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January 2010 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.
Over the next three years, Midea will add an area of 33,000 sq metres to the facility in Hubei province, as well as expand its warehouse space. Once the expansion project is completed, production capacity will be increased by 5m units a year.
Huang Qifan has been elected mayor of Chongqing municipality. He replaces Wang Hongju, who resigned from his post last month.
Huang is a 57-year-old native of Zhejiang province who was vice mayor of Chongqing from October 2001 to December 2009. In recent weeks he served as acting mayor and vice secretary of the Communist Party’s Chongqing municipal committee.
Huang started his working life in 1968 at a Shanghai coking plant and he received an MBA from the China Europe International Business School in December 1999 while serving as deputy secretary general of Shanghai municipal government.
Chongqing’s GDP reached Rmb652.7bn in 2009, up 14.9 per cent year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. This growth rate was the third highest in China last year, behind only Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Tianjin municipality.
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. According to the Canadian Consulate General in Shanghai, who attended the opening ceremony, Canadian investment in Wuhan stood at US240m last year alone. The investments were in the agriculture, food production, transport and auto parts sectors.
The new rep office is expected to promote further co-operation in education, information technology and the service industries. It will also assist local companies to invest in Canada. Last June, Wuhan Iron and Steel, one of China’s major steel producers, invested Rmb1.6bn in an iron ore mine in eastern Canada.
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 on 30 January, up 7.7 per cent year-on-year. The road network will bear the brunt of the massive traffic volume. People using the roads are expected to make 2,270m journeys, while the rail system will cope with 210m passenger trips. Nearly 30m passenger trips are expected to be made by air, with 32m by waterways.
The Spring Festival, starting 14 February, is the biggest family reunion event of the Chinese year. Migrant workers travel back to their homes in the interior from their jobs on the coast before the festival and make the return journey after it, thereby putting huge stress on the national transport system. This year, universities have broken up earlier than usual, allowing most of them to travel back home before the transport crush starts. This should help to relieve the pressure slightly. The Ministry of Railways is also trying out a new ticketing system – involving the printing of names and ID card numbers on tickets – to crack down on ticket touts.
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 Morning Post reported. The carrier initially responded by cutting prices and increasing the number of flights between Guangzhou and Changsha and Wuhan. However, Xie Bin, company secretary at China Southern, conceded many passengers had switched over to the high-speed train service that started last month.
Air China and China Eastern Airlines are also likely to come under pressure from the high-speed Beijing-Shanghai line, which could be completed by as early as 2011.
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 services are operated by Singapore’s SilkAir.
Chongqing is keen to increase the number of air connections to destinations in Southeast Asia. It will strive to initiate services to six destinations in the Asean region, with at least daily one connection every day to an Asean country.
Chongqing Airport’s export cargo volume fell 25 per cent year-on-year in 2009 to 29.2m tons, Logistics Week reported. The value of the cargo decreased 23 per cent to US$140m.
The US was the largest market, accounting for 20 per cent of the export value total compared with 18 per cent in 2008. Canada overtook Hong Kong to take second place, while the next most important markets were India, Taiwan and Italy.
Workers have completed the laying of railway tracks between the cities of Chengdu and Dujiangyan, Sichuan province. The decision to build this 65.5km section of line was taken soon after a massive earthquake hit the area in May 2008. The line will open to traffic in May this year.
Sichuan will complete more than 90 per cent of its reconstruction projects this year, said provincial governor Jiang Jufeng. This includes the worst affected counties, including Beichuan, Qingchuan and Wenchuan. The province will also strengthen cooperation with other provinces and cities in the fields of investment, trade, tourism and personnel services, Mr Jiang said.
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 Chinese market, according to a Standard report quoting executive director Brian Cheng Chi-ming. Mr Cheng went on to say that the company is looking to develop some water and highway businesses.
NWS, along with partners including state-owned CRCT and CIMC, the world’s largest container manufacturer, will invest a total of Rmb12bn to build 18 rail container terminals. Three, in Kunming, Chongqing and Shanghai, are already in operation. All terminals are expected to be completed in 2012.
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.
Shipments from Australia increased by 200,000 tons over the previous week to 22.23m tons, accounting for one-third of the total. Brazil (27.5 per cent of the total) and India (21.3 per cent) were the next two largest sources, according to statistics released by Mysteel.com.
However, iron ore imports in January may actually drop slightly from the previous month because of low turnover at the start of the month, said Hu Kai, an analyst with the steels and raw materials information website Umetal.com. China imported 62.16m tons of iron ore in December.
