a three-month trial period, said a municipal government official....
Heavy rain has eased drought conditions in Chongqing municipality, but dry weather and higher temperatures persist elsewhere in southwest China.
Zhang Xu, deputy director of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Re...
Two Filipino seafarers were missing after an explosion and fire engulfed a liquefied natural gas carrier in Nantong, Jiangsu province....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that freight volumes via the Three Gorges shiplocks hit 17m tons in the first three months of 2010, up nearly 55 per cent year-on-year....
Due to the Shanghai Expo, vessels entering the Huangpu River in Shanghai, the Yangtze’s major tributary before entering the sea, will need special permits from the Shanghai Maritime Safety Authorities between 1 April an...
The Nanjing deep-water dredging project is ready to start, according to the Yangtze River Administration....
Grand Alliance members Hapag-Lloyd, NYK and OOCL are to revive their Central China Express service in May, reported IFW....
Chinese imports of Brazilian soya are forecast to reach 43m tonnes in 2010 as the country looks to build up stocks at a time of relatively low prices, according to a report by Seatrade....
Against the backdrop of southwest China’s worst drought in a century, a leading Chinese environmentalist has called on listed companies to be more transparent about industrial emissions and their environmental performan...
The chairman of Central Japan Railway, which operates Japan’s busiest bullet train link, has been highly critical of China’s high-speed rail industry for ‘stealing’ foreign technology and compromising...
The building spree of metro lines in Yangtze River Delta cities has spurred multinational companies such as Herrenknecht to establish a production base in Wuxi Transport Equipment Industrial Zone, according to a story publish...
Air Canada is to resume twice-daily services to Beijing and Shanghai in June and is planning to fly to Guangzhou in 2013 in response to increasing travel demand between the two countries....
China’s fuel price regulators cut the domestic aviation fuel ex-factory price by Rmb10 per tonne to Rmb5,200 from 1 April, the Civil Aviation Administration of China announced.
Xinhua quoted industry analysts saying...
Chongqing Steel has received approval from the Chinese and Australian authorities to acquire an Australian mine owned by Hong Kong-registered Asia Steel Holdings....
Chongqing will start to widen its airport highway to eight lanes by the end of April, with the project set to be completed by 1 July 2011, according to Chongqing Construction Commission....
Tianjin Lishen Battery, the largest lithium battery company in China, is to establish a plant in Chongqing that will make lithium batteries for the city’s electric vehicle industry, according to a city government websit...
March 2010
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that general cargo throughput on the Yangtze trunk line increased by 30 per cent year-on-year in March 2010 to 110m tons....
On 31 March, the final lifting movement saw the Taizhou Yangtze Bridge, the world’s tallest tower bridge, reach a height of 192 metres....
China has started to build a 67km-long canal from the middle section of the Yangtze River to a tributary that connects with the central route of the country’s south-north water diversion project....
Shanghai International Port (Group), the largest port operator in China, booked a net profit of US$150.9m in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 48 per cent from a year earlier, China Knowledge Press reported....
The soon to be launched The Containership Company has been granted an operating licence in China, reported Seatrade....
Construction work began on 26 March of a high-speed passenger railway between the provincial capitals of Changsha, Hunan province, and Kunming, Yunnan province....
The popularity of high-speed train services between Zhengzhou and Xian has led to the postponement of air services between the two cities just seven weeks after the line opened, reported Xinhua....
Russian carrier Aeroflot has resumed flying a full freighter schedule after regaining traffic rights from the Chinese authorities, reported International Freighting Weekly....
Sinopec has starting to pump gas through the Sichuan-Shanghai natural gas pipeline, reported Xinhua....
Damco, the logistics arm of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, has officially opened its new customer service office in Chengdu, Sichuan province....
From 1 April, Chongqing municipal government is to issue emission-based licences to vehicles according to how environmentally-friendly they are. Vehicles without these licences will not be allowed on the road....
Wuhan’s Deputy Communist Party Secretary Mr Tu Yong visited some of the most popular rural tourist spots in the city’s administrative area on 29 March and called on local tourism officials to seize the opportunity...
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Authority issued a circular on 17 March, announcing a raft of special measures to be adopted during Shanghai Expo 2010, which runs from May to October....
Watson, the world’s largest health and beauty products retailer, is to build a logistics centre in Wuhan to serve all its stores in central and north-western China....
Improved export orders from China have persuaded the shipping line OOCL to partially reinstate some of the capacity it had previously withdrawn from the Asia-North Europe trade.
A new service, jointly operated by various c...
NYK Logistics has opened a branch in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province....
Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport opened a second terminal on 16 March, two months ahead of the 2010 Expo.
The five-year expansion project, which includes a new 3,300 metre-long runway in addition to the terminal, will boo...
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines will launch a scheduled service between Amsterdam and Hangzhou Xiaoshan airport from 8 May this year, thereby becoming the first airline to offer a direct connection between Europe and the capital of...
China’s air passenger throughput amounted to 39.66m in the first two months of 2010, up 14.8 per cent from the same period last year, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China....
The severe drought in southwest China has worsened over the past two weeks due to continued low rainfall levels, according to Xinhua....
Construction work began on a 308km, high-speed railway linking Chongqing and Chengdu on 22 March, said Wu Yong, director of Chengdu Railway Bureau....
A high-speed railway line connecting Beijing and Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, may start construction in July, according to sources quoted by China Knowledge.
Trains will be able to travel at speeds of up to...
Track laying on the Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity Railway was completed on 17 March, according to Xinhua....
Tongling Non-Ferrous Metals Group has started building a new copper smelter in Jinchang, Anhui province....
SAIC Motor celebrated the start of manufacturing its own-brand cars at its plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, when a Roewe 350 compact sedan recently rolled off the assembly line....
Chongqing’s foreign trade total in the first two months of 2010 increased 54 per cent year-on-year to US$1.49bn....
From 1 July, a new regulation from the Ministry of Transport will take effect that will withdraw non-standardised Ro-Ro vessels from the Three Gorges Reservoir on a compulsory basis....
Luzhou is suffering its worst drought in 100 years, according to the Yangtze River Waterway Bureau. Several 100 teu vessels were unable to enter Luzhou Container Port and became stranded in nearby Chongqing....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau has begun Yangtze digital mapping trials by giving away 12 sets of software and hardware relating to programme....
Westbound container rates on the China-North Europe trade lanes have risen by as much as 50 per cent over the past six months, according to data from shipping sources compiled by Cargonews Asia....
China Cosco Group, the world’s second largest shipping company by capacity, is considering making investments in foreign iron ore, coal or oil resources in a bid to dilute the financial impact of the volatile the shippi...
The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway will begin operation in 2011, a year ahead of schedule, according to Zheng Jian, chief planner of the Ministry of Railways, reported by China Daily....
A Ministry of Railways official has said that China has sufficient money to finance the high-speed railway construction programme, reported Xinhua....
China’s Ministry of Railways said on 13 March that the new Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line had obtained official government approval....
The France-based international logistics company, Gefco, has signed a deal with Air China to block book belly capacity on inbound and outbound flights with the carrier.
Aircargo News said the deal covers Air China’s...
Cargotec has received an order from Yingkou Port Group Corporation for eight Kalmar reachstackers and one empty container handler....
Wuhan city government announced on 17 March that ASEAN countries have replaced the US and Hong Kong to become the city’s third largest trading partner, following the EU and Japan....
Chongqing municipal government announced on 15 March that the city’s foreign trade volumes in the first two months of the year soared by 54 per cent to nearly US$1.5bn....
Chongqing’s first light rail train to be made in the city started service on 10 March....
The 12-year, Rmb15bn dredging project of the Yangtze River mouth is due to be completed in the middle of this month....
The Panama-registered bulk carrier Farvang suffered a sudden engine failure on 9 March when passing through a treacherous stretch of the Zhangjiagang section of the Yangtze River....
China’s new 10-year development plan for the interior will shift focus from driving economic growth to developing six major industries most suitable to the region, according Mr Wang Jinxiang, former deputy director of t...
The head of the French Development Agency has told Wuhan’s Communist Party Secretary and Deputy Provincial Party Secretary Mr Yang Song that the French government wishes to widen the scope of bilateral co-operation to p...
Tianjin Port Group, the largest port operator in north China, expects to handle 400m tons of cargo and 10m TEU in 2010. Its cargo throughput last year was 380m tons....
The drought that has struck five provinces in southwest China has worsened, leaving at least 11m people short of water and affecting large areas of farmland, the authorities have warned.
The Office of State Flood Control a...
TNT Hoau, TNT’s road distribution subsidiary in China, has completed its nationwide day-definite road distribution network, having extended the coverage into Chengdu, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, Xian, Yantai and Xiamen....
China’s highway mileage will surpass that of the US in three years following completion of the ongoing infrastructure construction programme, said Li Shenglin, Minister of Transport....
Ten per cent of the 13.6m new vehicles sold in China last year were recalled because of faults, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine....
Plans to build an efficient rail network linking China to six Southeast Asian countries are advancing as important gaps are filled in Cambodia, reported the Financial Times.
The Asian Development Bank recently agreed to ex...
From 8 March, China Eastern Airlines started operating direct cargo flights between Taipei and Changbei International Airport in Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi province....
Air China Cargo, China’s largest cargo airline, launched a service between Shanghai and Paris on 6 March, its fourth service between China and Europe....
China plans to buy 218 aircraft this year, including jumbo jets and regional planes, to meet surging demand, said Li Jiaxiang, director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
A total of 700m passenger trips a year...
Nanjing Customs announced on 9 March that its operations at the city’s international airport will start by October 2010....
The Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport has just completed a survey which, for the first time ever, identifies all the expansion and renovation projects across the 2,838km navigable length of the rive...
The Yangtze Maritime Safety Authority has issued warnings of severe drought in the Chongqing area of the Yangtze....
Hubei members of the National Congress are to submit a motion calling for the central government to raise the guaranteed water level between Yichang and Chenglingji in a bid to facilitate better utilisation of the river for i...
The port of Nantong, situated near the mouth of the Yangtze, posted a throughput of 33,000 TEU in January 2010, 46 per cent higher than in the same month last year....
Chongqing Traffic and Tourism Investment Group said it has started building the first of 10 luxury inland cruise ships in a project that will cost Rmb2bn....
The privately-owned Chinese bunker supplier Shanghai Lonyer Petrochemicals has acquired Hailian Tank Farm in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, according to various reports....
China Shipping Development, the dry bulk and tanker arm of China Shipping (Group), and Shenergy, the Shanghai-based energy company, have launched a joint venture shipping company for transporting coal, Shanghai Daily reported...
The Port of Shanghai, the world’s second largest container port after Singapore, recorded a throughput increase of 18 per cent year-on-year to 2.24m TEU in January, reported Xinhua.
The port’s performance began...
Shanghai Shipping Exchange plans to establish a container shipping derivates market by the end of 2010 as the city strives to challenge London as a global centre for shipping finance.
The forward freight agreements will be...
Services on the Wuhan-to-Guangzhou high-speed railway were 98 per cent full in the first 26 days of the 40-day Spring Festival, reported China Economic Review....
Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Co is planning to raise Rmb30bn-50bn through an initial public offering this year, a source with the Ministry of Railways told China Daily....
Air China will terminate its services between Chongqing and Central Japan International Airport (Centrair) from 28 March, according to Kyodo News....
Chongqing will invest another Rmb20bn in the construction of Jiangbei International Airport’s east terminal area....
February 2010
The Panama-registered vessel NYK Springtide sailed safely into the waters of Jiangyin port under the supervision of the local maritime safety authorities on 23 February, its destination being the local scrap yard....
China’s iron ore imports slipped to 46.62m tonnes in January after reaching 62.16m tonnes in the previous month, the second-highest monthly volume ever, the General Administration of Customs said.
January’s imp...
Shipping in the Zhangjiagang section of the Yangtze River has returned to normal following the sinking of an ocean vessel that collided with another vessel on the evening of 8 February....
A volume of more than 600,000 tons of coal passes the Jiangsu section of the Yangtze every day, according to Jiangsu Maritime Safety Authorities....
Panalpina, the Switzerland-based supplier of forwarding and logistics services, has introduced a new LCL (less than container load) ocean freight service between China and Poland....
Air China and Cathay Pacific Airways will sign an air cargo venture agreement by 26 February, said a China Daily report citing three people familiar with the negotiations in Beijing....
By 22 February, an estimated 1.34bn people had travelled on China’s roads since the start of the Spring Festival holidays, up 8.3 per cent from the equivalent period last year, according to the Ministry of Transport....
Chongqing Shipping Construction and Development Corporation, the operational arm of the municipal government’s transport commission, signed an agreement with the local government of Fuling on 8 February to build the lar...
Sinopec plans to build electric vehicle charging facilities in its large petrol stations in some regions, including Beijing and Chongqing....
The Yangtze River Delta city of Wuxi intends to transform itself from a manufacturing hub to a hi-tech centre by expanding cooperation with domestic and foreign businesses, according to China Daily.
Already one of the coun...
The International Olympic Committee has elected Nanjing as the host city of the Second Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2014....
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts has signed an agreement with Chongqing Guest House to manage a hotel in Chongqing that is scheduled to open in late 2011....
The leading committee of Wuhan New Port agreed on a set of 2010 targets at a meeting on 6 February....
Nanjing Port Group, the largest port operator in the capital city of Jiangsu province, says that it aims to handle 74m tons of general cargo and 1.32m TEU in 2010....
The final round of competition for hosting the 2014 Youth Olympic Games will be held in Vancouver, Canada, on 11 February and the winner will be announced at the end of the day....
Agriculture is the main cause of water pollution in China, according to the country’s first national census of pollution sources....
A surge in export orders in the lead up to the Chinese New Year has strained capacity at Shanghai port, reported China Daily....
The Ministry of Transport said that 609m journeys had been made by bus or railway between the start of the Spring Festival on 30 January and 8 February, up 8.5 per cent from the equivalent period in 2009....
More than 10,000 passengers were delayed for at least two hours at Guangzhou south railway station on 6 February because of an equipment error on the high-speed train between Guangzhou and Wuhan....
UPS launched its new Asia-Pacific hub on 9 February with its inaugural flight at Shenzhen’s Baoan International Airport. The Shenzhen hub replaces operations at the former Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines....
Malaysia Airlines Cargo plans to improve connections to Shanghai and other cities in China following the signing of a deal last October with Hainan Airlines Group....
Hubei Electric Power has signed cooperation agreements with the governments of Xiangfan and Suizhou in Hubei province to construct electric-vehicle charging facilities.
This is part of a plan that will involve 16 large and...
