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March 2009 A dozen people died in a chemical storage facility collapse in Chongqing municipality. The accident occurred at a Jianfeng Chemical building which was under construction when the ceiling collapsed, said Tang Zongwei, government head of Fuling district.
The company, under Chongqing Chemical and Pharmaceutical Molding (Group) Co, mainly produces fertilisers. The ceiling was 30 metres in diameter and more than 10 metres high.
Shanghai’s waterway authority took urgent measures to move a fleet of cargo ships clogging up a 3.7km-long section of Suzhou Creek. About 400 cargo ships have been unable to move for four days, according to the 20 March edition of Oriental Morning Post. Four patrol ships and nearly 50 officials were dispatched to get shipping flowing again and temporary berths were established.
Officials said continuous rain since late February in the Yangtze River Delta area had caused the jam. They said rising river levels had forced nearby cities to shut water gates and keep shipping out. The rain has also slowed down loading and unloading at ports along the creek.
Most of the ships involved transport stones and gravel for Shanghai’s construction projects.
The Qingshan shipyard of China Changjiang Shipbuilding Industry in Wuhan has officially delivered its first 57,000 dwt bulk ship. The vessel, which will be exported to Greece later in March, is the largest ship ever built in central China.
The ship, designed by Shanghai Ship Research & Design Institute, is nearly 190 meters in length, 32 metres wide and 18 metres deep. Ships of this size would have been impossible to build in Wuhan until very recently as the draught of the Yangtze was insufficient. A huge dredging effort in different stretches of the river is changing the face of Yangtze traffic. Wuhan is located some 1,100km along the river from the mouth near Shanghai.
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 two projects are the expansion of an ethylene plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, and the construction of a methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) plant in Chongqing municipality.
Hambrecht added that demand for chemicals “will not rebound this year. It may recover next year, or at the end of next year”.
BASF and Sinopec agreed in March 2008 to invest US$900m in the Nanjing project, raising annual ethylene capacity to 750,000 tons from 600,000 tons.
The US$4bn MDI plant was to have an annual capacity of 400,000 tons and was scheduled to enter operations in 2011. MDI is used to make polymers used in refrigerators and shoes.
BASF said a revised building schedule for the two projects would depend on market conditions.
The 350km Hefei-Wuhan high-speed passenger railway is due to open on 1 April, reported China Daily. Combined with the opening of the Hefei-Nanjing railway last year, these lines will help slash journey times between central China and the Yangtze River delta region.
Zhang Shuguang, chief of the transportation department of the Ministry of Railways, said trains running at 250 kph between Wuhan and Nanjing will take under three hours, almost eight hours less than now. Passengers travelling from Wuhan to Shanghai will have their journey time cut in half to four hours and 45 minutes, according to Zhang.
In response, airlines and bus companies are cutting prices. Wuhan-based Chutian Metropolis News reported that discounts of up to 70 per cent will be given to flights from Wuhan to Shanghai starting 1 April. The cost of a bus ticket will be reduced from Rmb185 to Rmb90 from 26 March. The ministry is also considering selling train tickets by phone and via the internet, with regions such as Guangdong and Chongqing piloting the schemes, Zhang said.
Currently, 200 high-speed trains pass through major cities in China, Zhang said, with 600 more expected to be operational by 2012.
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. Last November, the State Council approved a plan to merge Zhangjiagang Bonded Zone and Bonded Logistics Park into Zhangjiagang Free Trade Zone. This is the second free trade zone on the Yangtze. The other one is in Cuntan, Chongqing. Chinese goods entering the zone are treated as exports while foreign goods entering the zone are treated only as imports upon leaving the zone.
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. He allegedly gave all building contracts to Jiangyu Group, which he controlled, and siphoned off state assets worth a total of Rmb2bn. He also allegedly arranged US citizenships for his wife and daughter. It was not clear from the story whether he had been arrested.
Nanjing Jiangning ETDZ is a favourite with investors. Its location south of the city is convenient for both the airport and the man ring road. It lies 7km from the railway station and 20km from the port. The zone contains an international school, four universities and a large entertainment complex, and is home to more than 450 corporations including Ford, Fiat, Motorola, General Mills, Siemens, Ericsson, Kimberly-Clark, Mitsui and San Miguel.
The association of express delivery companies said that research and development will start shortly to standardise express delivery vans in China. The move is designed to increase vehicle recognition and facilitate compliance with regulations. China Transport Newspaper reported that this is part of a national plan to develop the logistics sector, one of the 10 major industries that China wants to focus on in the next 10 years. Standardising the vans will to some extent help companies to increase national coverage, said the newspaper.
