March 2009
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....
A dozen people died in a chemical storage facility collapse in Chongqing municipality....
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....
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....
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...
Shanghai’s waterway authority took urgent measures to move a fleet of cargo ships clogging up a 3.7km-long section of Suzhou Creek....
The Qingshan shipyard of China Changjiang Shipbuilding Industry in Wuhan has officially delivered its first 57,000 dwt bulk ship....
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....
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....
East Star, the Wuhan-based private airline, was ordered to suspend flights in mid-March because of prolonged financial and management problems....
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....
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 Shipping Development Co (CDSC), China’s largest oil carrier, recorded a 16.9 per cent increase in 2008 profits, reported China Daily....
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....
Bank of China has signed an agreement to provide the central province of Hubei with Rmb300bn in loans for construction....
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...
Bridge construction in Chongqing is being speeded up, according to a municipal government website....
China’s major coastal ports recorded heavy volume falls in February against the backdrop of a deteriorating foreign trade performance....
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....
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 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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
Tianjin port is faring relatively well in the current downturn, according to a report by China Daily....
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...
Carrefour, the world’s second largest retailer, plans to open two or three chain stores in Yichang, Hubei province, reported China Knowledge....
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...
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...
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....
Construction work has begun in Tianmen city, Hubei province, on a new, multi-purpose dam on the Hanjiang River, the Yangtze’s largest tributary....
ABB has opened an engineering centre in Chongqing for its process automation division....
From 17 February, a new pass system started a trial run on all expressways in Zhejiang province....
Ningbo government has started issuing free vouchers from 2 March worth Rmb30m to encourage tourism and air travel by its citizens....
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...
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...
The worldwide economic downturn has affected China’s export-oriented factories on a big scale....
Wuhan has re-started its container express service to Shanghai....
Wuhan government announced recently that it will re-build its urban bicycle network this year in a bid to boost green modes of transport....
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....