Ford’s joint venture with Chongqing Changan Automobile sold 30,759 passenger cars in January, an increase of 128 per cent from a year ago....
Chongqing’s economic growth rate of 14.9 per cent in 2009 was the third highest in China, according to the National Bureau of Statistics....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that cargo throughput via the major ports on the Yangtze trunk line rose 33 per cent year-on-year to 98m tons in January....
Shanghai increased its lead as the world’s largest general cargo port in 2009, with volumes up 1.3 per cent to 590m tons, according to the National Development and Reform Commission....
Hong Kong-based transport consultancy Transport Trackers says there has been a scramble to ship cargo out of China in the lead up to the Spring Festival....
China’s aviation authorities have set up a task force to sort out the problems resulting from flight delays by end of the year, according to the Aviation Newspaper....
A formal ceremony was held on 31 January to signal the start of second phase construction of Nanjing airport, according to China News Service....
Track laying started on 1 February on the 300km Shanghai-Nanjing intercity rail line, construction of which started in July 2008....
A funding shortage could hinder China’s ambition of creating a modern railway network, according to an article in South China Morning Post....
China’s only bullet train producer is to expand production capacity to cope with the country’s increasing number of high-speed railways, reported Xinhua.
Wang Chenghui, deputy general manager of Tangshan Railwa...
A subsidiary of Grand Power Logistics Group, a China-based international logistics provider, has signed an MOU to develop Yangshan International Container Transit Logistics Park, reported China Economic Review....
From 1 February, travellers in Wuhan have been able to pay for buses, ferries and light rail trains using an E-card, a keychain-shaped integrated circuit card....
Chongqing can expect to receive US$6bn of foreign investment in 2010, according to municipal mayor Huang Qifan....
January 2010
The port authorities in Hubei province announced last week that they plan to invest Rmb2.5bn in infrastructure in 2010....
At least another 300,000 people living along the banks of the huge reservoir behind the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River are to be relocated, according to China Daily....
Changshu port reported a throughput of 1.02m tons of solid and liquid dangerous cargo in 2009, up 119 per cent year-on-year....
Stockpiles of imported iron ore at China’s leading ports increased by 310,000 tons in the week beginning 18 January, reaching a three-month high of 67.42m tons by 22 January, the China Securities Journal reported.
Sh...
NWS Holdings, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based New World Development, plans to raise the proportion of its infrastructure business to about 80 per cent of its operations within two or three years to further tap the mainland Ch...
Workers have completed the laying of railway tracks between the cities of Chengdu and Dujiangyan, Sichuan province....
Flights between Singapore and Chongqing will be increased from twice a week to three times a week from March 2010, according to Chongqing government....
The Guangzhou-based China Southern Airlines may start bundling air and train tickets on domestic routes in response to stiff competition from the newly opened high-speed railway line between Guangzhou and Wuhan, South China M...
The deputy director of the State Development and Planning Commission, Liu Tienan, said that China’s transport network is expected to handle 2.5bn passenger journeys during the 40-day Spring Festival season that starts o...
Canada Commercial Corporation, a state-owned company that promotes international trade and commerce, opened a representative office in Wuhan on 26 January. This is its first presence in China’s interior....
Huang Qifan has been elected mayor of Chongqing municipality....
Guangdong-based home appliances manufacturer Midea has signed an agreement with Jingzhou government to invest an additional Rmb400m in its refrigerator and freezer production base in the city, reported China Sourcing News....
At 8am on 14 January, the water level at Wuhu, located in the busiest shipping section of the Yangtze River, fell to 0.77 metres. This was the lowest level in 10 years, according to the Yangtze Waterway Bureau....
According to Jiujiang Maritime Safety Authority, two vessels collided in the waters under its jurisdiction on 13 January. Four crew members fell into the icy water as one of the vessels sank....
The Jiangsu port of Jiangyin reported a general cargo throughput of 107m tons in 2009, up 22 per cent year-on-year, while container throughput increased nearly 50 per cent to 752,000 TEU....
Shanghai Railway Bureau has set up a special team headed by an executive deputy director to prepare for a stock exchange listing next year, according to a story published by the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Paper on 20 Jan...
China opened 4,719km of expressways in 2009 and started construction on an additional 16,000km network, said Li Shenglin, Minister of Communications....
The Chinese government has provided a cash injection of US$220m to Air China’s parent company to fund the carrier’s purchase of a stake in its cargo venture with the parent of Beijing Capital International Airport...
China Southern Airlines has added two Boeing 777 freighters to its fleet to serve the US and Europe markets, reported Cargonews Asia....
Wuxi is to launch a flight to Tokyo later this year, according to local airport officials, without giving a precise start date....
The US-headquartered express logistics company United Parcel Service plans to open 101 new logistics sites in China....
A high-speed railway linking Xian with Chengdu has won approval from the National Development and Reform Commission, according to a Xinhua article quoting the China Railway First Survey and Design Institute.
Construction o...
The first phase of a new rail container terminal in Chongqing’s Shapingba district has opened for business, reported Xinhua....
Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, the world’s largest notebook computer original design manufacturer (ODM), said it plans to build a plant in Chongqing....
Mazda Motor and Ford Motor will dissolve their joint venture in China by 2012, Nikkei business daily reported....
According to China News Services, Jiangsu reported 2,066 cases of the H1N1 virus in December, including 25 deaths....
Shanghai port’s container volume rose 7.1 per cent to 2.4m teu in December, its first increase of the year, said Shanghai International Port (Group)....
Wuhan and Nanjing airports are among a total of 14 major airports in China that handled more than 10m passengers in 2009, according to the China Aviation Newspaper....
Air China announced that from 15 January, it will start scheduled direct flights between Wuhan and Macau on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays....
Railways Minister Liu Zhijun said 1.64bn passenger journeys would be made on China’s rail network in 2010, up 7.6 per cent from last year....
China will pilot a system requiring train passengers to buy tickets with their own personal IDs to crack down on hoarding by ticket touts during busy holiday periods....
China’s Vice Minister of Railways Hu Yadong has led a delegation from the ministry’s safety department to visit the Munich headquarters of Knorr-Bremse, a leading manufacturer of braking systems for trains and com...
The first underground turbine of the Three Gorges hydropower project is expected to be put into operation in July 2011, according to the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC). Five others will come on stream by 2012....
China National Administration of Coal Geology has confirmed that it has quantified its recent discovery of coal in Tongshan county, Jiangsu province, according to China News Service....
China imported 62.16m tonnes of iron ore in December, a year-on-year increase of 80 per cent and the second highest volume on record, the General Administration of Customs announced....
Figures from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that cargo throughput via the major ports along the Yangtze trunkline went up by 11.3 per cent last year to 1.13bn tons.
The upturn came on...
The port of Jiangyin, Jiangsu province, said it expected its 2009 throughput to be more than 105m tons, a 20.1 per cent increase over the previous year....
Since the start of this month, information about the state of the waterway between the Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam is being conveyed on a telephone enquiry service....
Official statistics show that in 2009, a record total of 74m tons of cargo passed through the five-step shiplocks at the Three Gorges, up 8.45 per over 2008....
China’s Ministry of Transport said it would relax its rules and allow container shipping companies that operate services across the Taiwan Strait to carry goods originating from outside Greater China, reported Dow Jones...
China’s General Post Office under the Ministry of Transport granted four companies licences for engaging in international express services on 5 January. They include CAAC Air Express and Sinotrans Air Express....
The Ministry of Railway is forecasting that 210m passengers will use the network over the Spring Festival, with New Year’s Day falling on 14 February this year....
Heavy snowfall in northern China at the start of January stranded thousands of passengers on railways and at airports. The cold snap also caused coal shortages, forcing some provinces to cut power supplies....
Construction of the Suining-Ziyang expressway in Sichuan province began on 28 December....
Chengdu aims to become western China’s largest aviation logistics hub, with 10 non-stop international air routes to be added over the next three years, according to a government plan reported by China Knowledge....
The much-vaunted Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway was bought to a standstill by a smoker within a week of its opening last month.
A passenger set off an alarm while smoking a cigarette, and officials spent the next two-a...
Shanghai Chemical Industry Park Industrial Gases, a joint venture between Praxair of the US and Air Liquide of France, has been awarded a 15-year contract to supply hydrogen and carbon monoxide by pipeline to Bayer Polyuretha...
December 2009
Track laying on Chengdu’s Metro Line was officially completed on 30 November, according to the municipal government....
Zhangjiagang port claims to have beaten its full-year cargo throughput target in the first 11 months of this year....
The Shanghai-Chongqing Highway has now been completed with the trial opening of the 320km-long Hurongxi section in Hubei province....
Port operator China Merchants and Qingdao Port are creating a Rmb6.22bn joint venture to build and operate a container terminal in Qingdao, Shandong province....
APM Terminals has selected Shanghai as its Asia-Pacific regional headquarters, reported Shipping Gazette....
China Southern Airlines has launched express routes linking Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, with Wuhan and Changsha in central China....
Hubei Airport Group has signed strategic framework agreements with China’s leading three airlines to build Wuhan Tianhe International Airport into an international aviation hub....
Singapore’s Changi Airport Group has signed a memorandum of understanding with Chongqing Airport Group that is designed to promote management co-operation and staff exchanges between the two airports.
In addition, th...
Honda Motor plans to build a new car plant in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, to increase production in China’s growing auto market, according to sources quoted by Kyodo News.
The new plant is scheduled to start op...
Nanjing municipal government said the city’s Hanzhongmen Bridge would have to be repaired properly, after a public outcry followed attempts by a local construction team to fix the cracks with glue, according to state me...
In the year to 21 December 2009, a total of 72m tons of cargo had passed the Three Gorges shiplocks including 13m tons using fanba....
Sinopec Yangtze Petrochemical has recently been approved by the Jiangsu provincial government to open up four of its privately-owned quays to outside users, including foreign vessels. They are No....
Chongqing municipal government has announced that all of its rail projects due to be completed by 2020 have been rescheduled and brought forward to completion by 2015 in an effort to stimulate domestic demand....
The operations at dangerous goods terminals in Shanghai Port will be suspended during the Shanghai Expo between 30 April and 31 October 2010, except at Yangshan Deepwater Terminal, according to the Yangtze River Administratio...
China’s first shipping agents’ club was established in Shanghai on 9 December....
Jiangyin port reported that its throughput had increased by 20 per cent to 100.2m tons in the year to 13 December 2009....
Chongqing Evening Newspaper reported that local cab drivers are objecting to a code of higher service standards that the local government announced on 1 December.
The code is an adapted version of national standards for ta...
The Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway will open on 26 December....
Shanghai port’s cargo throughput increased 19 per cent year-on-year to 30.7m tons in November 2009, its first monthly double-digit growth rate of the year....
Mainland China accounted for 22.6 per cent of global container throughput in 2008, according to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)....
China’s aviation industry has staged a strong recovery this year, according to statistics released by the country’s Civil Aviation Administration....
Work is to start at the end of this month on Chongqing’s second light rail line....
The Rmb1.1bn second phase of Chongqing’s Cuntan terminal is due to be ready for opening at the end of 2009, reported Xinhua....
Figures released by the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport showed that cargo throughput via the major ports along the Yangtze trunkline fell by 7.9 per cent in November compared with the previous mon...
In the late afternoon of 1 December, 15 liquid chlorine containers rolled off a trailer pulled by a Dongfeng truck as it slowly climbed to board a vessel at Shishou vehicle ferry quay in Jingzhou, Hubei province....
Mr Wang Qingyun, Director of Basic Industries under the State Development and Reform Commission, said that the State Council has approved 22 new metro projects in 13 provinces and four municipalities involving a total investm...
Jiangsu has installed electronic toll collection (ETC) facilities on 22 more expressways this year, increasing the total to 77, according to local media....
China’s container rail network is poised for major expansion, according to Tsang Yam-pui, an official from NWS Holdings, the infrastructure arm of New World Development....
A railway line in Xinjiang autonomous region that opened in early December is expected to play an important role in expanding cargo transport between China, central Asia and Europe....
Ningbo Port Group and Jiangxi provincial Department of Commerce are jointly promoting a new sea-rail intermodal service from Jiangxi’s capital Nanchang to the coastal city of Ningbo, Zhejiang province....
Hong Kong port’s cargo throughput fell 4 per cent year-on-year to 64.4m tons in the third quarter of 2009....
Air China is to launch direct flights between Chengdu and the Indian city of Bangalore. The connection is designed to promote exchanges in the software industry....
China Pacific Insurance (Group) has become the first Chinese insurer to launch a shipping insurance department, reported Shanghai Daily....
China Development Bank has extended an Rmb80bn line of credit to Wuhan Iron and Steel to finance the development of its recently acquired overseas iron ore assets....
A Yichang government website reported that a series of stringent measures are to be announced that will bring together the powers of various state departments to reduce production levels in nine industries deemed to be backwa...
Heavy fog enveloped the Nantong section of the Yangtze on the evening of 1 December, and continued throughout the following day....
The number of coal-carrying vessels from Sichuan province via the Three Gorges that have to lighten in Yichang has increased dramatically since a compulsory lightening rule was enforced on 11 November, according to the Yangtz...
A Yangtze dolphin was found dead in the Xianning, in the Hubei section of the Yangtze on 29 November. About 3.09 metres long and weighing 200 kg, the mammal was estimated to be 20 years old....
Nanjing will launch direct flights to North America, Europe and Australasia next year, according to the general manager of the Nanjing International Airport, Mr Xu Yong....
Shenzhen-based Jade Cargo has launched an all-cargo service between Chengdu in Sichuan province and the European cities of Amsterdam and Vienna....
China’s railways carried about 3bn tons of goods in the first 11 months of 2009, according to the Ministry of Railways, exceeding its target by 64.35m tons....
On 24 November, Philips Lighting formally opened a fluorescent lamps plant in Yizheng EDZ, in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province....
Wuhan Iron and Steel, China’s third biggest steelmaker, has agreed to pay US$400m for 21.5 per cent of MMX, a Brazilian iron ore miner.
As part of the deal, Wisco will purchase at least half of the iron ore to be pro...
Pfizer of the US has signed an MOU with Wuhan government to set up an R&D centre in the city. The investment would make Pfizer the first global pharmaceutical company to establish a presence in the area....
A number of leading companies have joined a Wuhan government-led recruitment delegation to look for talent in Beijing and Qinghua universities, two of China’s most prestigious universities....
GKN of the UK has opened has opened a new driveshaft plant in Wuhan, its 11th direct investment in China....
PetroChina is to join forces with US oil giant Chevron Corp to explore for natural gas in Chongqing’s Kaixian county, reported China Knowledge....