Changshu port reported a throughput of 1.02m tons of solid and liquid dangerous cargo in 2009, up 119 per cent year-on-year. The number of vessels carrying dangerous cargo coming in and out of the port reached 3,620, up 157 per cent.
Changshu port has three terminals equipped with nine berths for handling dangerous cargo. Two of them can accommodate 10,000 dwt vessels and they are capable of handling 74 products.
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. The measure is deemed necessary to create a buffer zone to improve water quality and to address the threat of landslides triggered by the rise and fall of the water level.
Already, 1.138m of an estimated 1.3m people have been moved to make way for the world’s largest hydroelectric project. So far, the government has spent Rmb54bn to help in resettlement, but problems of corruption and inadequate compensation persist. There are also concerns about migrant unemployment.
The port authorities in Hubei province announced last week that they plan to invest Rmb2.5bn in infrastructure in 2010.
They expect 180m tons throughput of general cargo this year, while container throughput will reach 750,000 TEU. Major Yangtze ports in Hubei include Wuhan, Huangshi, Yichang and Jingzhou.
According to China News Services, Jiangsu reported 2,066 cases of the H1N1 virus in December, including 25 deaths. No other swine flu statistics were published to show comparisons with previous months or with other provinces.
Mazda Motor and Ford Motor will dissolve their joint venture in China by 2012, Nikkei business daily reported.
The newspaper quoted sources saying that Mazda, Ford and Chongqing Changan Automobile had agreed to split their three-way tie-up into two entities. The joint venture’s factory in Nanjing is likely to become a 50-50 tie-up between Mazda and Changan, while Ford and Changan will run the other factory in Chongqing.
Mazda wants more freedom to expand its business in China, according to Nikkei. A company official said it was sometimes difficult to coordinate production in the three-way joint venture.
Mazda’s ties with Ford have weakened since the US automaker reduced its controlling one-third stake in Mazda to 13 per cent in 2008.
However, the Wall Street Journal noted that such a major move would still require the approval of China’s central government.
Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, the world’s largest notebook computer original design manufacturer (ODM), said it plans to build a plant in Chongqing. In doing so it will join other IT companies that have decided to locate in the city, including Hewlett Packard, Foxconn, CISCO and Inventec. The plant will be Quanta’s third manufacturing facility on the mainland.
According to Huang Qifan, acting mayor of Chongqing, Quanta’s investment will help Chongqing achieve a notebook computer manufacturing cluster and will greatly advance the development of the IT sector in western China. The municipal government hopes to increase notebook computer production capacity to 80m units a year by 2015. This would make Chongqing one of the largest notebook manufacturing bases in the world. By then, computers will replace automobiles as the city’s pillar industry.
Founded in 1988, Quanta Computers produces notebook computers for the likes of Sony, Toshiba and HP. For its part, HP’s Chongqing factory is due to open later this month. Both HP and Taiwan-based Foxconn signed contracts with Chongqing in August to establish PC manufacturing plants in the city. Taiwan-based Inventec, the world’s fourth-largest ODM notebook maker, signed a contract with Chongqing in late December to set up a manufacturing base in the city.
The first phase of a new rail container terminal in Chongqing’s Shapingba district has opened for business, reported Xinhua. This is the third of 18 planned rail container terminals in China and follows the opening of similar terminals in Shanghai and Kunming.
Construction on the terminal began in October 2007 and involved investment of Rmb770m. It covers an area of 151 hectares, 60 hectares of which are dedicated to container handling.
After completion of all phases, the terminal will have an annual capacity of 1.65m TEU, and will contain eight railway lines, two container yards and an area for reefer boxes. Phase one has an annual capacity of 480,000 TEU.
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 of the section between Xian and Jiangyou will start this year, the institute said, without giving a timetable. The Jiangyou-Chengdu section has already been under construction for more than a year.
The entire line will cost about Rmb68.8bn and it will be the first rail route to run through the Qinling Mountains. Some 127km of the line in this mountainous area will comprise tunnels.
When completed in 2014, the railway will help to cut the travel time between the two major cities in western China to less than three hours from the current 13 hours. It will have a designed speed of more than 250kph.
The US-headquartered express logistics company United Parcel Service plans to open 101 new logistics sites in China. These hubs, called field stocking locations, allow manufacturers with operations in China to stock parts or finished products near their manufacturing plants or customers. They are particularly aimed at industries that require same-day or next-business-day delivery of parts.
