|
|
February 2010 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 469-room hotel will occupy the first 28 floors of a new 58-storey building, a multi-purpose complex incorporating office space and retail outlets.
The hotel will be located in the central business district, 45 minutes from the airport and an eight-minute walk from the commercial centre of Yuzhong district.
The International Olympic Committee has elected Nanjing as the host city of the Second Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2014. The city received 47 votes, ahead of the only other contender Poznan in Poland, which received 42 votes.
Some 3,600 athletes ranging in age from 15 to 18 are expected to compete at the Nanjing Games in 2014, which will feature competitions in 26 sports. The award will give the city tremendous momentum to speed up its investment in infrastructure and raise its profile on the international stage, said Mr Zhu Shanlu, the city’s Communist Party Secretary.
The inaugural Youth Olympic Games will be held in Singapore between 14 and 26 August 2010.
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 country’s top 10 cities in terms of GDP, Wuxi signed a dozen new projects last month, including ones in electronic information, bio pharmaceutics, outsourcing, and new energy and materials.
The city in Jiangsu province has also secured an agreement with consumer electronics maker Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology to invest Rmb30m in a hi-tech manufacturing base. Beijing Huaqi, maker of Aigo branded electronics, plans to locate its MP6 wireless technology unit in Wuxi.
In 2009, Wuxi formed new alliances with telecom carriers China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to cooperate in research and development, project incubation and other areas. In addition, one Wuxi company has reportedly signed an MOU with France’s Accor Services to set up a joint venture in the city focused on its prepaid services business, which provide employee benefits and outsourcing services.
Wuxi government believes that service outsourcing could employ more than 1m people by 2020, and as a consequence it has launched a number of measures to develop its talent pool.
Sinopec plans to build electric vehicle charging facilities in its large petrol stations in some regions, including Beijing and Chongqing. On 22 February, a Beijing subsidiary of Sinopec teamed up with Beijing Capital Science and Technology Group Corp to set up a clean-energy joint venture to build charging stations for electric vehicles.
State Grid Corp of China has already built several charging stations in Shanghai, Tianjin and Xian. By the end of this year, it plans to add 75 stations and 6,029 charging facilities in 27 Chinese cities.
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 largest logistics park in the upper reaches of the Yangtze.
Known as Longtou (Dragon Head) Port Logistics Park, the project will take five years to complete and will involve a total investment of Rmb4bn.
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.
Snowstorms in eastern China closed a number of highways during the holiday period, with major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing all affected. However there was no repeat of the chaos experienced in 2008 when the extreme cold weather crippled transport systems and stranded millions at the start of the holiday rush.
The rail network has also been busy. An estimated 600,000 passengers entered railway stations in Guangdong on 21 February. Most of the passengers were returning from holiday or migrant workers seeking employment in the province, said Huang Xin, spokesman for Guangzhou Railway Group. About half of them were transported by the 138 trains added during the Spring Festival holiday, he said. The second peak of inbound passengers is expected to occur between 1 and 3 March, when students and more migrant workers return.
China’s civil aviation industry recorded a 19.4 per cent year-on-year increase in passenger numbers to 4.78m between 13 and 19 February, according to statistics released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Chinese airlines arranged 37,027 flights during the holiday, 14.7 per cent more than in the same period last year.
An increasing number of Chinese are travelling abroad during the holiday period. The number of cross-border entries and exits by mainlanders between 13 and 19 February grew by 20.8 per cent on the equivalent period in 2009 to almost 2.4m, said the Ministry of Public Security. According to the China Youth Travel Service, popular destinations included Southeast Asia, Australia and Taiwan.
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. According to these contacts, Air China will inject seven freighters into the venture, while Cathay will put in five or six planes.
The carriers plan to form the Shanghai-based venture as Chinese exports to the US and European markets are starting to rebound. Shanghai is China’s most important cargo centre, said Jack Xu, an analyst at Sinopac Securities in Shanghai, and the move should help the partners challenge China Eastern, which last month acquired Shanghai Air.
Shanghai Pudong International Airport currently accounts for more than 60 per cent of China’s international air cargo, of which more than 70 per cent is handled by overseas carriers.
Talks between the two airlines started in 2006, when it was announced that Beijing-based Air China would own 51 per cent of the new cargo venture, with Cathay owning the remaining 49 per cent.