November 2009
Dense fog in Sichuan province on 18 November caused major disruption to transport in the province, with airports and expressways forced to close, according to China Daily.
In the provincial capital Chengdu, Shuangliu Inter...
China is to extend its railways in western regions to more than 50,000km by 2020, according to Yan Hexiang, deputy director of the Ministry of Railways’ development planning department....
Pakistan’s Ministry of Railways and the Chinese government have agreed in principle to form a consortium to carry out a feasibility study into a planned joint venture rail service between the two countries, Pakistan&rsq...
China Eastern Airlines plans to co-operate with Sinotrans in air cargo services, according to a source quoted by China Business News.
Currently, both China Eastern and Sinotrans run air cargo businesses....
The US-based technology company Dell claims to have become the first company in the PC sector to introduce packaging made from bamboo....
The world’s first combined LNG/LPG/ethylene carrier was officially named on 15 November....
Taiwan’s UNI Air started direct scheduled services to Chongqing on 18 November....
China’s largest online air ticket booking agency Xiecheng Tourist Net started to offer huge discounts from 22 November on flights originating from Wuhan....
Wuhan Mayor Ruan Chenfa said at a meeting on 24 November that his government would not allow the development of industries that consume large amounts of energy, following the natural gas crisis this month....
The heavy fog and storms that started to envelop the entire Yangtze River region from Shanghai to Chongqing on 10 November has impacted the safety and security of shipping, according to the Yangtze Maritime Safety Authority u...
Chongqing Maritime Safety Authority announced a list of 30 landslide hazards in the Three Gorges reservoir area under its jurisdiction....
The State Development and Reform Commission has approved the 952km Xian-Hefei railway line, a major route for energy products and raw materials. The double-tracked line will run parallel to the existing route....
Chongqing’s outward investment is expected to reach US$180m in 2009, up more than 20 per cent year-on-year, according to Mr Li Jianchun, Director of the city’s Municipal Commission of Foreign Trade and Investment....
Wuhan Government announced on 15 November that all the fuel stations in the city would stop supplying natural gas to taxis from the following day as a measure to cope with a severe supply shortage....
Wuhan Iron & Steel Group, China’s third largest steelmaker, has signed a long-term iron ore supply contract with Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana, the only iron ore producer in Venezuela....
Nanjing International Airport said that three routes to North America would start by the end of November: the Nanjing-Beijing-New York service operated by Air China, and the Nanjing-Shanghai Pudong-Los Angeles and Nanjing-Sha...
China’s ports recorded a 2.6 per cent year-on-year fall in container traffic in October, handling 10.78m teu, according to the Ministry of Transport....
The Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines Group is to set up an administration and service centre in Chongqing, according to a statement by Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Commission....
Wacker, the Germany-based chemicals group, has officially opened its new dispersible powder and vinyl acetate ethylene dispersion plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province....
The Kuwait-China Investment Co, an investment firm targeting infrastructure, real estate, agriculture and energy, plans to open its first China office as it seeks to provide a platform to establish private equity vehicles to...
A Nanjing land auction held on 10 November saw the price of a second-hand plot in Jiangning ETDZ plummet by 35 per cent....
Record low water levels are affecting the lower reaches of the Yangtze as much as the middle reaches, according to statistics from the Yangtze River Administration....
According to China Waterway Transport, by end of October this year, more than 90 per cent of vessels passing the Three Gorges Dam were equipped with GPS....
A feasibility study of the Chengdu-Xian railway project has been approved by the State Development and Reform Commission. The 519km double tracked railway line will cater mainly for passengers....
Yangtze Phoenix, the listed arm of Sinotrans Yangtze National Shipping Corp, the largest shipping line operating on the Yangtze, has announced the withdrawal of its fleet of 106 tugs of 2,000dwt with immediate effect....
Consumer associations from 17 major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing and Hong Kong have jointly called for information on air tickets to be written in Chinese....
PYI Corporation, the Hong Kong-based bulk cargo port and infrastructure group, has completed its investment of Rmb114m for a 51 per cent equity interest in Yichang Port Group.
Tom Lau, Managing Director of PYI, said the mo...
Chinese road haulage companies have suffered from a spate of armed robberies in recent months, especially in the south of the country, according to an article on the China Supply Chain Council website....
Petrol and diesel fuel prices were raised by Rmb480 per tonne on 10 November, according to the National Development and Reform Commission....
China’s foreign trade value fell 10.7 per cent year-on-year in October, according to the General Administration of Customs....
Japan Airlines Corporation is cancelling 16 loss-making international and domestic passenger routes in a bid to improve profitability....
ScinoPharm, a Taiwan-based supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients, has started construction of a new plant and R&D centre in Changshu, Jiangsu province. It should be operational in 2011....
At 5:30am on 1 November, a vessel carrying 100 tons of hydrochloric acid collided with another vessel carrying sand in the Ezhou section of the Yangtze River in Hubei province....
Two ocean-going specialist tar-carrying vessels built in Chongqing safely passed the seasonally low waters in the middle reaches of the Yangtze on 29 October, joining another vessel that was delivered earlier in the month....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport show that October’s cargo throughput in the ports along the Yangtze trunkline increased by 31.3 per cent year-on-year to reach 107.4m tons...
The municipal government of Chongqing has signed an agreement with Citic Infrastructure, Citic Guohua and Chongqing Expressway Group to build the Chongqing-Fuling section of the Chongqing Riverside Expressway at a cost of Rmb...
The Ministry of Transport has fined 10 shipping lines for not filing freight rates with the Shanghai Shipping Exchange on time after new rule became effective on 1 August....
For the first 10 months of 2009, Zhangjiagang’s imported waste steel increased by 887 per cent to 3.28m tons, according to the city’s Inspection and Quarantine Bureau....
Air China will hold a 51 per cent stake in its air cargo venture with Cathay Pacific that is hoped to be finalised in the first half of next year, a Chinese airline executive was quoted as saying by China Daily.
Reuters re...
The Yangtze port city of Taicang signed 29 investment agreements worth a combined Rmb7.2bn at its economic and trade fair held in late October, reported China Daily....
The construction of high-speed railways in China poses a threat to the nation’s airline industry, warned Si Xianmin, chairman of China Southern Airlines.
“Over 80 per cent of the domestic aviation market will b...
John Elkann, vice president of Fiat, has held discussions with Chongqing vice mayor Tong Xiaoping, about the Italian auto giant’s plan to establish a new engine works in Chongqing.
Fiat has two existing enterprises i...
Wuhan-based Dongfeng Motor Corp is set to export several of its light goods vehicle models to South Korea next year, according to various media reports....
Air Products of the US has opened a new amines plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The facility will support customers in the growing polyurethane additives and epoxy markets....
Novartis, the world’s third largest pharmaceutical company, said it plans to invest US$1.25bn in two Chinese R&D centres over the next five years....
October 2009
The Three Gorges Dam started releasing water earlier than scheduled to combat a worsening drought in the Yangtze....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau has finished compiling digital maps of the entire Yangtze River, according to the director of its waterway division Wan Dabing. Work started in 2008 on the upper and lower reaches....
On 26 October, heavy fog enveloped the Yangtze lower reaches, with visibility reduced to just 100-200 metres in places. More than 2,500 vessels were stranded in the Nanjing and Zhenjiang areas....
China’s largest dry bulk carrier capable of sailing on both river and sea has been built by Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing....
Figures from Chongqing Statistics Bureau showed that the municipality’s GDP reached nearly Rmb380bn during the first three quarters of 2009, up 13.4 per cent over the same period last year....
Shanghai Shipping Exchange has launched a new Shanghai (Export) Container Freight Index (SCFI), Xinhua reported....
Hong Kong International Airport recorded the world’s largest cargo throughput in 2008 with a total of 3.63m tons....
Wuhan Iron and Steel Company, the listed arm of Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Corp, posted a 76 per cent decline in net profit in the third quarter of this year due to falling sales....
Coca-Cola has opened a new bottling plant in Wuhan’s East Lake District. It is the soft drinks giant’s 39th bottling plant in China, and the third to open in 2009....
The Ministry of Transport has recently issued a circular that allows domestic shipping companies to purchase ‘abandoned’ vessels (except passenger cruises) for use on domestic routes, after the new capacity is reg...
A major maintenance project began on 15 October on the No.3 shiplock of Gezhouba Dam, 38km downstream of the Three Gorges Dam. Such work happens once every six years....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau organised a successful demonstration on 14 October of the digital mapping of Wuhan port....
Statistics from Chongqing municipal government revealed a 52 per cent year-on-year increase to Rmb76.2bn in utilised domestic investment in the first three-quarters of 2009....
The Ministry of Railways will start issuing the second lot of China Railway Construction Bonds worth a total of Rmb20bn on 22-23 October....
China has begun to resettle 330,000 people to make way for construction of a water transportation project that will divert water from the Yangtze River to Beijing, according to official media.
People from Henan and Hubei p...
FedEx Express has announced an improvement to its inbound international express service in China that will involve parcels from around the world being delivered in Shanghai by noon, six hours earlier than the previous commitm...
Construction of the Yunnan-Asean International Cold Chain Logistics Centre is to begin next month in the Yunnan provincial capital of Kunming, reported Logistics Week....
Cofco, the major shareholder of dairy company Mengniu, has announced that production has begun at Mengniu’s manufacturing base in Meishan, Sichuan province....
On 16 October, drilling work began in Wuhan, Hubei province, on China’s first metro tunnel under the Yangtze River, according to local officials....
The world’s largest tunnel-bridge structure, linking Shanghai with two of its major islands, will be open to traffic at the end of this month, reported China Daily.
The Yangtze River Tunnel-Bridge and connecting expr...
Construction of the Chongqing section of the Lanzhou-Chongqing railway started on 17 October....
SIPG Jiujiang port recorded a September throughput of 10,034 teu, its largest-ever single month total. For the first nine months of 2009, container throughput totalled 65,000 teu, up 108 per cent year-on-year....
The Yangtze River Administration and the Salvation Bureau, both under the Ministry of Transport, signed an agreement on 12 October to set up an emergency salvation system....
The operators of the main international airports in Shanghai and Hong Kong are to form a joint venture to manage Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, reported China Daily....
Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics is to increase the number of its sailings on the Japan-South Korea-China RoRo service to three a month....
China plans to invest Rmb469bn in infrastructure projects to boost the development of the country’s western regions in 2009, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)....
Damco, formerly known as Maersk Logistics, has recently decided to set up an operation in Chengdu rather than Chongqing....
China’s railways carried 54.5m passengers over the busy National Day holiday period between 1-7 October, according to the Ministry of Railway....
Carrefour, the France-based retailer, will spend more than Rmb100m on buying fruit and vegetables in Chongqing next year, according to Eric Legros, chief executive of the company’s China operation....
Sichuan plans to spend Rmb82.5bn on 137 projects in the natural gas, chemicals and petrochemicals sectors, said Zhang Yushan, deputy director of the province’s Economic Commission.
In 2008, Sichuan’s sales reve...
On 29 September an inaugural container service was completed on the direct route between the ports of Taicang in Jiangsu province and Incheon in South Korea. The vessel Linyuan has a 614 teu capacity....
The Taiwan-headquartered Taibo Group is to set up the world’s largest soda plant in Huaian, in the north of Jiangsu province. Construction started on 29 September....
Transport authorities in Jiangsu have announced a plan to rename all its national and provincial expressways as part of a nationwide effort to standardise the names of all expressways....
Construction has begun in northern Shanxi province on China’s first railway involving private funds.
The railway is co-funded by the Broad Union Investment Management Group, Yufeng Railway Construction Investment and t...
China’s railways carried a record of 6.93m people on National Day on 1 October, according to the Ministry of Railways....
Guiyang, capital of southwest Guizhou province, started the construction of an urban railway network on 29 September, reported China Daily.
The Rmb18.9bn network will connect nine logistic centres around the city....
China Shipping Container Lines has announced peak season surcharges and rate increases on most of its major trade lanes, according to Exim News Service.
A peak season surcharge for shipments on Asia-European/Mediterranean...
September 2009
The Liberian chemical tanker ‘Cyrano’ broke down recently on the Yangtze River near Zhenjiang Runyang Bridge on its way from Jiangyin to Nanjing, according to a China News Services story....
Figures released by the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport showed a year-on-year increase of 15.2 per cent in general cargo throughput to 98m tons in the first 26 days of September....
The third phase of the multi-million dollar dredging project at the mouth of the Yangtze that aims to increase water depth to 12.5 metres has started its ‘final push’ ahead of schedule, according to the Yangtze Ri...
Statistics from the Ministry of Transport show that 488m people are expected to use roads and railways during the eight-day National Day holiday period, up 6.8 per cent year-on-year....
Water quality levels in 30 per cent of China’s major river sections are below standard, according to officials at the Ministry of Environmental Protection....
China’s container shipping business is starting to recover for the first time since the start of the global financial crisis, according to a report by China Daily....
Construction began on 26 September of the Chongqing North Railway Station-Fuling section of the second line of the Chongqing-Huaihua Railway....
The Chinese joint venture of Canadian plane and train manufacturer Bombardier has won a contract to build 80 high-speed trains for China’s Ministry of Railways, the Wall Street Journal reported....
Air China Cargo has begun a three-times-a-week service to Vienna International Airport with a Boeing 747 Freighter....
Ferro Corporation, the US-based supplier of materials for fabricating photovoltaic silicon solar cells, has started production of solar aluminium paste at its expanded Suzhou facility.
The 16,500 square metre plant has roo...
The Yangtze River Administration issued a circular on 11 September, saying that between 21 September and 10 October, the anti-terrorist code will be activated in the Three Gorges Reservoir and all vessels passing the shiplock...
In addition to tighter shipping security in the Three Gorges area ahead of the National Day holidays, China is strengthening safety checks on letters and parcels sent to addresses in Beijing, the Ministry of Public Security a...
Wuhan government announced on 21 September that work will start on four intercity railway lines within the year, connecting the city with Huangshi (58km away), Huanggang (63km), Xiaogan (33km) and Xianning (51km).
A total...
The Nanjing section of the Riverside Highway was completed on 20 September, complementing the existing Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway and 312 National Highway, which runs from Shanghai to Xinjiang in the far west of China....
A Korean vessel carrying 30,211 tons of iron ore arrived at Rugao terminal in Nantong, Jiangsu province, on 21 September. With a draught of 10.86 metres, it is the largest ship to have ever called at the terminal....
Changan Ford Mazda, a joint venture between Chongqing Changan Automobile, Ford and Mazda will start building its third plant in Chongqing on 25 September in response to growing sales in the China market.