The expansion will extend UPS’s China coverage to 89 cities and increase to 110 the number of its field stocking locations across the country.
Wuxi is to launch a flight to Tokyo later this year, according to local airport officials, without giving a precise start date. Located in Jiangsu province, Wuxi initiated a flight to Osaka last April.
Direct flights between Taipei Songshan Airport and Shanghai Hongqiao Airport are likely to begin by the start of the Shanghai World Expo 2010, which opens on 1 May. Deputy Shanghai mayor Tang Dengjie said that both sides have completed technical studies and are working towards initiating direct flights as early as possible. Currently, direct air services between Taiwan and Shanghai use Shanghai Pudong Airport, in the east of the city. Most Taiwanese people in Shanghai live in the western district of Puxi, making it more convenient for them to use Hongqiao.
China Southern Airlines has added two Boeing 777 freighters to its fleet to serve the US and Europe markets, reported Cargonews Asia. One of the freighters serves the Shanghai-Frankfurt route via Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, while the other is deployed on the Shanghai-Chicago route, said the company.
The addition of the 777 to its network has doubled the carrier’s capacity on US-bound routes, which were previously served by two 747 freighters. A 777 freighter can carry as much as 105 tonnes of cargo, and is far more fuel efficient than the 747.
China Southern’s cargo business started to pick up in the second half of 2009, resulting in a shortage of capacity and a rise in cargo rates.
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, Reuters reported.
Last April, Air China decided to buy the 24 per cent share it did not own in the venture, Air China Cargo, from the airport group for US$105m.
China’s other two big state carriers, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, have both obtained government money to help offset the downturn in the global industry in 2008.
China opened 4,719km of expressways in 2009 and started construction on an additional 16,000km network, said Li Shenglin, Minister of Communications.
According to a national highway plan unveiled in 2005, China will establish a national highway length of 100,000km by 2020, on a par with the US today. Mr Li said the target could now be achieved ahead of schedule. The country’s highway network totalled 65,000km at the end of last year.
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 January. The plan is to list its best assets in Shanghai (A shares) and Hong Kong (H shares) and use the money raised to buy out the 1,465km-long Beijing-Shanghai Rail line, which will be used mainly for freight once the Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail line is completed.
At the moment, only two rail operators are listed: Daqing Railway and Guangshen Railway. Daqing Railway operates a 653km line from Datong in Shanxi province to Qinghuangdao in Hebei province, a major line that transports coal from China’s west to east. It is listed in Shanghai. Guangshen Rail, listed in Shanghai, New York and Hong Kong, operates a 146km line between Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Analysts believe that the ongoing railway investment projects across the country will call for more public listings to cover the heavy investment required.
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.
The growth of container throughput was the largest among major ports on the Yangtze. Jiangyin is now the fifth largest river port in China, according to the figures from the Yangtze River Administration.
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.
All crew members were rescued and maritime officials are still trying to salvage the sunken ship.
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.
Waterway officials have employed more people to monitor changes in silting patterns and the river bed, and they have installed 24 extra beacon lights. Waterway patrol vessels have been put on round-the-clock duty to identify trouble spots and alert passing vessels.
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.
The import total was also up 22 per cent on the previous month.
For the whole of 2009, China imported 627.78m tonnes of iron ore, up 42 per cent on 2008. China is the world's biggest importer of iron ore, sourcing most of its supplies from Australia, Brazil and India.
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. Geologists believe coal reserves total 72m tons up to 1,200 metres below the surface and 47m tons between 1,200 metres and 1,500 metres. Once exploited, the reserves will greatly ease the shortage of coal experienced by industrial centres along the coast.
China’s coal reserves are located mostly in the north. Each year, coal is transported in large quantities by rail to thermal power plants along the coast. Coal is also the second largest commodity shipped along the Yangtze, behind iron ore.
No details of the excavation plan have so far been published.
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.
The underground power station will have a total capacity of 4.2m kW. When it is operational, the Three Gorges project, which also has 26 hydropower turbo-generators, will have an installed capacity of 22.5m kW, generating up to 100bn kWh of electricity a year.
As of the end of last year, the world's largest hydroelectric project had generated about 367bn kWh of electricity since its first generator was put into operation in July 2003.
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 commercial vehicles.
One focus of the visit was on innovations such as the eddy-current brake for high-speed trains, which operate with zero wear, reported Transport Weekly.