In the first half of 2009, Cathay Pacific Cargo suffered a 20 per cent fall in tonnage at Hong Kong International Airport, although demand picked up in the second half of the year. The improvement has been carried over into 2010. Last month, Cathay and its sister carrier Dragonair carried a total of 144,000 tonnes of cargo and mail, up 25 per cent on the same month in 2009.
Air China is Cathay’s second-largest shareholder with a 30 per cent stake. Cathay Pacific owns 18 percent of Air China, the nation’s largest international carrier.
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. The service, between Ningbo and Wroclaw in Poland, involves a transit time of 26 days. It complements an existing direct LCL service between Shanghai and Wroclaw.
Panalpina is looking at additional services from the Asia-Pacific region to Wroclaw as it expects considerable economic growth in Poland, especially in the hi-tech sector.
A new shipping line formed only last year, The Containership Company, is set to start services from China to Europe and the US in the next few months once fundraising is completed, reported Seatrade. The Copenhagen-based company will charter six to eight small container vessels for a China- US west coast service and up to a further 10 ships for a China- Europe service. The services will be based out of the Yangtze River Delta port of Taicang and offer direct port-to-port calls only, with no additional door-to-door logistics services offered by most major lines.
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. From 10 January, local maritime officials started a Green Channel for Coal and Oil, a procedure designed to speed up anchorage applications, the co-ordination of vessels entering and departing ports, and loading and unloading operations. The measure was taken to ensure that all the major coal-fired power plants along the Yangtze had enough stocks leading up to the Chinese New Year.
In another recent development, the largest ever coal-carrying vessel to enter the Yangtze anchored at the terminal of Taicang Power Plant. It was carrying 56,000 tons of coal. It is not clear where the coal came from.
According to China Daily, China’s coal imports more than tripled in 2009 to 130m tons. The increase was attributed to the economic stimulus package which pushed up demand for high quality coking coal used in the steel, cement and chemical industries.
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.
As a result of the sinking, a temporary shipping lane about 160-180 metres wide was created. On 21 February, a salvage team managed to move the sunken vessel northwards, away from the main shipping channel. After some monitoring, the waterway authorities declared the area safe.
At 12:20pm on 21 February, the Hong Kong-registered oil tanker Beech Galaxy was the first vessel to pass through the main channel since the collision.
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 imports of steel products decreased to 1.35m tonnes, while exports fell to 2.89m tonnes.
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. About 253 metres long and 32 metres wide, this was the 10th such vessel to arrive at the port since the start of the year, according to China News Services. In 2009, as many as 123 vessels arrived in Jiangyin for scrap, making the Jiangsu city Asia’s largest base for scrap vessels. 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.
Shipbuilding is one of many industries in the city to have performed well over the past year, despite a worldwide downturn in the sector. The gross output of Chongqing’s ship industry reached Rmb15.67bn in 2009, up 55 per cent compared with 2008, according to municipal government figures. A surge in domestic orders more than compensated for a sharp fall in international business.
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. The US company attributed the sales surge to the increasing popularity of its new Fiesta and Focus models.
Another Chongqing company enjoying prosperous times is Chongqing Longxin Engine, which last year topped a list of motorcycle firms ranked by export value. Its 2009 exports were valued at US$265m, according to a report released by China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. During the year it exported 630,090 motorcycles, more than any other Chinese manufacturer.
Chongqing Yinxiang Motorcycle (Group) was in fifth place with exports of US$159m.
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 medium-sized electric-vehicle charging stations built in the province in 2010, along with 300 charging poles. The province will invest Rmb127 in the project.
Over the next five years, Hubei will build at least one charging station in each county and key town.
Across the world, electric cars are generally used over short distances between work and home. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they also help reduce noise pollution.
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. “We are working closely and hope to start a major initiative with [Hainan] by May 2010,” said managing director, Shahari Sulaiman.
The company aims to grow 10-15 per cent in 2010 by expanding its network through alliances and increasing its capacity.
Mainland Chinese airports handled 9.46m tonnes of cargo in 2009, an increase of 7 per cent over the previous year, said the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
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.
The new facility cost an estimated US$180m to build and its 400 staff will be capable of sorting 18,000 packages an hour, according to the US-based company. It will provide overnight delivery services between Asia-Pacific countries.
UPS reported a 10 per cent growth in Asia-Pacific export volume in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared with the same period in 2008. China-to-Europe volume grew by more than 15 per cent, while intra-Asia volumes increased by more than 5 per cent.