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 main focus will be on improving the quality of road surfaces and increasing coverage of the public transport network. Between 2000 and 2008, the local government spent Rmb5bn on the rural road network.
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, explaining that the long term impact as much as the immediate benefit to the economy would need to be assessed carefully.
Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were the first to have taken the initiative to issue free vouchers to attract tourists in a bid to stimulate consumption. This has sparked a nationwide debate as to whether the national May Day Long Holiday should come back again. The seven-day holiday was reduced to three days last year partly due to the tremendous pressure on the national transport infrastructure when millions of people travelled around the country at the same time. Some people have also pointed out that these tourist vouchers, paid for by taxpayers, are given only to people who can afford to travel. They called on the central government to take control and distribute such vouchers more fairly.
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. Throughput of metal ores reached 20,300 tons, that of non-metal ores 211,600 tons, and that of construction materials 234,800 tons. The throughput of breakbulk cargo surged by 88 per cent to nearly 1.8m tons. Container throughput grew by 11 per cent year-on-year to 177,300 teu on the back of strong domestic trade and growing trade with Taiwan.
China Shipping Development Co (CDSC), China’s largest oil carrier, recorded a 16.9 per cent increase in 2008 profits, reported China Daily. Its net income climbed to Rmb5.37bn, on sales that increased 38 per cent to Rmb17.5bn.
The company’s performance was buoyed by rising demand for gasoline and other fuels in China, the world's second- largest energy user.
CSDC, part of China Shipping (Group), operates a fleet of oil tankers and dry-bulk vessels mainly for carrying coal. It has signed joint ventures and long-term contracts with its largest customers, including Baosteel and PetroChina Co.
The company plans to expand by 19 ships with total loads of 2.72m tons, comprising 14 oil tankers of 2.26m tons and five bulk ships of 460,000 tons.
East Star, the Wuhan-based private airline, was ordered to suspend flights in mid-March because of prolonged financial and management problems. The order was issued by a regional branch of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China. Xinhua reported that East Star had failed to pay plane rental fees to GE Commercial Aviation Services, forcing the US firm to seek help from the local government and start legal action.
East Star started business in May 2006 and operated about 20 domestic passenger routes. It held about 10 per cent of the market share in Wuhan.
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. Of the total, expressways will reach about 100,000km by 2020, up from 60,300km at the end of 2008, Xinhua reported.
The plan also said that by 2020, the annual cargo throughput of China’s coastal ports will rise to more than 6.5bn tonnes, from 4.4bn tonnes in 2008. Container throughput will reach 240m teu by 2020, up from 128m in 2008.
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. The 800 sq metre facility takes over operations from local agents.
Yusen Air & Sea is the main logistics unit of NYK Line, Japan’s largest shipping company.
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.
Li Wanqin, from the China Shipowners’ Association, said 15 new LPG vessels were added last year to the Chinese merchant fleet giving a total of 110 vessels for LPG transportation in China, equivalent to 100,000 dwt. In 2009 and 2010, China will acquire 47 new LPG vessels, giving the country 170,000 dwt of LPG vessel capacity.
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. Construction will be split into two phases. The first phase, costing Rmb6bn and with the capacity to handle 3.5m tons of LNG and produce 4.8bn cubic metres of natural gas, involves the construction of an artificial island, an LNG receiving station, a jetty and undersea pipelines. The station will be located in Rudong county, Nantong, occupying 0.3 sq km. There will be a special LNG terminal, capable of accommodating the world’s largest LNG vessels of up to 267,000 cubic metres. The second phase will handle 6.5m tons of LNG and produce 8.7bn cubic metres of natural gas.
Meanwhile, Dalian Port Co said it planned to establsih a Rmb2.6bn LNG terminal joint venture with PetroChina.Dalian Port said it would hold 20 per cent of the joint venture, with PetroChina holding 75 per cent and the remainder held by Dalian Construction Investment.
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. Only four major iron and steel plants in China are able to produce the special heavy duty tracks required: Panzhihua Iron and Steel in southern Sichuan, Anshan Iron and Steel in Liaoning, Baotou Iron and Steel in Inner Mongolia and Wuhan Iron and Steel in central China.
Reports from Baotou alone said that 110,000 tons of railway tracks had been dispatched up to 10 March, equivalent to 36 per cent of last year’s total.