The new plant is d...
China’s refrigerated warehouse sector is expected to grow by an average of 24 per cent in each of the next five years, according to a Jones Lang LaSalle report....
China’s State Council has issued a new regulation covering the prevention and clearing up of marine pollution caused by vessels, reported Xinhua. It is set to take effect on 1 March 2010....
Cities across China encouraged residents to leave their cars in the garage on Tuesday 22 September as part of the global car-free day....
The number of passengers flying on China-based airlines rose 42 per cent year-on-year in August, while cargo and mail traffic grew 18 per cent, according to the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China....
The Ministry of Railways has begun the process of raising Rmb30bn in bonds to support railway construction in China, reported Xinhua.
The funds are to be used to construct 32 new lines, including a high-speed passenger lin...
Beijing-based Wumart remains in talks to acquire Jiangsu province-based retailer Times, reported Caijing magazine....
L'Oreal China president Paolo Gasparrini and three of his senior managers met with the Communist Party Secretary of Yichang on 10 September and pledged to increase investment at annual rate of 69 per cent over the next three...
The State Council has approved the plan for the Three Gorges Dam to start, from 15 September, the cycle of storing flood water to the maximum level of 175 metres for the first time....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau has announced a series of measures to ensure shipping safety on the Three Gorges reservoir....
The Development and Reform Commission of Hubei province has given the go-ahead to a new terminal project at Taipingxi in Yichang, Hubei province....
At 6:45am on 8 September, two men from Xuba town in Tongling used their own unlicensed wooden motor boat to ferry 38 farmers to their harvesting jobs in a nearby town....
In the first eight months of 2009, the Ministry of Railways invested Rmb1.35bn in 11 railway projects in Yunnan, one of the provinces least served by the national rail system....
Nantong maritime safety officials received a circular from their Fujian counterparts on 8 September, informing them that a Singapore flagged vessel carrying 9,000 tons of palm oil heading for Nantong collided with a Chinese f...
Jiangsu public health authorities said on 15 September that the province had recorded 505 cases of the H1N1 virus, otherwise known as swine flu, by 9 September....
A paper mill in Chongqing faces the prospect of closure next year if it continues to fail to clean up its waste water as requested by the local authorities, reported China Daily....
Global pharmaceutical and chemical company Merck has acquired Suzhou Taizhu Technology Development, a supplier of effect pigments located in the Yangtze port city of Taicang, Jiangsu province....
Throughput at Dalian port in Liaoning province between January and August 2009 increased 12 per cent year-on-year, according to operator Dalian Port (PDA) Co....
Guangxi autonomous region in southern China has introduced a toll reduction scheme that has saved truck companies a total of Rmb168,700 between 10 and 31 July, Xinhua reported....
Two international airfreight routes connecting Chongqing and Europe have been initiated by Jade Cargo International Airlines, according to the municipal government....
Volkswagen Group says it plans to invest a total of €4bn in new products and expand production capacities in China. Output at both the Nanjing and Chengdu plants is to be boosted to 300,000-350,000 units by 2012....
The Three Gorges Administration of Navigational Affairs has clarified the procedures involving applications to pass the shiplocks, following a major accident in early August when 12 chemical containers together with 50 othe...
Odfjell Jiangyin Terminal, the largest liquid chemical storage tanker terminal in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, recently passed an official inspection by the Jiangsu provincial transport authorities....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration, the Ministry of Transport, show that throughput along the Yangtze in August increased 12.7 per cent to 101m tons over the same period last year....
The Yangtze dry bulk index reached 803.47 in August, up 0.76 per cent over the previous month. Coal and metal ore were the commodities most responsible for the slight increase....
Taiwan Fuxing Airlines started a new direct service between Wuhan and Taiwan on 22 August. Before then, only China Eastern Airlines offered a regular service, with six flights a week....
The State Reform and Development Commission has agreed in principle to include the development of Chengdu-Chongqing economic region in its 12th five-year plan (2011-16), according to a prominent scholar....
China Shipping Container Lines recorded a 51.5 per cent fall in revenue to Rmb8.92bn in the first half of 2009 compared with the same period in 2008....
China plans to impose a tax on exhaust emissions in a bid to get the worst polluting vehicles off the roads, reported China Daily.
The government will gradually push for the removal of some 18m high-emission vehicles after...
Construction on the Chengdu-Lhasa railway will not start this month, said the Ministry of Railway in response to recent contradictory state media reports.
Planners and engineers are still examining the difficult geological...
Construction of Chongqing’s third railway station will start this year, said Zhang Yuan, chief planner of the municipality’s urban planning bureau....
METRO Cash & Carry will open four new stores in China this year including one on the Yangtze port city of Changshu in Jiangsu province, said Tino Zeiske, president of the company’s China operations....
Nanjing government has signed an agreement with Sharp of Japan and the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group to jointly set up an eighth-generation LCD panel plant in the Jiangsu capital....
The departure from Nantong on 25 August of a Taiwan-bound bulk carrier loaded with 21,200 tons of cement took total throughput on the newly opened route to more than 500,000 tons, according to the China Waterway Transport new...
China’s cargo throughput increased 3.5 per cent year-on-year to 3.88bn tons in the first seven months of 2009, according to the Ministry of Transport....
Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) is to invest in one of the most westerly ports on the Yangtze trunkline, Yibing, according to the city’s government....
Shanghai’s shipbuilding industry has bottomed out, according to the border inspection agency at Waigaoqiao. The area under its jurisdiction usually accounts for half of all export orders in Shanghai....
At least 150 vessels containing a combined 75,000 tonnes of steel products have clogged up the Grand Canal near Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, because buyers refused to receive orders they had made before a sudden slump in pr...
The central government has allocated a new budget of Rmb984m for 12 dredging projects in the Yangtze trunkline, according to the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport....
Work to lay epoxy asphalt on the surface of the Shanghai Yangtze Bridge was completed on 27 August, which means that the bridge is ready for traffic, according to China Transport Newspaper....
Deputy Minister of Railways Mr Hu Yadong has recently written to his staff in charge of Urumqi Railway Bureau, instructing them to provide priority and flexibility in transporting Xinjiang cotton pickers and reporting the tra...
Statistics from the Maritime Safety Authorities in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province show that between January and August this year, the number of international vessels entering and departing the city’s port exceeded 3,400, up...
Statistics from Suzhou Vehicle Administration Authorities show that by end of July, the total number of cars registered in the city reached 925,500, an increase of 98,800 compared with the end of 2008....
Chongqing’s 186km-long outer ring expressway will be opened to traffic at the end of 2009, according to local media....
The first bonded warehouse in the Three Gorges Reservoir area was officially opened on 28 August....
China Cosco Holdings reported a US$672m net loss in the first half of 2009, Bloomberg reported, the second consecutive interim loss for the shipping company....
Air China will accelerate talks with Cathay Pacific Airways regarding the formation of an air cargo joint venture based in Shanghai, South China Morning Post reported....
Wuhan-based private airline East Star Airlines has officially become bankrupt after its restructuring application was rejected by the city’s Intermediate People’s Court, reported a Hubei government website....
Construction of the Sichuan-Tibet railway will begin in September, according to a Sichuan-based news site....
Shanghai-based China Energy Recovery, a company that specialises in waste heat energy recovery, has decided to build a new manufacturing plant in the Yangtze port city of Yangzhou, Jiangsu province....
Construction of a US$450m solar power project has begun in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province....
August 2009
The Yangtze Police Yueyang branch confirmed last week that a major fire on 18 July at the private terminal of Yueyang Chemical Plant was caused by the mishandling of the highly flammable solvent cyclohexane....
More than 200 vessels with an engine size of less than 270 kW were stranded in waters between the Three Gorges Dam and the Gezhouba Dam due to the torrents created by the largest flood during the current rainy season.
The...
Chongqing Iron & Steel Group (Chong Gang) said that a new project to produce 4100mm steel plates will start operation in September and its first phase in Chong Gang New Area would reach an annual capacity of 6.5m tons by...
The numbers 7, 9 and 11 lines of the Shanghai underground railway system will run into pilot operation by the end of this year, according to the local transport authorities....
The State Administration of Taxation has issued a circular to clarify definitions contained in a previous circular regarding tax incentives for projects in China’s western regions, including Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou...
Car sales in China’s western and central regions increased 33 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2009, according to a report from the global market research firm, Ipsos....
Macquarie, the Australian bank that specialises in infrastructure investment, and financial services firm China Everbright are to form two funds that will seek to raise a total of US$1.5bn for infrastructure projects.
Both...
DHL, the global express transportation company, has launched a cross-border trucking service linking major Chinese cities with destinations in Vietnam....
Shanghai’s Urban Environmental Protection Committee is deliberating on a draft law that could force shipping companies to take out insurance against pollution spills, reported China Daily....
The amount of freight carried by China’s railways rose 0.3 per cent year-on-year in July, the first monthly increase in 2009, according to Ministry of Railways figures.
Cargo transportation volume stood at 1.88bn ton...
GE Drivetrain Technologies, part of the giant US-based multinational GE, has formed a joint venture with Chongqing XinXing Fengneng Investment to produce large diameter gears for the wind turbine industry....
Honda Motor has started to manufacture the Spirior sports sedan at the Dongfeng Honda Automobile joint venture in Wuhan, Asia Pulse reported....
Malaysian airline AirAsia X is to launch services between Kuala Lumpur and Chengdu from 22 October....
A six-lane road tunnel under the Yangtze River in Nanjing, designed to ease congestion in the city, is expected to open for traffic in June next year, according to Xinhua....
A new high-speed train that will operate between Chongqing and Chengdu will be delivered later this month, according to a local government department....
Two major Yangtze ports in Anhui province, Maanshan and Chizhou, are to be opened to foreign vessels, according to Hefei Customs....
An important logistics centre has been established along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in the Tibetan township of Nagqu.
Covering Lhasa, Qamdo, Ali and northern Xigaze, the centre provides services on freight transportation, s...
PetroChina has put an 11,000 cubic metre oil products tank into operation in Chongqing. The municipality has suffered from tight oil product supplies for several years due to poor transportation links....
Air services between Chongqing and Seoul will resume on 17 September with two flights a week, according to Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Commission.
Services on the route began in 2000 but were suspended f...
Carrefour is expected to open a new store in Hefei, Anhui province before the Spring Festival in 2010.
The France-based retailer will take out a 20-year lease on a 23,000 sq metre site owned by Hefei New Civil and Cultural...
Trade volume between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong dropped 23.6 per cent year-on-year to US$88.68bn during the first seven months of 2009, according to the Ministry of Commerce....
Air China has signed a strategic co-operation framework agreement with Sinotrans Shipping, one of China’s largest shipping companies....
Shanghai has obtained approval from the State Council to build a bonded area in Shanghai Pudong Airport, reported Xinhua.
It will be the first bonded area at an airport in mainland China and will cover an area of some 4 sq...
The city of Wuxi, located on one of the Yangtze’s major tributaries, Taihu Lake, is building a third power plant that generates electricity through burning household waste, according to the local media....
Chongqing’s export value rose by 9.5 per cent in July to US$61.64m compared with the previous month, while imports rose by 32 per cent to US$15.4m. The major markets are the US, Hong Kong and Italy....
Wuhu port, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, announced on 18 August that it plans to sell Rmb170m-worth of A Shares to Huainan Coal Mine, the largest coal producer in Anhui province....
August floods have sent an unprecedented quantity of floating waste such as broken branches and weeds down the Three Gorges Reservoir....
Mr Tang Guanjun, Director of the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport, told the Yangtze Shippers Association that undeclared dangerous goods on vessels will be severely punished once discovered....
A serious accident occurred on the evening of 10 August when 62 containers from the Chongqing barge 'Hanglong 518’ fell into the lower waters of The Three Gorges Reservoir in Yichang....
Marine Safety Authorities in Nanjing announced on 19 August that they will set up inspection points along the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River to check the weight of passing vessels....
Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that the Yangtze dry bulk index stood at 797.4 at the end of July, 0.6 per cent down on end-June....
The director of Shanghai Maritime Safety Authority said in an interview on 31 July that the waterway control centre and emergency response centres for the Shanghai Expo 2010 had started operation....
Statistics from the Shanghai Shipping Exchange show an upturn in outbound container shipping business....
Nanjing port signed an agreement with Huaneng Power at the end of July to increase its stake in their joint venture, Nanjing Port Tianchen....
The five-step shiplocks of the Three Gorges Dam were temporarily closed on 3 August in preparation for the biggest flood crest of the summer....
The US-based Preferred Freezer Services has broken ground on a refrigerated warehouse in Shanghai’s Lingang Logistics Park.
After construction, the 26,000 sq metre facility will be the largest and most advanced singl...
Jiangsu Yangzijiang Shipbuilding has become the latest yard to enter the ship demolition market....
China’s total railway freight volume stood at 273.55m tons in June 2009, reported People’s Daily, virtually unchanged on the same month last year....
Cargo throughput at China’s leading ports stood at 500m tons in July, a year-on-year growth rate of 12.9 per cent according to the Ministry of Transport....
Chongqing will shut down at least 50 hazardous chemicals enterprises in the next three years according to a local government website....
July 2009
Three pharmaceutical clinical research organisations (CROs) in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, including MediTech and Sundia, claim that Customs clearance time for CRO shipments has been shortened from three days to...
China Infrastructure Group-controlled Wuhan Yangluo terminal recorded a container throughput of 113,900 teu in the first six months of 2009, up 31 per cent over the same period last year....
The Hubei-based Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile (DPCA), a joint venture between PSA Peugeot Citroen and Dongfeng Motor, is to shelve plans to build a third plant because of concerns of overcapacity, according to China Bus...
Six companies, including Carrefour, Huayi Brothers, Shanghai Huge Group and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, have signed strategic co-operation agreements to set up businesses in Huangpo, a peripheral city of Wuha...
Western China’s industrial value added increased by 13.2 per cent in the first six months of this year, according to the State Statistics Bureau, well ahead of the 5.9 per cent recorded in the coastal region and 6.8 per...
A new toll road regulation was submitted to the people’s congress of Jiangsu province for approval on 27 July, according to China News Service....
China Eastern Airlines, the country’s third-largest carrier, plans to launch 29 weekly direct flights between nine mainland cities and Taipei from September....
Sections of the Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway will be linked together by the end of this year, Zhang Shuguang, chief of the transportation department at the Ministry of Railway told Beijing News....
Cargo throughput at Chinese ports rose 17.5 per cent year-on-year in June to 598m tons, the fourth consecutive monthly rise. This was 0.7 per cent higher than in May....