International express delivery companies have invested heavily in China in recent years. One year ago, FedEx opened a US$150m Asia-Pacific hub in Guangzhou’s Baiyun International Airport. Its main Asian hub was also previously based in the Philippines. In December 2008, UPS opened an international air hub in Shanghai at a cost of US$125m. DHL has also announced plans to spend US$175m on its north Asia hub in Shanghai, due to be completed in the second half of 2010.
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.
The error, which happened in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, caused the third delay to the service since operations began in late December.
Police officers were sent to the station to help maintain order as passengers had to contend with inadequate toilet facilities and long queues for refreshments.
The 1,069km Wuhan-Guangzhou railway, China’s first long-distance high-speed line, is expected to carry more than 1.6m passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival season, with 33 pairs of trains operating each day.
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. A total of 63.3m journeys were made by bus or railway on 8 February despite weather disruptions in some regions. Snow and heavy fog hit northern China over the weekend of 6-7 February, closing expressways and delaying flights.
A total of 2.54bn journeys are expected to be made during the 40-day mass passenger transportation period. In January, the Ministry of Railways forecast that China’s railways expect to transport 210m passengers over the Chinese New Year, up 9.5 per cent year-on-year.
A surge in export orders in the lead up to the Chinese New Year has strained capacity at Shanghai port, reported China Daily.
Outgoing vessels heading for Europe and America have been over-booked since last December, according to Michelle Wang, a local manager at UniLogistics, a privately owned Chinese freight forwarding company. She said the shipping price for container vessels has risen, on average, three times a week since January.
The China Containerised Freight Index rose 7.7 per cent in a month to stand at 1,081.67 points on 5 February, reflecting the upturn in international seaborne trade, particularly to the American east coast.
Another factor that has contributed to the shortage of capacity was the reduction in container services last year in response to the global economic downturn. A spokeswoman at Shanghai Quanmei Logistics said that the outbound container price per TEU had doubled in a month since the end of December.
Agriculture is the main cause of water pollution in China, according to the country’s first national census of pollution sources. The discharge of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), a major water pollution indicator, totalled about 30m tonnes in 2007, 43 per cent of which came from agricultural sources, according to the census.
Zhang Lijun, vice minister of environmental protection, was reported by Xinhua as saying that controlling pollution from agriculture is essential to solving the water pollution problem. Livestock and poultry are the main sources of agricultural pollution, said Wang Yanliang from the Ministry of Agriculture. He went on to say that the ministry would work to help more livestock and poultry-breeding farms develop methane digesters. Measures will also be taken to limit rural waste discharge and improve the efficiency of agriculture chemicals.
Industrial pollutant discharges are mainly concentrated in a small number of industries and areas that have particular structural problems.
This census is the first significant survey on national pollution. Environmental experts have said that reliable statistics on the sources and extent of pollution are essential in order to tackle the problem.
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. Nanjing is one of just two finalists, the other being Poznan in Poland. Earlier, Mexico’s Guadalajara withdrew from the competition.
The first Youth Olympics will be held in Singapore this August.
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.
Nanjing is among the 10 largest ports in China and is a regional hub on the Yangtze.
The leading committee of Wuhan New Port agreed on a set of 2010 targets at a meeting on 6 February. The targets include a 15.5 per cent year-on-year increase to 100m tons of general cargo throughput and a 25 per cent increase to 710,000 TEU in container throughput.
A total of Rmb12bn of government money will be invested in 80 projects, nearly double that of last year. The target also envisages attracting inward investment of more than Rmb20bn.
Wuhan New Port is a provincial government-driven project to develop Wuhan and the neighbouring cluster of ports in an effort to accommodate and serve the rapid pace of industrialisation in the region. On 3 February, four building projects − a bulk terminal in Wuxue port, a multi-purpose terminal in Huangzhou port, a steel-handling terminal and another cement-handling terminal in Huangshi port − started construction at the same time. Between them, they will have an annual handling capacity of 15m tons and involve a total investment of Rmb392m.
Chongqing can expect to receive US$6bn of foreign investment in 2010, according to municipal mayor Huang Qifan. About one-third of the foreign capital will be invested in industry, with equal proportions going to real estate and urban infrastructure, and finance, business and tourism.
One of the largest investments in Chongqing in recent times, Hewlett-Packard’s PC manufacturing facility, was formally put into production on 26 January.
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. This new payment system introduced by the Wuhan government is designed to encourage more residents to use public transport.