The delegation was shown a test-bench simulation of the emergency braking of a planned Chinese high-speed train travelling downhill at 380 kph. In coming years, China will have the world’s largest fleet of high-speed trains. A few weeks ago, Knorr-Bremse and its Chinese partners obtained a €500m order from China to supply braking and door systems for a total of 2,720 cars for the Chinese CRH3 high-speed train.
Knorr-Bremse has its own production facility in Suzhou, meaning it can meet high local-content requirements.
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. The passenger’s name and ID card number will be printed on the ticket, which will be checked against the ID card that should be presented when boarding, the Ministry of Railway said.
The new system will be implemented in 37 stations along trunk lines passing through Guangdong, Hunan and Sichuan provinces, where large numbers of migrant workers arrive and depart. It will operate between 30 January and 13 February and tickets can be bought 10 days before departure.
Severe ticket shortages are common during national holiday periods, especially the Spring Festival. The situation is exacerbated because touts stockpile tickets and resell them at inflated prices.
China’s railways are expected to carry 210m passengers during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, according to the Ministry of Railway. The figure is 9.5 per cent higher than the same period last year.
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. Freight traffic is set to increase 5.4 per cent to 3.5bn tonnes.
The network length totalled 86,000km at the end of 2009, second only to the US. A further 33,000km is under construction, funded by a massive fiscal stimulus package. Railway investment in 2009 alone was Rmb600bn, an increase of 79 per cent on the previous year and more than the entire 1995-2005 period. Mr Liu said China would invest Rmb823.5bn in the railways in 2010, including about Rmb700bn on infrastructure.
Air China announced that from 15 January, it will start scheduled direct flights between Wuhan and Macau on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Air China says it is the only carrier to operate direct services between the two cities.
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. Last year alone, investment in the airport sector reached Rmb60bn and the number of airports with operational licences rose by another six to a total of 166 by the year end. By the end of this year, the number of airports in China will rise to 175.
China’s airlines are expected to carry 28.94m passengers during the Spring Festival holiday period, which runs from 14 to 21 February, according to the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China. This will be 12.5 per cent more than the equivalent holiday period in 2009.
The administration has urged airline operators to closely monitor weather conditions and improve contingency plans in case of flights delays.
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). However, over the course of the whole year, volume fell 11 per cent to 25m teu. It was the first annual decline since a container port was first established in the city in 1978, Du Qidong, deputy secretary general of the China Ports & Harbours Association, told Seatrade.
Overseas shipments from China fell 16 per cent last year as the global recession cut consumer demand. However, container traffic could increase by 10 per cent this year, according to Zhu Anping, an analyst at Shenyin Wanguo Securities in Shanghai.
Shanghai’s overall cargo volume fell 1.1 per cent to 365m tons in 2009, said SIPG.
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 Polyurethanes (Shanghai).
The joint venture will build a new HYCO plant, including a steam methane reforming unit and a carbon monoxide unit. It will have an annual capacity of about 130,000 tons and is expected to start operations in 2012.
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-and-a-half hours in a fruitless search of the train for the culprit. This is almost as long as the train takes to cover the entire 1,100km journey.
The train was in Guangzhou railway station when it was delayed and had not yet begun its 350kph journey, Xinhua reported.
"Smoking is strictly forbidden on the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed train, even in the toilet," a spokesman with Guangzhou Railway Group Corporation was quoted as saying.
China plans to build more high-speed lines, including one that will connect Chengdu with Chongqing. Construction of this 310km line will begin in 2010.
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. Under the plan, there will be non-stop flights from the Sichuan capital to Tokyo and Dubai starting this year.
Last month, Jade Cargo International signed an agreement with Chengdu to establish an air cargo hub for western China as part of an official policy to build a regional centre for hi-tech and other export-oriented companies.
Construction of the Suining-Ziyang expressway in Sichuan province began on 28 December. Chongqing Construction Engineering Group will construct this east-west expressway on a build-operate-transfer basis.
The expressway is 123km long and will require investment of Rmb7bn. The Chongqing-Suining expressway, Chengdu-Anyue-Chongqing expressway and Chengdu-Chongqing expressway will all be linked to this new road.
One day earlier, work started on the 96km-long Chongqing-Fuling riverside expressway. It will start at Chayuan Development Zone and will connect with the Fuling-Fengdu expressway, which is also under construction.
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.
All four airports in Shandong province were closed, as well as 30 state highways in northern China. Beijing Capital International Airport was also badly affected. On 3 January, 832 flights were cancelled and by 4 pm the following day, 690 flights were delayed by an average of 90 minutes and 98 flights were cancelled. This disruption to services had a knock-on impact at airports across the country. For example, 34 Chongqing-Beijing flights were delayed or cancelled, according to Chongqing Jiangbei Airport.