Chinese citizens made 1bn domestic trips in the first half of 2009, up 11.7 per cent year-on-year, according to a survey by the State Administration of Tourism....
The Jiangsu city of Zhangjiagang imported 2,441.6 tons of wool in the first six months of 2009, up nearly 15 per cent year-on-year and worth a total of US$14.9m, according to the local inspection and quarantine bureau....
Nantong police arrested a man on 24 July on suspicion of fraud in relation to the evasion of road tolls....
The first two purpose-built container vessels to transport Shanghai’s household waste will be put to use by 1 October, according Shanghai Maritime Safety Authorities....
A major fire broke out at 11:55am on 18 July at the Yueyang Chemical Plant’s private terminal....
The Yangtze River Administration is sending a team of inspectors to check on the safety of ro-ro transport along the Yangtze, specifically in the Three Gorges Reservoir....
Zhangjiagang imported a total of 2.236m tons of waste steel during the first six months of 2009, up more than 1,000 per cent year-on-year, according to the city’s inspection and quarantine bureau....
Statistics from Chongqing Municipal Government showed that during the first six months of 2009, the average disposable income of rural residents was Rmb8,192, up 9.9 per cent year-on-year....
Bulk cargo port and logistics operator PYI Corp is expected to complete its 51 per cent acquisition of Yichang Port Group in October, according to company chairman Joseph Chow quoted by Lloyd’s List....
Construction work on two bridges in Chongqing will start around 1 October, according to the municipal government....
The National Audit Office has publicly criticised construction work on the Rmb67.5bn Xiluodu dam, the world's third-largest hydropower project....
Wuhan Iron and Steel has signed an agreement with Australian Centrex Metals to jointly develop iron ore mines in southern Australia....
UPS has opened an international air hub in Shanghai Pudong International Airport in a bid to increase its China market share....
China’s urban fixed asset investment increased by 33.6 per cent in the first six months of this year to Rmb9,132bn, according to the National Bureau of Statistics....
The second runway at Jiangbei International Airport is expected to be finished in July 2010, according to Chongqing municipal government. The project was started in September 2008 and is now 30 per cent complete....
Despite the depressed state of the global shipbuilding industry, Chongqing’s shipbuilders recorded revenues of Rmb5.6bn in the first half of 2009, a 21 per cent year-on-year increase....
A local court in Jiangyin recently sentenced a truck driver to four years in jail for stealing the contents of a container he was transporting, according to China News Service....
Wuhan’s Baishazhou Yangtze Bridge was closed on 6 July for a new round of renovation work that is due to be completed by 30 September....
An expressway project leading from a popular tourist destination in Guangxi province, Yangshuo, has been approved by the State Development and Reform Commission, according to the provincial transport authorities....
Data published by the Yangtze Maritime Safety Administration showed that 153 major accidents and collisions happened within its jurisdiction between January and June this year....
SIPG Jiujiang port reported a record year-on-year monthly jump of 28 per cent in cargo throughput in June to 630,000 tons....
The All-China Environmental Federation is suing Jiangyin Port Container Co in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, in what is believed to be one of the first public lawsuits involving an environmental organisation as the main plaintiff....
Nissan Motor plans to launch its lithium ion battery-driven vehicles in the Chinese market in 2011, according to Yasuaki Hashimoto, president of Nissan (China) Investment....
Singapore’s state investor Temasek is reported to have been in talks with a unit of Bank of China to launch a US$1bn-2bn investment fund that will focus on China infrastructure projects.
The initiative was said to ha...
Throughput at China’s main ports totalled 2.64bn tons in the first half of 2009, a rise of 0.5 per cent year-on-year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Transport....
The development of China’s western regions still has a long way to run, according to the latest Blue Book of the Western Region of China....
Retail and wholesale operator Metro plans to invest €80m to open four more stores in China this year, reported China Daily....
Central China’s Hubei province recorded a 10 per cent GDP growth in the first half of this year to Rmb540bn, according to local reports....
The world’s largest bulk cargo port company has been created in Hebei province in northern China, according to a report by Xinhua. Hebei Port Group is made up of the ports of Qinhuangdao, Caofeidian and Huangye....
China’s three largest airlines have called for the reintroduction of fuel surcharges on domestic routes in response to rising oil prices, South China Morning Post reported....
After five years of construction, the Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze Road Bridge was formally opened on 13 July.
The road bridge provides a link between the Jiangsu cities of Nantong and Suzhou....
Twenty people in Chongqing were confirmed killed by recent heavy rainstorms. The toll included 16 hikers swept away by a flash flood in Tanzhangxia Canyon in Wanzhou county....
Taiwan UNI Air plans to launch a twice-weekly service between Chongqing and Taipei from September....
BASF is to press ahead with building a multibillion-dollar chemical project in Chongqing, despite the concerns of some Chinese environmentalists and residents....
A loaded truck caught fire on a ro-ro barge sailing on the Three Gorges Reservoir on 1 July, according to the Three Gorges Navigational Administration....
Anhui provincial port authority has vowed to double the water level of the Yangtze River within its territory to 10 metres....
The Asian Development Bank is to loan US$100m to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for urban improvements designed to spur sustainable growth and improve the environment....
Sinopec and BASF are to go ahead with a US$1.4bn expansion of their 50-50 joint venture in Nanjing....
The Dapu Tunnel in Shanghai will be closed on 10 July for major reconstruction....
Real-time information about water quality from China’s major rivers and lakes is now available online....
The first half of the year saw domestic investment in Chongqing jump 28.1 per cent year-on-year to Rmb39.8bn and 34.5 per cent in terms of the number of projects to 4,440, according to statistics released by the local governm...
China Clean Energy Inc, a producer of biodiesel fuel and environmentally-friendly chemical products made from renewable resources in China, has confirmed that the construction of its Jiangyin plant will be completed in Septem...
The 318km-long Dazhou-Chengdu railway, the first express railway in southwest China, was put into operation on 7 July, reducing the train journey between Chongqing and Chengdu to two hours....
In June, 1.08m passenger journeys were made via Chongqing Airport. This represented a 40 per cent increase on the same month in 2008....
The Deputy Minister of Transport Xu Zuyuan announced on 25 June that the central government would take measures to push through a vessel standardisation programme across the Yangtze trunkline by the end of 2013....
The Deputy Director of the Go West department of the State Development and Reform Commission, Ms Li Yingming, told a press conference last week that a series of new incentive policies would be announced later in the year to p...
Anhui’s new Provincial Port Law, released on 30 June and effective on 1 October, includes a warm welcome to outside investors....
Throughput of general cargo along the Yangtze trunkline totalled 100m tons in June, up 14.5 per cent compared with the same month last year, according to statistics released by the Yangtze River Administration under the Minis...
Yangtze River police have arrested nine people suspected of carrying out one of the largest oil tanker robberies in recent years....
DHL Supply Chain plans to add 10 transportation hubs in China by the end of 2009 in response to growing domestic shipping activity, Dow Jones reported....
China’s domestic air passenger traffic in May increased 26 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC)....
Flash Global Logistics says it has added 66 locations to its China network. The expansion enhances the company’s existing distribution, Customs clearance and Importer of Record capabilities....
Construction has begun in Chongqing on what will be China’s largest recycled aluminium alloy project....
A rock collapse forced the temporary closure of the Chengdu-Chongqing Expressway’s Jinyun Mountain Tunnel on 28 June....
A key supplier to the Changzhou plant of photovoltaic (PV) product manufacturer Trina Solar is to establish a production facility next door to its client....
June 2009
Jiujiang Port Authorities have announced a plan to build 18 major berths of 1,000dwt or more, adding an annual handling capacity of 25m tons of cargo by 2012....
The local government in Jiujiang has approved a major renovation project on the city’s No.214 quay at a cost of Rmb320m....
Wuhu Ship Exchange traded 1,046 vessels in 2008, recording a dead weight tonnage of 762,000 tons, third in the national ranking, and a total transaction value of Rmb1.13bn, eighth in the national ranking....
By 22 June, Nantong Maritime Safety Bureau had recorded the 64th vessel direct from Taiwan and a total Taiwan-related throughput of 350,000 tons since the mainland and Taiwan signed a direct shipping agreement on 15 December...
Heavy storms in most parts of Chongqing claimed eight dead and three missing and caused the displacement of 106,000 local residents, according to the local government....
Environmental advocates have warned that a planned dam on the Yangtze River could lead to the extinction of a number of rare fish species, reported the Wall Street Journal....
Japan Climate Systems, a joint venture involving Visteon, Mazda Motor and Panasonic, has opened an auto air-conditioning system plant in Nanjing....
Around 13,000km of high-speed railways capable of handling trains travelling at more than 200kph could be completed and put into service by 2012, according to a railway ministry official quoted by China Daily....
Tunnelling work has been completed on a new crossing under the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China Daily reported....
TNT has opened a regional road hub in Wuhan, Hubei province, which will be managed by its wholly owned subsidiary TNT Hoau....
The Meixi River Grand Bridge in Chongqing municipality was completed on 17 June. The 821-metre bridge forms part of the Fengjie-Yunyang section of the Chongqing-Yichang Expressway, which is due to open to traffic next year....
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has opened a financial advisory office in Chongqing, its first in southwest China. The firm now has twelve offices across the country....
Wuhan’s vice mayor Yue Yong was quoted in the local media on 16 June as saying that construction of a major chemicals terminal would start in the second half of this year at the chemical industrial zone in the east of t...
Chongqing Port Authority announced recently that it would speed up the modernisation of the waterway network in the upper reaches of the Yangtze by investing an additional Rmb24.5bn over the next three years, reported Chongqi...
The water level of the reservoir at the Three Gorges dam fell to 145.84 metres at 2pm on 9 June, according to the China Three Gorges Dam Corporation, signalling the end of the water release process and its readiness for the f...
From 17 June, Jiangsu Maritime Safety Bureau will start registering all its 179 terminals that handle dangerous goods in an effort to check their safety and emergency precautions....
According to Hubei province’s Reform and Development Commission, the first north-south rail line dedicated to transporting coal is inviting bidding; construction work is expected to start at the end of the year....
Transport police on the Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway flagged down a passing sleeper coach at 6:30pm on 15 June only to find 148 passengers on a coach with a capacity of 39....
Chongqing government has announced its detailed subsidy policies to encourage farmers to buy new cars and motorbikes....
Chongqing will start constructing five new expressways in 2009, according to the municipal government....
Sandoz, the Germany-based pharmaceutical company, is to set up its Chinese headquarters in Chongqing and merge with Chongqing Lummy Pharmaceutical, according to a municipal government website....
China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation is to build a ship industry town in Wanzhou, a city of some 1.7m people situated halfway between Chongqing and Yichang....
PetroChina, China’s largest oil producer, has received approval from the Ministry of Commerce for its proposed Rmb6.6bn investment to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Jiangsu province, Shanghai Securities...
Luxembourg-based logistics company Logwin has opened a new customer office in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province....
China’s industrial output climbed 8.9 per cent year-on-year in May, 1.6 percentage points higher than in April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Among the big sector gainers were chemical product...
Guangzhou-based property developer Evergrande Real Estate has decided to invest Rmb10bn in a mixed use development project in Wuhan, Hubei province....
PYI Corporation, the Hong Kong-based bulk cargo port operator, has acquired a 25 per cent interest in Jiangyin Sunan International Container Terminal from Shanghai International Port Group for a sum of Rmb28m....
Wuhan Iron and Steel, China’s third largest iron and steel producer, recently confirmed its plan to invest several hundred million Renminbi in seven ports across the country to facilitate the transportation of its raw m...
At 8:30pm on 5 June, hurricane-force winds on the lower reaches of the Yangtze between Wuhu, Anqing and Jiujiang, caused 12 vessels to capsize and 47 crew members to fall into the river....
The southern shiplocks at the Three Gorges Dam were shut down for a total of 58 hours between 8 and 10 June for maintenance repair, according to the Yangtze Three Gorges Navigation Administration....
According to sources from Tongling Customs, 36 international vessels entered the city’s port in May, a record monthly total since Customs clearance was set up 12 years ago....
Nantong quarantine inspectors targeted the numerous empty containers stacked in Nantong’s container yards recently, according to an article in China News Service published on 10 June, and issued a grave warning that poo...
Dow Chemical’s new facility in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province, has completed trial operations and started production of commercial-grade glycol ethers....
Jiangsu Shagang Group is weighing up an acquisition of Zhangjiagang Wanda Steel Plate, according to China Business News....
The giant retailer Wal-Mart plans to invest a total of US$16.9m in the five stores it will open in Chongqing this year, according to a company executive quoted by Chongqing Daily....
Air China will increase the frequency of its Chongqing and Taiwan service to three flights a week from August 2009 and it is expected to become a daily service by the end of the year....
Low-cost airline AirAsia plans to continue its China expansion in 2009 by flying to two new destinations. In the second half of the year, the Malaysia-based carrier will start services to Chengdu and Xian from Kuala Lumpur....
Wuhu-based Chery Automobile, China’s largest automaker, has raised Rmb2.9bn from Chinese private investors to fund its development and expansion plans....
Cargo throughput in May at China’s leading ports rose 5 per cent from a year earlier to 546m tons, said the Ministry of Transport....
UK-based investment firm Ecofin has launched a China power and infrastructure fund to invest in equities of major companies.
The company said the fund would benefit from the Chinese government’s massive upgrade of th...
Jiangsu government launched a month-long promotional campaign on 1 June to increase awareness of a government-backed insurance scheme to cover the costs of river pollution and clean-up before it comes into full operation in J...
Wuhan Port Authority has urged privately-owned terminals to be opened up to outside users....
Shanghai International Maritime Arbitration Centre was set up on 25 May as part of on-going efforts to build Shanghai into an international shipping centre....
The major Yangtze ports reported a total cargo throughput of 90m tons in May, the same level as last May, according to figures released by the Yangtze River Administration....
The number of residential properties sold in Nanjing totalled 8,486 units in May, equivalent to 949,000 sq metres, according the Nanjing Real Estate Bureau. Both totals were about 10 per cent lower than the previous month....
A Panama-registered vessel entered Nantong from South Korea on 28 May and was spot fined Rmb1,000 for not displaying three red lights at night while waiting for quarantine inspectors....
According to the transport authorities in Hubei province, the Yichang-Wuhan Expressway has been renamed Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway as of 1 June....
Logistics services provider Schenker China has obtained a business licence to establish a new branch in Wuhan, Hubei province.
Heavy industry is a pillar of the local economy, led by iron and steel....
Sinopec has started building an 18,000 barrels-a-day hydrofining unit at its Jiujiang plant in Jiangxi province to improve petrol quality....