According to the central government’s budget this year, Rmb103.5bn will be spent on roads, Rmb73.2bn on railways, Rmb24.2bn on airports and Rmb10.3bn on ports. Prominent projects include the Beijing-Shanghai express railway line and a number of railway lines in the interior, the Yangtze waterway, and airports in the middle and western parts of the country. Road building projects will aim to connect rural areas with urban areas.
The blueprint for Wuhan Tianhe Airport has been approved by the national aviation authorities and Hubei provincial government. Expansion work on the airport’s second runway and third terminal will start within the year, costing an estimated total of Rmb12bn. It is expected to take three years to finish. The 3,600km long second runway, on the eastern side of the first, will accommodate large aircraft such as the Airbus 380; the third terminal will be nearly twice as big as the second one.
In another development, Wuhan Port Group, the largest port operator in the city, has had its plan to build a 24-storey shipping centre approved by the city’s development and reform commission. It will be a gathering place for shippers, forwarders, shipping agents, Customs, banks, insurance and other related agencies to work together under the same roof.
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 have to wait just an hour.
The reduction in waiting times is a direct result of a monitoring system that the administration has installed with an investment of more than Rmb70m. The system involves a control centre and seven monitoring stations that track the movement of more than 3,000 vessels entering the area. It allows all vessels to apply online for a time slot to pass the shiplocks; previously vessels had to book days in advance, which often led to slot times being wasted.
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 for liquefied natural gas (LNG) transportation.
The new company, which will be 90 per cent owned by China Shipping Development, expects to operate two to three ships costing US$160m each. Initially it will be responsible for importing LNG import from countries such as Australia and will probably cooperate with other shipping enterprise in the near future.
It is estimated that China’s LNG imports are likely to exceed 12m tons in 2010.
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 monthly report on the country’s surface water quality showed the Yangtze was slightly polluted in December 2008 while its branches recorded medium-level pollution, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
There is a high concentration of heavily polluting industries along the Yangtze. Nearly 10,000 of the 21,000 chemical companies in China are situated along the 6,300 km-long river, according to Chen. More than 20 chemical industry parks are under construction.
Local governments have built more than 40,000 reservoirs along the river and its branches in a bid for water resources, which has further degraded the Yangtze’s ecological system, he said.
"We should take the opportunity to improve sewage treatment facilities in cities, and move faster to readjust industrial layout and structure along the river,” concluded Chen.
Tianjin port is faring relatively well in the current downturn, according to a report by China Daily. Yu Rumin, chairman of Tianjin Port Group, said its container business had already started to pick up, and iron ore volumes were holding up well due to steel firms buying ore at much lower prices than existed last year.
Tianjin handled nearly 8m tons or iron ore in January, he said, more than the average 5m-6m tons in good years. Growth should continue for the rest of the year.
Tianjin, the third largest port in China for cargo handling, aims to transport at least 360m tons in 2009, 4m tons more than last year, he said.
Tianjin is located in north China, where the economy is much less reliant on exports than the south. This has helped shore up the port’s performance in recent months. To further reduce its reliance on exports, the port now plans to open new domestic shipping routes to Guangdong province and the Yangtze River Delta over the next 12 months, as well as raise its domestic container traffic from 30 to 50 per cent, he said.
China’s major coastal ports recorded heavy volume falls in February against the backdrop of a deteriorating foreign trade performance. Exports plunged 25.7 per cent in the month compared with a year ago.
Shanghai, the world’s second-busiest container port, handled 1.5m teu in February and 1.9m teu in January, representing year-on-year declines of 19 per cent and 17 per cent, according to Shanghai International Port Group.
Shenzhen, the nation’s second-largest container port, recorded an even steeper fall in container business, falling by 21 per cent in the first two months of this year.
Shenzhen Chiwan Wharf Holdings, which operates nine of the city’s 34 container berths with an annual capacity of about 6m teu, said volume declines had worsened in February. The Shenzhen-listed company posted a 24 per cent downturn in throughput in January and a 40 per cent fall in February. It handled 682,000 teu in the first two months of 2009.
In a separate announcement, China’s biggest terminal operator predicted its first ever zero growth in container throughput in 2009 as demand peters out in the mainland’s key export markets. China Merchants (Holdings) International has a 34 per cent share of the mainland container market, which company chairman Fu Yuning said would remain at 129m teu this year.