Elsewhere in the country, heavy fog and poor visibility forced Chengdu and Nanchang airports to close partially on 4 January. Some 9,000 passengers were kept waiting at the airports. Seven expressways in Chongqing municipality were closed due to dense fog, including the Bishan-Shuangjiang section of the Chongqing-Suining Expressway, which was closed for 12 hours.
With households across the country turning up their heating systems in response to the extreme cold, many provinces have cut back electricity supply due to a shortage of coal. Since December, power has been cut or reduced to more than 2,000 factories in Wuhan, Hubei province, to ensure adequate supplies for household use, energy analyst Han Xiaoping told China Daily.
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. The peak time will start on 30 January and extra services will be available to allow migrant workers to go home, especially on lines from the major cities of Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai. After the holiday period, the focus will be on Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanchang and some regions of Hunan province to transport people to their jobs in the coastal cities.
Last year, the railway system collapsed under a record volume of home-returning migrant workers and heavy snow storms, resulting in Premier Wen Jiabao apologising personally to stranded passengers.
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. Earlier, the Post Office in Tianjin and Shandong issued 13 licenses for the express business. The license typically lasts for a period of five years.
The licensing law took effect on 1 October last year. So far, 131 applications have been lodged, involving nearly 500 outlets in the country.
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.
Taiwanese and mainland Chinese container shipping lines can also carry empty boxes that belong to, or are rented by companies that don't have approval to operate direct cross-strait shipping links, the ministry added. No details were published on when the new rules would take effect.
Taiwan and China established direct cross-strait shipping links in December 2008, but only Taiwanese and Chinese ships registered in Greater China are allowed to operate services, and cargo has been limited to goods originating from Taiwan or China.
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. Nearly 32 per cent of the vessels passing the locks are 2,000 dwt or larger, a direct result of the central government’s vessel standardisation programme.
The shiplocks had an initial annual designed capacity of 50m tons. The vessel standardisation programme and better management are expected to double capacity. However, if recent traffic growth rates are maintained, the new capacity will be reached in the relatively near future.
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. Dial 0717-696 3456 and you will hear updated information, such as time slots for passing the shiplocks at both dams, water depths, currents, a weather forecast and anchorage vacancies.
This is a free, 24-hour automated service that caters particularly for vessels not yet equipped with GPS devices. Such information is already available via the official website of the Three Gorges Administration of Navigational Affairs. However many ship operators, mostly small and owned by families, complain that internet access is not easily available on vessels. The automated telephone enquiry service is designed to address this problem.
The fact that the two dams are only 38km apart has made shipping conditions in this section of the Yangtze particularly complicated. The regular cycle of storing and releasing water from both dams has created new rapids and other hazards.
In a separate announcement, the Three Gorges Administration, which is in charge of the waterway in both reservoirs, said that Rmb160m has been set aside for a major dredging project in this section later in 2010, which will involve exploding some hidden rocks. The project, which will not lead to any closure of the waterway, will improve shipping conditions and increase available space for anchorage.
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.
Jiangyin is advantageously situated, being 201km from Nanjing and 162km from Shanghai. Near the city of Wuxi, it sits at the intersection of the Yangtze River and Xicheng Canal.
Another Yangtze port in Jiangsu, Taicang, said its cross-Taiwan Strait service was on course to handle 22,000 TEU in 2009, reported Xinhua. Taicang was one of the first batch of six ports to open a direct service to Taiwan in late 2008. Its total container volume is expected to exceed 1.5m TEU in 2009.
Meanwhile, France’s FM Logistics has opened a logistics facility in Taicang, its largest in China, Logistics Week reported. The facility covers an area of 100,000 sq metres and will specialise in providing distribution services for food, healthcare products and supermarkets.
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 back of the government’s Rmb4,000bn stimulus package designed to counter the effect of the worldwide economic downturn. Major infrastructure projects in the interior have been brought forward. Increasing demand for iron ore, steel, cement and other bulk cargo as a result of the accelerated investment is responsible for much of the increase in throughput, according to administration officials. Another factor is the continued relief efforts for the Sichuan earthquake, which happened in May 2008.
Throughput for containers in 2009 fell by 6.8 per cent over the previous year 6.48m teu. The decline is slightly better than the expected national average and resulted from strong domestic trade, said the administration.
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