The standard fare for a cardholder on ordinary buses will drop from Rmb0.9 to Rmb0.8, on double-decker buses from Rmb1.4 to Rmb1.3, and on air-conditioned buses from Rmb1.8 to Rmb1.6. For those passengers without an E-card, the standard bus fare remains unchanged.
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.
The park will be located at the north end of the Shanghai terminal and will cover 867,700 sq metres of reclaimed land. It will facilitate the transhipment of containers passing through Yangshan deepwater terminal. The estimated investment required to develop the park is expected to total US$485m.
Transport Intelligence said that the final terms of the land purchase for the development would be agreed by October 2010.
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 Railway Vehicle, said the company would double its monthly production capacity in the first half of 2010 to eight bullet trains, each with eight compartments.
The company makes trains with a maximum test speed of 394kph. It has produced 22 trains to serve the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed line, which began operation in December last year. Another 20 trains are running on the Beijing-Tianjin line, which became China’s first high-speed line in August 2008.
A funding shortage could hinder China’s ambition of creating a modern railway network, according to an article in South China Morning Post. Some difficulties were experienced last year as funds from the Rmb4,000bn stimulus package dried up and they may continue to impact high-speed rail projects in 2010. The report said that a high-speed network can cost up to three times as much to build as a regular railway network.
In September 2009, the Ministry of Railways announced it would build 42 high-speed passenger rail lines over the following three years, with a total length of 13,000km.
Operators also face the problem of ticket pricing, as many potential passengers can’t afford to travel on high-speed trains. “If the price is too high, nobody will take them. If the price is too low, there will be financing difficulties,” said Geoffrey Cheng, director of Asian equity research at Daiwa Securities.
Track laying started on 1 February on the 300km Shanghai-Nanjing intercity rail line, construction of which started in July 2008. Many workers on the line will have to continue their work throughout the Chinese Spring Festival holiday (14-21 February) in order to make sure that track laying is completed by 28 February.
According to the schedule, the intercity line will start operations on 1 July, during the Shanghai Expo. The line, running almost parallel to the existing Shanghai-Nanjing railway line to the north, will pass through Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang and Nanjing. It is jointly financed by the Ministry of Railways and local governments in Shanghai and Jiangsu province.
In another project, this one timed to be operational at the start of the Expo on 1 May, Shanghai’s No.2 metro line will be extended at both ends to connect the two airports in Pudong and Hongqiao.
A formal ceremony was held on 31 January to signal the start of second phase construction of Nanjing airport, according to China News Service. The Rmb9.9bn project will involve the construction of a second runway, 3,600 metres long and 60 metres wide, and a 200,000 sq metre second passenger terminal and 42 landing berths.
Last year, more than 10m passengers passed through Nanjing airport. By 2020, the airport is expected to handle 30m passengers and 800,000 tons of cargo.
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. From 10 February, they will concentrate efforts on Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to set up decision-making procedures and emergency response mechanisms in an effort to reduce the number of delayed flights and improve passenger care at times when severe weather conditions or other factors make delays inevitable. They will also aim to establish ways to collect accurate flight data and track punctuality.
At the moment, flight delays in the four airports in these cities have ripple effects across other parts of the country. Passengers are frequently ill-informed if stranded.
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. There has been a big increase in Asia/China outbound trade growth since the end of December, and in recent weeks conditions have approached pandemonium for exporters trying to get cargo out before the holidays begin.
Cargo owners have been forced to pay whatever rates are being asked. Transport Trackers quoted the example of the customer of a forwarder who balked at paying US$2,700 per FEU from Shanghai to the US west coast, while half that rate was more common a few months ago.
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. Singapore, in second place, experienced an overall volume decline of 8.5 per cent to 471.5m tons, according to its own figures.
Shanghai was still behind Singapore in terms of container traffic, with a 10 per cent fall in 2009 throughput to 25m teu. Container traffic in Singapore last year fell 13.5 per cent to 25.9m teu.
Twenty Chinese ports each recorded a cargo throughput of more than 100m dwt in 2009, according to the Ministry of Transport. Four new ports joined the list last year: Jiangyin in Jiangsu province, Xiamen in Fujian province, Zhanjiang in Guangdong province and Huzhou in Zhejiang province. Jiangyin, on the Yangtze River, and Huzhou, on the Grand Canal, are both inland waterway ports.
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. In the same period, foreign trade-related throughput rose by 22 per cent to 11.5m tonsm while and container throughput reached 550,000 TEU, up 25 per cent.
|
|