Sinochem’s new 50,000 tons polyether polyols facility in Taicang, Jiangsu province, started trial operation in late May....
Maanshan Iron & Steel, China’s second-largest steelmaker, has recorded significant growth in its auto steel plate sales in recent months, according to sources reported by China Knowledge....
Jiangyin port imported 841,000 tonnes of steel in the first quarter of 2009, an increase of more than eight fold over the same period last year, according to the city’s Customs office....
Construction work begun on 2 June of the first phase of Chongqing Lianglu Cuntan Bonded Port Zone....
The Shuijiang-Wulong section of Chongqing-Hunan Expressway will open to traffic in October 2009, according to a Chongqing government website....
Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group, China’s largest copper smelter, plans to raise production by 23 per cent in 2009 to 800,000 tonnes, according to analyst Yang Changhua at state-owned metals consultancy Antaike....
The Italian chemicals company Polynt has opened a new production line at its facility in Changzhou, Jiangsu province.
Situated in Xinbei Industrial Park, the plant was built in 2004 and acquired by Polynt in 2007....
China’s first national level medical high-tech industrial development zone was established in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, on 29 May....
May 2009
The three provincial capital cities of Jiangsu (Nanjing), Anhui (Hefei) and Jiangxi (Nanchang) signed a memorandum on 22 May to forge a strategic regional development alliance....
Regular container services to Taiwan could start by end of this year according to the general manager of Wuhan International Container Transhipment Corporation, the operator of Wuhan’s Yangluo container terminal....
Jiangyin Yangtze Vessel Strip Yard is reporting record business due to the continued downturn in the shipping market....
Mr Song Dexing, Director of the Waterway Department of the Ministry of Transport, said in an interview with China Waterway Newspaper on 25 May that companies involved in international shipping business and registered at Yangs...
Zhangjiagang terminal, part of the Suzhou port, reported a 29.7 per cent increase of throughput in April to 13.57m tons, up nearly 21 per cent over March....
China’s central government has allocated Rmb270bn for infrastructure investment so far in 2009, according to an official from the country’s top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commissio...
Urban rail transit construction is to be accelerated following a decision by the National Development and Reform Commission to approve the plans of 19 Chinese cities....
Wuhan North Marshalling Yard, one of the largest yards in Asia, has started operations in Hubei province.
Nearly 10,000 rail freight cars will be diverted to the yard every day instead of travelling across the city centre...
Nanjing Iron & Steel plans to issue 2bn shares in a private placement to finance a proposed Rmb8.6bn asset acquisition....
China had set aside Rmb53.87bn for the huge south-to-north water diversion project by the end of April, according to the head of the project office Zhang Jiyao....
Ikea is to close its sourcing offices in Chengdu, Wuhan and Xiamen as part of a plan to better integrate its sourcing businesses in China....
Fast food franchising giant Subway has opened its third restaurant in southwest China....
Zhengzhou-based frozen food company Sanquan Foods plans to invest Rmb500m to build its southwestern manufacturing base in Chengdu, Sichuan province, reported China Retail News....
Two high-tech companies have decided to set up operations in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
The US-based circuit protection products company Littelfuse is to consolidate its Taiwan wafer fabrication facility into Wuxi....
Chongqing Municipal Statistics Bureau said that the city showed strong signs of recovery in April, with industrial output up by 13.3 per cent over the same month last year and 6.6 percentage points higher than March....
Mr Song Desing, Director of Inland Waterway Department under the Ministry of Transport, said in an interview published on 19 May that the growth of domestic container volumes would fall below 20 per cent for the first time in...
The Yangtze Waterway blueprint, compiled by the Ministry of Transport, the State Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Finance, has recently received approval from the State Co...
According to a research report released by Hubei provincial job centres association, the average pay offer available in April at Wuhan job centres was Rmb1,322 a month, up 2 per cent over March....
Tunnelling work on the Nanjing Yangtze Tunnel was completed on 20 May, according to China News Service. More than 3,000 metres long and with a diameter of 15 metres, it is technically the most challenging project in China....
Ford Motor Co has approved a plan to build a second assembly plant in Chongqing to meet fast-growing demand for its cars in China, Xinhua reported....
Construction work started in late April on western China’s largest steel marketing centre.
Longgang Steel Marketing Centre will be located in Longtan Industrial Park in Chengdu’s Chenghua district....
Approval has been granted for the construction of a regional airport in Chizhou, Anhui province. Building work will start later this year and will take two-and-a-half years to complete, said Xinhua....
Five more mainland ports have been approved for direct shipping with Taiwan, reported Xinhua....
Toll Holdings, Australia’s largest logistics services company, has acquired the remaining 49 per cent of Shenzhen-based ST-Anda Logistics it does not already own....
Dow Chemical is to spend US$200m on creating a logistics centre in Tianjin....
Chongqing is to spend Rmb300bn by 2012 on improving its transportation facilities, said Huang Qifan, executive vice-mayor of the municipality.
Some Rmb100bn will be used to improve its railways, river ports and Jiangbei In...
A total of Rmb83.1bn will be invested in nine petrochemical projects in Jiangsu over the next three years, according to a statement by the provincial government....
Taiwan-based food and beverage group Uni-President plans to produce dairy products in Wuhan, Hubei province, reported China Retail News.
Xiao Fengshi, the general manager of Uni-President Central China, said Wuhan was attr...
Some 20,000 cubic metres of mudstone fell into the Yangtze River on 18 May after a landslide on a section of the river’s bank in Wushan county, Chongqing....
The Yangtze port city of Huangshi is attempting to restore its shipbuilding glory by giving the go-ahead to Huangshi Jinzhou Shipyard....
The decline in the Yangtze’s dry bulk market eased in April, with the Yangtze Dry Index closing at 803.79 on 30 April, according to the Yangtze River Administration under the Ministry of Transport....
Transport authorities in Shanghai have announced that from 16 May, the section of the Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway between Xinzhuang and Xinqiao will be closed for the second phase of a renovation project....
The official spokesman for the National Office for Taiwan Affairs said on 13 May that representatives from the mainland and Taiwan had signed an agreement in Nanjing recently to increase air traffic between the two sides....
On 13 May, a road tanker loaded with 21 tons of petrol collided with a truck on the Feng Guan Expressway near Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, killing the tanker driver and his assistant....
The Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed passenger line will start operating by 20 December 2009, a year ahead of the original plan, according to a revised schedule from the Ministry of Railways....
According to statistics from the Nantong Maritime Authorities, Nantong recorded a 35.5 per cent year-on-year rise in foreign trade-related throughput in April to 3.02m tons....
Jiangxi provincial government recently announced a package of strategic measures designed to speed up Jiujiang’s industrial development....
The 12th China Chongqing International Investment and Global Sourcing Fair opened on 13 May....
China’s fixed asset investment surged again in April as a result of the government’s fiscal stimulus package, but exports dropped further, reflecting continuing weak demand in overseas markets....
The Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze Road Bridge, the world’s largest cable-stayed bridge, has been formally opened in Jiangsu province after five years of construction....
Domestic air cargo and parcel post volumes in China increased 1.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2009, compared with sharp falls in the last quarter of 2008, according to Ministry of Transport data....
First Automobile Works (FAW) and Volkswagen have officially started construction of its joint venture in Chengdu, Sichuan province, Xinhua reported.
With an annual output of 150,000 cars, the Chengdu plant will assemble th...
China has started revamping a railway from Baoji in Shanxi province to Sichuan province’s capital Chengdu to enhance the line’s capacity and support rebuilding activities in the earthquake zone....
China’s iron ore imports in April jumped 33 per cent year-on-year to 57m tons, according to the General Administration of Customs....
China Clean Energy Inc, a manufacturer of fuel and specialty chemical products, said that the construction of its plant in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province will now be completed in September 2009....
PYI Corporation, the Hong Kong-based bulk cargo port and infrastructure operator, has proposed to raise HK$362m (US$46.7m) from a rights issue to fund its stake in Yichang Port Group, reported Lloyd’s List....
A barge hit rocks and capsized in the Yangtze River near Longmentan in Chongqing municipality on 27 April, dumping 900 tons of coal into the water. The five crew members were rescued uninjured....
Major cities in the Yangtze River Delta reported slower GDP growth in the first quarter of 2009 as the global downturn intensified, reported the Wuxi statistical bureau....
China’s major airlines made a combined profit of Rmb1.3bn in the first quarter of 2009 after posting a loss of nearly Rmb30bn last year....
Air passengers entering China are now subject to tightened quarantine procedures against A(H1N1) influenza, which at Beijing Capital International Airport have extended average waiting times by 30 minutes....
Shanghai has launched feasibility studies into two new tunnels under the Huangpu River and an expansion project to increase capacity of the existing Xiangyin Road Tunnel....
China’s railways carried 382.1m passengers in the first quarter of 2009, up 3.8 per cent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Railways....
China Railway Group, the country’s largest railway and highway builder, said first its quarter profit jumped 87 per cent year-on-year to Rmb982m....
Wuhan Iron and Steel Group, China’s third largest steel producer, has agreed to buy a 50 per cent stake in Western Plains Resources’ Hawks Nest project in South Australia....
Wal-Mart is speeding up its expansion plans in Chongqing, according to a municipal government website....
Cargo throughput at China’s main ports totalled some 500m tons in April 2009, down 1.9 per cent from a year earlier, according to an estimate by the Ministry of Transport....
According to the Yangtze Waterway Bureau, the 882km section between Yichang and Luzhou has been upgraded to accommodate vessels of 1,000 dwt and barge fleets of 3,000 dwt....
The State Development and Reform Commission invited experts and scholars from the State Council Development Research Centre, China Academy of Social Sciences and State Macro Economy Research Institute to a seminar on 28 April...
According to a press conference at the Ministry of Transport on 5 May, 1,263 toll stations on Grade 2 highways have so far been abolished, covering 70,800 km of road and amounting to 65 per cent of the national total....
Shanghai Dazhong Taxi, one of the best known taxi companies in Shanghai, launched its Shanghai Expo service on 5 May by presenting 100 new taxis whose drivers have been trained to speak foreign languages....
Wuhan started a direct express rail service to Shenzhen, Guangdong province on 6 May....
Within three days of the May Day holiday, a total of 980 new flats exchanged hands in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province....
According to Nantong Inspection Bureau, a total of 200,040 tons of copper ore concentrates came through the port of Nantong in April, a record volume for a single month....
April 2009
Lhasa’s urban planning blueprint for the period 2009-2020 has recently won the approval of the State Council....
The Ministry of Transport has designated Chongqing as an experimental location outside Beijing for the building of transit hubs, according to Chongqing Daily on 23 April....
Nanjing Waterway Bureau is ordering more than 20 new vessels, including 10 speed boats, to help raise its capability to maintain the waterway under its remit, according to officials from the bureau.
Separately, the Ministr...
Cargo throughput of the major ports along the Yangtze trunkline reached 85m tons in April 2009, up 1.1 per cent over the same period last year. Out of this total, 11m tons were foreign trade related, up nearly 3 per cent....
Chongqing recorded a first quarter 2009 GDP of Rmb103.22bn, up 9 per cent year-on-year. This was 2.9 percentage points above the national average, and ranked sixth among the country’s interior regions....
China Cosco plans to cancel or postpone some of its ship orders, according to a report by the Financial Times....
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) will bolster the development of air transportation in central China, its deputy head Yang Guoqing said during the recent Expo Central China 2009 held in Hefei, Anhui province....
Chongqing municipality said it would spend Rmb30bn to become a financial centre in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River by 2015....
Shanghai International Port Group’s net profit fell 28 per cent to US$108m in the first quarter of 2009 as a consequence of the global economic downturn, Shanghai Daily reported.
The company handled a total of 5.56m...
Chongqing Chaotianmen Yangtze River Bridge was due to officially open to traffic on 29 April. The bridge, located at the meeting point of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, is 1,741 long....
Two collapses in a tunnel on the Yuhuai railway line between Tongren and Yangtou, both in Guizhou province, have caused a disruption to train services in the region....
Fixed asset investment in China increased 28.8 per cent year-on-year to Rmb2,10bn in the first quarter of this year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics....
The Taiwan-headquartered supermarket group RT-Mart has signed an agreement to open a new supermarket in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, reported China Retail News....
Wuhan Iron & Steel, China’s fifth-largest steel maker, reported a net profit of Rmb263m for the three months to 31 March, just one-eighth of the total made in the same period last year....
A new same-day air cargo route will start from Wuhan at the end of May, flying to Chengdu and Hong Kong and then returning to Wuhan....
According to the China Shipping News, Zhangjiagang port recorded a total foreign trade volume of nearly 8m tons in the first quarter of 2009, up 6 per cent year-on-year....
Chongqing is replacing cables at the country’s first major suspension bridge, the Stonegate Bridge, linking Shapingba and Jiangbei districts....
The East-west Lake Bonded Logistic Centre in Wuhan Export Processing Zone reported a total of 22 transactions in the first 20 days of its operation, worth a clearance value of US$2.2m....
Japan’s largest tyre maker, Bridgestone, plans to invest an additional US$98m to expand capacity at its plant in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
The investment, scheduled to start in the second half of 2011, will enable the...
China’s fixed asset investment in the first quarter of 2009 rose 28.8 per cent year-on-year to Rmb2,810bn, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)....
China will boost the use of hydroelectric resources along the Yangtze River in the coming decades despite, according to a strategic development plan of the river unveiled by the Ministry of Water Resources....
The number of wild Yangtze alligators is expected to reach 300 from the current 120 in the next five to 10 years, an expert told China Daily.
The endangered species are living and breeding in a wider area than in 2005, sai...
China produced a total of 280.49m tons of cement in the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 12.95 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Cement output in s...
Chongqing Airlines has taken delivery of an Airbus A319, the first of three such planes leased from the International Lease Finance Corp.
The aircraft can accommodate 122 passengers and will be deployed by the carrier on r...
Small airports are expected to receive government subsidies after being reclassified as public infrastructure under a new regulation, reported China Daily....
The World Bank has approved loans to two important transport projects in China. The first is a US$3000 loan that supports the GuiGuang Railway Project and the second is a US$150m to the Hubei Yiba Highway Project....
360buy.com, a Chinese retail e-commerce company, has established a logistics subsidiary in Shanghai to improve distribution quality and efficiency, reported China Economic Review.
The company has invested Rmb20m in the sub...
Bus fares in Shanghai’s urban and rural areas are to be harmonised by end of June....
Chongqing recorded a foreign trade container throughput of 21,787 teu in March, up 28.8 per cent from the previous month....