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. The VLCCs, along with other new vessels that the company plans to put out to sea this year, will increase Nanjing Tanker’s shipping capacity from 1.82m tonnes to 3.82m tonnes. It transported 30.63m tonnes of products last year.
Nanjing Tanker was operating 58 ships at the end of 2008, only one of which was a VLCC. The company transports products for both domestic and foreign oil producers, including Sinopec, Shell and Exxon Mobil.
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 store is expected to open in December this year.
Tesco now has 58 hypermarkets in China plus five pilot convenience stores, reported China Retail News.
Other stores in the 275,000 sq metre Nanjing Wanda Plaza will include Vans Department Store, Wanda International Cinemas, Gome and Little Sheep.
Bank of China has signed an agreement to provide the central province of Hubei with Rmb300bn in loans for construction. The loans are to be used to support projects in urban infrastructure, transportation, electricity, iron and steel, automobiles and other industrial and agricultural projects. The bank also agreed to provide the state-owned China Three Gorges Project Corporation with up to Rmb50bn to finance the Hubei-based company’s ‘going global’ strategy.
Also in March, BOC signed an agreement with Sichuan province to provide areas hit by last May’s earthquake, with at least Rmb300bn in loans for reconstruction over the next five years.
Bridge construction in Chongqing is being speeded up, according to a municipal government website. Changshou Yangtze River Highway Bridge will be put into operation at the end of March, while construction work on Jiayue Bridge and Chaotianmen Bridge will be accelerated. By 2012, when the Hongyancun, Dongshuimen and Qiansimen bridges will be completed, Chongqing city proper will have a total 28 bridges over the Yangtze.
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. The water level behind the dam was 163 metres on 8 March, compared with 172.8 meters in early November, said the China Three Gorges Project Corporation. The dam will continue to discharge water for downstream use until April, according to an engineer of the station. Water levels are then expected to rise naturally during the wetter summer months.
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. Upon completion, the Wujiang River will connect to the Yangtze River in the north and the Pearl River in the south, providing a route to the southwest coast. Preliminary work will finish by end of this year and the project is expected to start in 2010.
In another development, the provincial government has signed a framework agreement with the Ministry of Railways to build a network of railway lines that will connect one of the country’s poorest provinces to major cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing and Wuhan.
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. More than 70 per cent of the workers are returned migrants whose factories along the coast went under due to the global economic recession. After a period of training, they have started work on the biggest railway project in recent Chinese history. It is estimated that the number of workers directly involved in the construction could reach 600,000.
Started in April 2008, the project used a total investment of Rmb55.2bn last year alone, the single largest annual expenditure on a railway project in China. This year, expenditure is estimated at Rmb60bn. The railway line has a planned top speed of 350 kph and will pass through Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu before reaching Shanghai. Estimated figures show that the project will need 5m tons of steel, 380,00 tons of steel tracks, 27m tons of cement, 55m cubic metres of pebble stones, 33m cubic metres of sand and 60m cubic metres of cement.
The new railway line, scheduled for trial operation by 2010, is expected to take passengers, freeing up the existing Beijing-Shanghai line for freight.
Xinhua reported Li Heping, a researcher at the China Academy of Railway Sciences, as saying that trains will take less than five hours to make the journey from the capital to Shanghai, which is now at least 11 hours.
The researcher went on to say that current bottlenecks in China’s railway traffic system would be greatly eased by 2012 as a result of higher investment levels that form part of the Rmb4,000bn stimulus package announced last year. The Ministry of Railways has said it plans to have built 13,000km of passenger lines by 2012.
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 growth rate was 18 percentage points higher than the national average and 19.5 percentage points higher than the coastal region. The interior provinces include Chongqing municipality, Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Yunnan.
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 province reported total exports of US$1.76bn, up 26 per cent year-on-year, against the backdrop of a 21 per cent fall nationwide. Value of imports in Sichuan stood at US$910m, a decrease of 25 per cent, compared with a nationwide fall of 34 per cent. The other province to report an increase in foreign trade was Hainan, in southern China.
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. Container throughput also fell by 2.6 per cent to 450,000 teu, the first fall since the start of the global economic crisis. Export-related cargo suffered the sharpest decline, nearly 11 per cent to 9m tons. “The situation is devastating,” said Johns Gu, deputy general manager of NYK Logistics China, which has several branch offices along the Yangtze. “Our boxes are going in, but not coming out because there is little cargo going overseas.” The company is cutting more jobs, having just closed down its Chengdu office.