The record low water levels on the upper reaches of the Yangtze have finally come to an end, according to the Yangtze Waterway Bureau....
Shanghai International Port Group announced on 10 April that it aims to handle 29m teu this year, a growth of 3.6 per cent over last year....
Experts have approved Guizhou’s plan to upgrade Wujiang River to link up with the Yangtze to the north. The four-year project involves 407km of waterway between the Wujiang River Ferry and Gongtan....
A conference initiated by the State Reform and Development Commission in late March concluded that the current worldwide economic crisis is creating significant problems for the Go West campaign....
According to the Transport Commission of Gansu province, the central government has spent Rmb1.8bn in the eight ‘severely-affected’ counties and 36 ‘affected’ counties over the past year and will spend...
Chongqing Mayor Wang Hongju and Executive Deputy Mayor Huang Qifan met with senior adviser of Shenzhen Airlines Mr Li Zeyuan in April and discussed their mutual interest in developing Chongqing as the air cargo hub in China&r...
Wuhan government’s trial free bicycle scheme that started last October has been deemed a success, with none of the 1,000 bicycles involved being stolen....
The US-based home appliances giant Whirlpool will close its washing machine plant in Shanghai, reported China Sourcing News, cutting 600 jobs.
Whirlpool’s washing machine output will be moved to the Hisense-Whirlpool...
Praxair China has signed a contract to supply liquid nitrogen to Chery Automobile, one of the largest exporters of Chinese cars....
Logistics services provider Longwin is joining forces with Finnish forwarding agent Wikestrom & Krogius to establish a supply chain centre for the marine and energy solutions company Wartsila in Shanghai....
The night navigation ban at a section of the Yangtze River that has been threatened by a massive landslide was revoked on 8 April by the Yangtze River Administration of Navigational Affairs.
The decision was made because t...
Wuhan North railway marshalling station, the largest in Asia according to local media, will be completed in mid-April.
With a total investment of Rmb2.4bn and an area of 4.67 sq km, the station has 112 marshalling railway...
On 16 April, Yangtze Business Services is organising a site visit to Wuhan for manufacturers and logistics providers....
According to Taicang Port Authorities, 42 vessels from Taiwan called direct at Taicang in the first three months of 2009, making Taicang the major terminal for direct trade between Taiwan and Suzhou....
According to statistics from the Three Gorges Administration relating to the first quarter of 2009, more cargo went upstream of the shiplocks for the first time....
The Ministry of Railways estimated that passenger volumes during the Tomb-sweeping festival between 3 and 6 April jumped by 40 per cent to 21.6m compared with normal days, and up 12 per cent over the same period last year....
According to Gansu provincial government, an estimated total of Rmb160bn will be spent this year and next on starting construction of nine railway lines, including the Lanzhou-Chengdu line and the Baotou-Lanzhou line....
Changshu terminal reported a year-on-year growth of 5.6 per cent to 350,000 tons of imported waste paper in the first quarter of 2009....
UK-based steelmaker Corus has opened a new service centre in Suzhou Industrial Park’s free trade zone, where an aerospace hub is being created.
It will be used to supply China’s aerospace industry....
Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport handled 15,120 tons of cargo in March, up nearly 2 per cent year-on-year.
The local government plans to invest Rmb1.2bn in airport projects this year, including the third phase expa...
Air China said it plans to buy the 24 per cent stake in its cargo unit — Air China Cargo — that it doesn’t already own for US$105m, reported Cargonews Asia....
An annual three-month fishing ban on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River came into effect on 1 April and will run until 30 June, said Hu Xuedong, deputy director of China Fishery Administration Commanding Centre...
The China Insurance Regulatory Commission has issued a notice that specifies the proportion of an insurance fund that insurers will be allowed to invest on infrastructure projects....
On 1 April, the National Development and Reform Commission approved the construction of a new railway between Chongqing and Guizhou. The new line will be 345km long and will have a maximum speed of 250 kph....
An operation licence was granted on 25 March to the oversize cargo terminal in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province....
Cargo throughput on the Yangtze trunkline fell by 11.8 per cent to 78m tons in March 2009, while container throughput decreased by 24 per cent to 450,000 teu....
Wuhan has been allocated a quota to issue three-year local government bonds worth Rmb3bn. This is part of a central government plan to allow local governments to issue bonds to finance public spending for the first time....
The new cargo facility at Wuhan Tianhe Airport started operation on 30 March....
A project to turn 80 per cent of Changzhou’s daily waste into energy has passed the assessment of experts and started commercial operation....
Siemens opened its first-ever China retail outlet in Nanjing on 25 March, selling domestic electric appliances. The shop will stock Siemens products, both locally-made and imported....
US sportswear giant Nike plans to stop production at three footwear plants in China as part of a global drive to improve supply chain efficiency....
Wuhan-based Dongfeng Motor Co has begun a national recall of 5,014 sedans due to suspension flaws....
The Changshou Yangtze River Bridge, the first road bridge across the river in Chongqing’s Changshou district, formally opened in March.
The four-lane, 1.2km bridge shortens the journey time between Changshou and Nana...
Chongqing Chemical Terminal was opened to the public in Changshou district on 26 March....
Anhui’s first direct international service started operation on 30 March, according to a provincial government website....
The construction of the Nanjing Yangtze Tunnel, which began in September 2005, has reached a water depth of 60 metres, a landmark for the world-class tunnel-building technology that China claims to have mastered
The 5,853...
March 2009
According to the port authority of Taicang, throughput of general cargo soared by 36 per cent year-on-year to nearly 7m tons during the first two months of this year, driven by metal ores and construction materials....
The spokesman for the National Tourism Board Liu Xiaojun confirmed on 23 March that a national holiday plan is being drafted, but denied that the national May Day Long Holiday is going to be re-instated any time soon, explain...
According to Nanjing’s transport commission, a total of Rmb3bn has been set aside for renovation and building projects in the city’s rural areas within the next three to five years....
The association of express delivery companies said that research and development will start shortly to standardise express delivery vans in China....
China News Service reported on 23 March that Mr Yang Youlin, General Manager of the Development Corp of Jiangning ETDZ and also the Deputy Director of the Administration of Jiangning ETDZ, had been accused of corruption....
Eight new companies settled in Zhangjiagang Bonded Zone in the first two months of 2009, involving a total investment of US$4.9m, up 49 per cent over the same period last year....
The 350km Hefei-Wuhan high-speed passenger railway is due to open on 1 April, reported China Daily....
BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, has halted construction at two facilities in China due to slumping demand as a result of the global economic downturn, chairman Jurgen Hambrecht told Caijing....
The Qingshan shipyard of China Changjiang Shipbuilding Industry in Wuhan has officially delivered its first 57,000 dwt bulk ship....
Shanghai’s waterway authority took urgent measures to move a fleet of cargo ships clogging up a 3.7km-long section of Suzhou Creek....
A dozen people died in a chemical storage facility collapse in Chongqing municipality....
Statistics from the Three Gorges Dam Administration show that the average waiting time for cargo vessels passing the five-step shiplocks has been halved to 4.2 hours; passenger vessels are still given priority and they now ha...
The blueprint for Wuhan Tianhe Airport has been approved by the national aviation authorities and Hubei provincial government....
The increased investment in railway projects under the central government stimulus package has led to a surge in demand for railway tracks. So far this year, the Ministry of Railway has ordered 3.25m tons of tracks....
An agreement was signed on 16 March between Sino Petroleum, Pacific Oil and Gas and Jiangsu provincial State Assets Management Company to build and operate a Jiangsu liquefied natural gas (LNG) station....
China’s fleet of LPG vessels is set to grow by 40 per cent over the next two years, with transportation capacity increasing 70 per cent, Seatrade reported from the 14th China International LPG conference....
Japan’s Yusen Air & Sea Service opened a bonded warehouse on 1 March at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, as part of a strategy to improve logistics services in China, the company said....
China’s total highway length is to exceed 3m km by 2020, an increase of 50 per cent from 2008, according to a plan released by the Ministry of Transport....
East Star, the Wuhan-based private airline, was ordered to suspend flights in mid-March because of prolonged financial and management problems....
China Shipping Development Co (CDSC), China’s largest oil carrier, recorded a 16.9 per cent increase in 2008 profits, reported China Daily....
Sichuan became one of just two provinces in China to record an increase in foreign trade during the first two months of the year, with its value growing 2.5 per cent year-on-year to US$2.67bn....
Statistics show that foreign trade value in the interior provinces in 2008 exceeded US$100bn for the first time, up 36 per cent over the previous year....
The Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway is being built at a rapid rate. Some 98 per cent of the 1,318km line is under construction, giving employment to 116,200 people....
Guizhou government is to spend Rmb200m this year on modernising the Wujiang River, part of a national waterway network. This will be the single largest investment the provincial government has made in the waterway....
The water level in the Three Gorges Dam has been lowered by more than 10 metres over the past four months so as to maintain shipping conditions and demand for water in downstream locations....
Bridge construction in Chongqing is being speeded up, according to a municipal government website....
Bank of China has signed an agreement to provide the central province of Hubei with Rmb300bn in loans for construction....
The British supermarket giant Tesco has signed a contract with Nanjing Wanda Plaza to open a Tesco supermarket in the Hexi New City area of Nanjing....
Nanjing Tanker Corp, a major domestic transporter of energy products, plans to add five new very large crude carriers (VLCC) to its fleet this year, the company has announced....
China’s major coastal ports recorded heavy volume falls in February against the backdrop of a deteriorating foreign trade performance....
Tianjin port is faring relatively well in the current downturn, according to a report by China Daily....
China should apply stricter standards in keeping potential polluters away from the Yangtze River, said Chen Qinghua, a member of the 11th National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
A mo...
China Shipping Development Co, a subsidiary of China Shipping Group, was reported by China Knowledge to be teaming up with PetroChina International Co, an affiliate of China National Petroleum Corp, to set up a joint venture...
The Yangtze River Administration of Navigable Affairs under the Ministry of Transport announced on 11 February that a digital waterway map for the entire Yangtze trunkline would be available by the end of this year....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau has announced that dredging projects will start in May along the stretch between Wuhu and Nanjing so that the minimum guaranteed water level will rise from 7.5 metres to 9 metres between July and S...
The worldwide economic downturn has affected China’s export-oriented factories on a big scale....
From 17 February, a new pass system started a trial run on all expressways in Zhejiang province....
China’s international air cargo volume fell 28 per cent year-on-year to 264,334 tonnes in February, according to figures released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), while international passenger volum...
Construction work has begun in Tianmen city, Hubei province, on a new, multi-purpose dam on the Hanjiang River, the Yangtze’s largest tributary....
Jiujiang airport in Jiangxi province handled 43,000 passengers in 2008, five times the 2007 number and the highest total it has ever recorded, according to the airport website.
This represents a healthy turnaround for an a...
Carrefour, the world’s second largest retailer, plans to open two or three chain stores in Yichang, Hubei province, reported China Knowledge....
Suning Appliance, one of China’s largest privately-owned electrical appliance retailers, is to build a large-scale logistics base in Chengdu, Sichuan province....
Taiwan’s Wan Hai Lines is in talks to invest in a mainland shipping company to expand its network and offset the severe industry downturn that is likely to impact its revenues this year, Dow Jones reported.
Wan Hai L...
China’s cement consumption may increase 6.3 per cent to 1.54bn tons in 2009, according to Guo Wenlong, a researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission.
Guo said demand would be driven by the transporta...
ABB has opened an engineering centre in Chongqing for its process automation division....
Ningbo government has started issuing free vouchers from 2 March worth Rmb30m to encourage tourism and air travel by its citizens....
Wuhan government announced recently that it will re-build its urban bicycle network this year in a bid to boost green modes of transport....
Wuhan has re-started its container express service to Shanghai....
Statistics released by the Yangtze River Administration show that cargo throughput along the trunkline fell by three per cent to 73m tons, compared with the same month last year....
February 2009
The State Development and Reform Commission has recently approved the feasibility report on Jiujiang No.2 Yangtze Bridge. Construction of the road bridge is scheduled to start in July....
On 19 February, an inspection team from the General Administration of Customs visited Rugao terminal in Nantong, Jiangsu province, and approved its status as an open terminal that can accommodate foreign vessels....
The global sports apparel maker Nike is to invest US$99m in a new distribution centre in Taicang, Jiangsu province, reported China Sourcing News....
Chinese home appliance and consumer electronics retailer Suning is to invest several billion renminbi on constructing nine logistics bases around China, said the company’s president Sun Weimin....
A major new reservoir near Chongming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze will start supplying water to 18m Shanghai residents before 1 May 2010, when the Shanghai World Expo begins....
Construction of the Rmb 62bn Chengdu-Lanzhou railway, linking the capitals of Sichuan and Gansu provinces, got under way on 21 February....
FedEx has cut its express service prices by 70 per cent in a bid to win bigger market share in China, Xinhua reported....
Loans by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest bank, soared in January in response to government calls to support the weakening economy....
Commodity shipping rates in India, which rose in early February, were expected to fall in the near term, industry observers told DNA India on 24 February.
The comments followed a drop in demand for Indian iron ore from Chi...
Sinopec has started construction of a Rmb14bn ethylene plant in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.
The plant will have a production capacity of 800,000 tonnes a year, according to a government statement.
Sinopec owns a 6...
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau is to announce actual water levels on 16 major shoals in the trunkline on the 1st, 11th and 21st days of the month, on top of the monthly guaranteed water levels released during the second half of...
Statistics show that Chongqing utilised Rmb123bn-worth of investments relocated from the east coast of China over the past three years....
The Railway Commission of Jiangsu province announced recently that six new rail passenger lines worth a total investment of Rmb65bn will start construction this year in the northern part of the province, traditionally much un...
Changsha city government announced on 10 February that the first phase of its urban light rail system costing Rmb22.2bn would start construction this year....
Jiangsu provincial government says that it plans to invest more than Rmb81bn on transport infrastructure in 2009....
The Ministry of Environmental Protection is to investigate firms that discharge waste into the Yangtze River and punish those that do so illegally, reported China Daily.
Vice-minister Zhang Lijun said that the ministry will...
Alstom’s new factory for Wuhan Boiler Co will be built and put into operation in the suburbs of Wuhan in the second half of this year, reported People’s Daily. Wuhan Boiler is 51 per cent-owned by Alstom....
Shanghai-based TNT-Hoau, a wholly owned subsidiary of TNT Express, has officially entered China’s domestic road distribution market....
Air China will launch two direct flights from Wuhan to Paris and Tokyo this year, according to a local government website....
Container throughput in Hong Kong and Shenzhen fell significantly in January.