January saw the first rise of 5.7 per cent in cargo throughput after three months of sharp falls: 17 per cent in October, 21 per cent in November and 30 per cent in December. Port officials predicted then that throughput was likely to fluctuate due to the worsening worldwide economic crisis, before stabilising towards the second half of the year.
Wuhan has re-started its container express service to Shanghai. The loaded 245-teu barge named Changhai Donghu set off from Wuhan’s Yangluo International Container Terminal on 3 March and reached Yangshan terminal in Shanghai within 48 hours. The containers were then re-loaded onto ocean-going vessels for the USA and Netherlands.
Initially started in May 2006, the service didn’t attract enough shippers within the first year or so and became commercially unviable.
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 scheme involves establsih 800 outlets in the city centre where 20,000 bicycles will be provided free for use. Wuhan will probably be the first major city in China to promote such a policy.
Ningbo government has started issuing free vouchers from 2 March worth Rmb30m to encourage tourism and air travel by its citizens. Some Rmb10m-worth of vouchers are for use when buying air tickets and the remaining Rmb20m is for tourist spending money. A booklet includes two Rmb100 denominated vouchers for spending and five Rmb20 denominated vouchers for use when purchasing air tickets. People with Ningbo ID cards or temporary residence are entitled to one booklet each.
ABB has opened an engineering centre in Chongqing for its process automation division. The Europe-based supplier of power and automation technology said the new centre would integrate its engineering service resources in China. It will serve ABB’s local marine, crane, minerals, pulp and paper, metals, oil, gas, petrochemical and electrification business units.
Currently, ABB has 15,000 employees in China and operates 27 joint ventures and wholly owned companies. It has existing engineering centres in Beijing and Shanghai.
Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group made net profits of Rmb637m in 2008, down 38 per cent from the previous year. Its revenues stood at Rmb37.3bn, up 0.82 per cent.
The company is a major state-owned producer of copper, sulphuric acid and other products. It was among the world’s five largest copper cathode producers last year with an output of 800,000 tonnes.
Sinopec’s new 50,000 tons polyols project in Taicang is predicted to come into operation in May 2009. Construction of the Rmb100m project started at the end of last year.
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 transportation, logistics and warehousing sectors, set to consume some 180m tons of cement in 2009, 27 per cent more than last year.
This increase in consumption, much of which can be attributed to the central government’s Rmb4,000bn stimulus package, is likely to compensate for shrinking demand in the depressed property sector, said Guo.
Last year, China produced 1.38bn tons of cement, up 5.2 per cent from a year earlier, and consumed 1.45bn tons, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
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 Lines, the largest container shipping firm on intra-Asia routes by market share, has been cutting capacity on the Asia-Europe route and restructuring its network because of the downturn in global trade and vessel overcapacity that has slashed freight rates and profit, company president Tony Chow said.
An investment in a Chinese shipping firm would allow Wan Hai Lines to exploit the expected growth in China’s river transport and trade between China and Southeast Asia, Chow said.
"We are positive on the domestic demand stimulus package implemented by the Chinese government, which will also create intra-Asia cargo as China and Asean remove trade tariffs,” he explained.
Chow did not reveal to name of the Chinese company, but said a conclusion to the talks was likely to take time because Wan Hai wants a stake of at least 51 per cent in the firm.
Taiwan and China agreed on closer transport links in November, including launching direct daily charter flights and direct shipping links, but restrictions remain on cross-strait business. For example, Taipei prohibits investment in container terminals on the mainland, and branch offices can only deal with cross-strait cargo. This means Wan Hai Lines must first ship Chinese cargo to a Taiwanese port before carrying it to a third destination, said Chow.
Investing in a Chinese liner would give Wan Hai Lines, which has 20 offices in China, immediate access to China’s river cargo business, he said. “There’s a lot of coastal and Yangtze River cargo that we can’t do now.”
Suning Appliance, one of China’s largest privately-owned electrical appliance retailers, is to build a large-scale logistics base in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The base, which will be situated in the Longquanyi district of the city, will complement the group’s three established bases in Nanjing, Beijing and Hangzhou. When the new base is operational in two years, it will be the biggest electrical appliance distribution centre in Sichuan.
Carrefour, the world’s second largest retailer, plans to open two or three chain stores in Yichang, Hubei province, reported China Knowledge.
According to the report, double digit economic growth for five the past five years in Yichang convinced Carrefour of the potential consumer market in the city.
Carrefour has five chain stores in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei, each with an average annual turnover of Rmb320m. It has more than 130 chain stores across China.
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 airport that has experienced serious difficulties in recent years. It has been closed for about half of the time since opening in 1996 due to low traffic levels. Its latest reopening was in 2006.
With a capacity to handle 500,000 passengers a year, Jiujiang airport is only 10km from the south gate of the popular tourist attraction of Lushan Mountain. However, more tourists bound for the mountain preferred to use alternative airports such as Nanchang, which despite being further away had good expressway links to the mountain area.
In response, Jiujiang airport began offering passengers special discounts on Lushan’s entrance fees. It also subsidised flights landing at the airport to attract more services, Jiujiang Daily reported.
These measures appear to be working and the airport has already started flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xiamen.
However there is no room for complacency, according to Xu Faxin, who was in charge of the airport’s reopening in 2006. He said it needs to focus more on cargo transport and adopt new strategies to lure tourists headed for Lushan.
Construction work has begun in Tianmen city, Hubei province, on a new, multi-purpose dam on the Hanjiang River, the Yangtze’s largest tributary. The Xinglong Dam is an important element of the central route of China’s massive south-to-north diversion plan to bring water from the Yangtze to the dry northern regions of the country.
Zhang Jiyao, chief of the Office for the South-to-North Water Diversion Project of the State Council, said the dam would cost Rmb3.05bn to build.
Xinglong Dam is designed mainly to help irrigation of farmland on both banks of the Hanjiang River as well as improve shipping conditions when the river is in the dry season. It also has power generation and flood control functions. A total of 1,240 residents in Hubei will have to be moved to make way for the dam.
The 1,532km-long Hanjiang River originates in Micang Mountain in northwest China’s Shaanxi province and flows in a southeasterly direction to join the Yangtze at Wuhan, Hubei 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 volumes dropped 16 per cent. In January, cargo volumes decreased 29 per cent to 264,334 tonnes.
The CAAC said international aviation traffic is expected to record a sharp fall in 2009 because of weakening demand resulting from the global financial crisis. By contrast, domestic passenger numbers are likely to grow 10 per cent as a result of government measures to boost the economy.
From 17 February, a new pass system started a trial run on all expressways in Zhejiang province. This yellow pass contains a chip that is able to record the actual mileage of a vehicle and thus adjust the toll fee accordingly. A total of 100,000 passes have been issued for the trial run, which will be used in conjunction with the existing ones; for the time being, toll fees will not be calculated according to mileage. Fifteen reading systems have been installed on major expressways such as the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo expressway.
In another development, the provincial government commissioned a health check on all its expressways and concluded that most of them were well maintained and in good shape. In 2008, official statistics showed that the provincial government spent a little over Rmb1.2bn on maintaining its expressways, equivalent to about 10 per cent of its total income from 2007 tolls.
The worldwide economic downturn has affected China’s export-oriented factories on a big scale. By the end of February, the number of migrant farmers returning to Wuhan alone reached 38,300 and the number is increasing. According to local government statistics, about 27,500, or 72 per cent of the total, have found employment so far. Some 300 of them started their own business, while 8,500 joined various re-training schemes provided by the government.
Helping returning migrant farmers find work is now a top priority for the Wuhan government. Forty three job-seeking conferences have been planned especially for migrant workers. The government has introduced a number of measures, including providing small loans to help returning farmers set up their own business. For those companies that have cashflow problems but are not cutting jobs, the local government has pledged to subsidise their social security provisions for their employees for up to six months.
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 September and from 6 metres to 7.5 metres in other months of the year. This means that by end of the year, the guaranteed water level throughout the navigable length of the Yangtze will be increased. According to official statistics, one more metre in water depth allows a vessel to carry an extra 1,000 teu, thus reducing shipping costs.
The Wuhu-Nanjing stretch is one of the busiest on the Yangtze. In a separate development, the waterway authorities plan a major dredging project to guarantee an all-year-round water level of 12.5 metres up to Nanjing by 2012.
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. Vessels equipped with digital waterway map systems will be able to unload the latest version, which shows information such as water levels, locations of shoals, ports and anchoring areas, thus helping vessels to charter their journeys safely and efficiently.
The Digital Waterway is an integral part of the Yangtze modernisation programme. By 2015, the government hopes to build a digital network for the navigable Yangtze, including digital mapping and real-time transfer of data to measure and profile waves, currents, discharges and sedimentation. Information will be shared across the different sections of waterway management, such as emergency services, life-saving, piloting and safety inspection.
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