Hong Kong port’s container throughput fell 23.2 per cent last month from a year ago to 1.62m teu, South China Morning Post reported, its big...
Accelerating investment in transport infrastructure in China’s interior has halted the recent sharp decline in cargo throughput at ports along the Yangtze River, according the latest official figures....
Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping line, has closed its Greater China headquarters in Beijing and halved the number of its mainland sub-regional offices against a background of slowing demand, the South...
China should place more emphasis on environmentally sustainable transport systems that can help reduce its heavy reliance on oil, according to a new Asian Development Bank publication....
China’s aviation market reported a single digit growth in air traffic in 2008 for the first time in five years.
Passenger volume rose 3.3 per cent to 192m last year, down from 16 per cent in 2007; cargo volume increa...
Fog has continued to cause serious problems for shipping in the Shanghai region. More than 300 vessels were stranded in the Yangtze River Estuary on 8 February, the local maritime authority said....
The volume of imported scrap steel hit a record high of 334,000 tons in Zhangjiagang port in January, more than 18 times that of January 2008....
Chinese exports in January dropped 17.5 per cent year-on-year, the country’s biggest decline in more than a decade....
In January 2009 total cargo throughput for the major ports along the Yangtze trunkline stood at 80m tons in, 5.7 per cent more than in the same period last year....
Dense fog on 2 February delayed or cancelled more than 700 ships in the mouth of the Yangtze River....
The value of imports and exports passing through China’s bonded zones and other special areas increased 17 per cent year-on-year to US$300bn in 2008, said China Customs....
Construction has begun on Chengdu’s first upscale European upscale shopping mall. The 86,000 sq metre Galleria is scheduled to be in trial operation by mid-2010....
The GDP of central China’s Hubei province stood at Rmb1,130bn in 2008, said Hubei Statistics Bureau....
Digging work on two tunnel that will form part of the Guiyang-Guangzhou railway line started on 1 February, signalling the beginning of construction of the 857km line between the capital cities of Guizhou and Guangdong provin...
Registration will close soon for early bird delegates of the Yangtze Business Network 2009 conference in Shanghai....
January 2009
The central government has set aside Rmb1bn this year alone on dredging projects across the trunk line of the Yangtze....
Statistics from the Ministry of Transport showed that, in the 12 days leading up to January 22, the total passenger volume on major national highways stood at nearly 60m, up 11 per cent on the corresponding period in the lead...
The city’s executive vice mayor Huang Qifang has predicted that the city’s industrial output this year would exceed Rmb800bn, up 23 per cent from that of last year....
China will invest Rmb21.3bn in the south-to-north water diversion programme in 2009, according to the office in charge of the scheme under the State Council....
After a seven-week suspension, Okay Airways resumed operations on 23 January, two days before the Chinese New Year holiday.
The suspension came after some airports, worried about the airline's financial troubles, would only...
China International Marine Containers, the world's biggest manufacturer of containers, plans to set up a new truck-making joint venture with two domestic investment holding companies in Wuhu, Anhui province, Reuters reported....
Two prominent foreign manufacturers have selected Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, to become their regional headquarters in central China....
A framework agreement was signed on 18 January between the local governments of Chengdu and Leshan....
Investment in the Port of Nantong reached an all-time record of nearly Rmb1.7bn in 2008, up 7.6 per cent year-on-year and 13 per cent more than the planned budget....
Taicang terminal, one of three terminals under the umbrella of Suzhou port, reached a new high in handling 1.45m teu last year, up by 42.4 per cent year-on-year....
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retail chain, has opened its first wholly-owned outlet in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province....
China National Aviation Holding Co, the parent company of Air China, has been in talks with Wuhan-based East Star Airlines to acquire all or part of the private carrier in a bid to strengthen its presence in central China, re...
Eight highway projects in Chongqing with a total length of 412km will be completed in 2009, taking the total highway length in the municipality to 1,500km, according to a local government website....
Construction of Suining-Chongqing Railway Line II project started on 18 January....
Container shipping volumes at the mainland's two largest ports plunged in December, with throughput in Shanghai dropping 6 per cent and in Shenzhen by 15.7 per cent, South China Morning Post reported....
Shipping capacity through theThree Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River reached a record high in 2008, said the Three Gorges Navigation Administration....
Chongqing municipal government has vowed to speed up its road building and protection campaign....
Work has begun on a 264km section of Chongqing-Shanghai Railway Line that connects Chongqing and Lichuan, Hubei province. It is the most challenging of the entire line as it winds its way through mountainous terrain....
China has approved dredging work on a 122km stretch of the Grand Canal in Zhejiang province, costing approximately Rmb10bn....
More than 40 international vessels had to cancel departure from Yangshan, Waigaoqiao and Wusong terminals in Shanghai over a period of three days from 11am on 9 January because of strong winds....
The Ministry of Transport has announced that Mr Tang Guanjun is to be the new director of Yangtze River Administration of Navigational Affairs....
Provincial officials said on 12 January that river cargo would reach a new high in 2009 on the back of its aggressive investment in waterway, port and other transport infrastructure projects....
Shanghai maritime authorities have recently announced two sections at the Yangtze mouth that can accommodate the simultaneous passing of two large vessels in opposite directions....
Rail cargo volume in 2009 would be unchanged from last year, predicted the Ministry of Railways. The ministry said it would rely more heavily on passenger transport to offset any weakness in cargo, reported Xinhua....
In a new measure that forms part of the central government’s Go West policy, graduates who find jobs in towns and villages in central and western China will have their tuition refunded....
Cosco said its subsidiary in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, had cancelled an order for two bulk carrier vessels, while postponing the delivery of another two vessels until 2010....
Taiwan-based technology manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co plans to shift production to third-tier Chinese mainland cities in order to reduce costs and take advantage of preferential tax policies, reported China Sourc...
Work has begun on the Chongming-Qidong Expressway, an important part of a regional project that will nearly halve travel time between Shanghai and Jiangsu province.
When finished in 2012, the expressway will link Chongming I...
Shanghai port’s container throughput increased 7 per cent to 28m teu in 2008, maintaining its number two world ranking behind Singapore....
Cargo volume on mainland Chinese airlines plunged 11.3 per cent year-on-year in November, reported Cargonews Asia, as a result of a downturn in consumer spending in Europe and North America....
Sichuan provincial government has announced that all the roads destroyed by the May earthquake have reopened. According to media reports, the massive quake affected or destroyed 22,000km of roads in Sichuan....
Construction of the Hefei-Wuhan Railway, the first high-speed line in central China, has been completed after three years, said the government of Wuhan....
China has approved the establishment of Wuhan Dongxihu bonded logistics centre. It will act as a bonded warehouse and export supervision warehouse and will offer a number of preferential policies for international trade....
The third phase project of Chongqing’s Cuntan container terminal has begun, according to a municipal government website....
The Yangtze water level at Wuhan Customs at 8am on 2 January stood at 14.56 metres, the lowest level since the dry season started in November and a fall of 9.65 metres from the peak tide on 9 August....
The Yangtze Waterway Bureau has announced that it plans to replace all buoys on the entire navigable length of the Yangtze with patented solar-charged minimum-maintenance uniform buoys within the next two years, comprising so...
Early statistics from the Ministry of Transport showed that cargo throughput in 17 of the country’s ports exceeded 100m tons in 2008....
December 2008
Wuhan-based Dongfeng Automobile said it expected to sell 170,000 vehicles in 2008, reported China Daily....
Construction of the Chongqing-Lichuan Railway officially began on 27 December. This Rmb26.18bn line runs 260km from Chongqing North railway station to Liangwu railway station of Lichuan city, Hubei province....
The Wanzhou-Yunyang expressway was opened to traffic on 27 December, reducing the journey time between the two places to 40 minutes from 90 minutes, according to Chongqing Express Development Co....
A stimulus program to revive China's shipbuilding industry is being discussed and will be submitted to the State Council for approval in early 2009, reported China Business news quoting a senior industry official....
The US-headquartered Prologis has agreed to sell its China operations and property fund interests in Japan in order to reduce its substantial debts....
The first phase of Wanzhou Jiangnan Tuokou Terminal started formal operation on 20 December....
According to the planning department of the Yangtze River Waterway Bureau, five major dredging projects along the middle and lower reaches of the river costing a total of Rmb40bn have passed a round of rigorous examinations b...
According to Wuhan planners, a total of Rmb40bn will be set aside in 2009 to speed up major transport projects that help better connect the city’s three major districts: Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang....
Chongqing government has recently unveiled a plan to open the waterway as an environmentally-friendly means of public transport....
Initial figures show that the major Yangtze ports recorded a total throughput of 1bn tons of cargo and 692,700teu for the whole of 2008, representing a growth of 9.2 per cent and 25.1 per cent year-on-year....
The State Council has withdrawn the Yangtze Waterway Maintenance Fee as part of its reform on petrol tax....
Vehicles are now running under the Cuntan interchange in Chongqing, according to a local government website....
The first phase of Wanzhou’s Jiangnan Tuokou container terminal area was completed on 20 December....
China will spend Rmb5,000bn up to 2020 to add 41,000km to its rail network, Xinhua reported, as the government tries to boost domestic demand and ease bottlenecks in the overburdened system.
Deputy Railway Minister Lu Dongfu...
Siemens is looking to increase sourcing and exports from Asia to help control costs, said Richard Hausmann, the chief executive for Siemens North Asia, according to the China Supply Chain Council.
The company also wants to i...
The freight carried on the national road network in November totalled 1.48bn tons and 107.69bn ton kilometres, up 5.5 per cent and 9 per cent respectively compared with the same period last year....
Those mainland-registered shipping lines and their agents that wish to start direct services between the mainland and Taiwan have been promised a speedy approval procedure by the Ministry of Transport....
The major ports along the Yangtze trunkline recorded a total throughput of 28.46m tons in November, equivalent to just 80 per cent of the amount carried in the same period last year....
A four-year project to widen and deepen the Luohuzhou section of the Yangtze River was completed on 21 December in Hubei province, reported Xinhua, allowing a 10,000 ton tug barge fleet to pass through the former bottleneck....
The prolonged drought in the Xiangjiang River and Dongting Lake is worsening, prompting officials to flag up orange alert on 17 December....
The Ministry of Railway has announced that the Huangtong-Baise Railway line connecting Guangxi and Chongqing will start construction in 2009....
Li-Ning has started construction of a Rmb3.2bn manufacturing and distribution centre in Jingmen, Hubei province....
Chongqing’s 187km outer ring highway is due to be completed at the end of December....
Shanghai port’s container traffic will rise 9 per cent in 2008 to 28.5m teu, predicted municipal government spokesman Chen Qiwei....
The first cargo ship from Taiwan via a direct shipping route to the Chinese mainland since 1949 docked at the port of Xiamen, Fujian province on 17 December.
Goods unloaded from 326 containers on the ship included oranges, m...
New shipping orders in China decreased 44 per cent year-on-year in the first 11 months of 2008, compared with a fall of 37 per cent worldwide, according to a report by shipping research company Clarkson Research Studies....
A revival in Chinese demand for iron ore and coal has led to a significant recovery in charter prices, reported the Financial Times....
The State Council granted bonded port status to Chongqing and Zhangjiagang in December, joining Yangshan Terminal in Shanghai as the three bonded areas along the Yangtze River....
The third-phase construction of Yangshan deepwater terminal was completed on 4 December, expanding the terminal’s annual throughput to 9.3m teu said Liu Zuoliang, chairman of Shanghai Tongsheng Investment Group and vice...
The main route of China’s huge south-north water transfer project has been put back four years because of pollution concerns, reported Xinhua....
South Korea is to open a consulate general in Wuhan by the end of 2008 or early 2009, said Wan Yong, assistant to the city’s mayor....
Power giant China Huaneng Group plans to invest Rmb500m in setting up a shipping company that will operate on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, reported Caijing....
UPS of the US has opened an international air hub in Shanghai Pudong International Airport with an investment of US$125m....
China will increase retail fuel taxes and abolish some fixed charges for car owners in 2009 to encourage the use of more efficient vehicles and to meet energy-saving targets....
Two container barge models that will operate on both river and sea have been approved by a panel of experts at a meeting in Wuhan on 13 November....
Chongqing municipal government has recently announced its ambition to invest Rmb164bn in transport infrastructure within the next five years....
Suzhou port’s throughput capacity (which includes the three terminals of Changshu, Taicang and Zhangjiagang) increased 16.8 per cent to 137m tons between January and August 2008, according to Jiangsu Transportation Depa...
Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China will invest more than Rmb400bn on transportation infrastructure over the next five years, reported Xinhua....
The Ministry of Transport said it expects to spend Rmb1,000bn on transport infrastructure in 2009, up from about Rmb800bn in 2008....
Falling iron ore imports are unlikely to lead to an imminent reduction in handling costs at Chinese ports, according to a report by Securities Times....
Construction will start in 2009 on a 1,000km railway line dedicated to transporting coal from Inner Mongolia to Hebei province. The new line will stretch from Erdos to Caofeidian in Tangshan, sources told China Daily....
Construction has begun on China’s first state-level rice trading centre, reported People’s Daily....
A new road tunnel under the Yangtze in Wuhan is to open to traffic on 28 December, said Hubei provincial website. The 3.6km tunnel will connect the city’s two major districts, Wuchang and Hankou....
November 2008
The global financial crisis and the slowdown in the Chinese economy have affected throughput in the Yangtze trunkline ports....
According to the provincial Xinhua Daily newspaper, Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, will spend more than Rmb23bn on developing its waterway and port by 2020....
The China Seismological Bureau reported an earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale in Zigui County, Hubei province on 22 November at 4pm Beijing time....
The municipal government of Chongqing has announced that its top priority for investment in 2009 is the construction of two major high-speed railway lines, Chongqing-Guizhou and Chongqing-Kunming; these lines will eventually...
China will spend US$65.9bn billion on expanding or building at least 60 airports in the next two years....
Kerry Asia Road Transport, the Thailand-based road unit of Kerry Logistics, is to start a trucking service between Kunming in southwest China and Bangkok....
Persistent fog severely affected shipping in the mouth of the Yangtze River on 6 November, Shanghai port authorities said....
The water level behind the Three Gorges dam reached 172.3 metres on 11 November at the culmination of a six-week trial storage operation....
Spending on transport infrastructure looks set to increase following the central government’s recently announced Rmb4,000bn stimulus package designed to shore up the Chinese economy at a time of declining export orders....
The western section of Chongqing’s external ring expressway will open to traffic in late January 2009, according to a subsidiary of Chongqing Expressway Development Corporation....