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The article describes the state of the modern port industry on the sea coast of the People's Republic of China, highlighting its features and characteristics. The author analyzes the form ation and development of large-scale, intensive and modern groups of seaports in China, whose economic structure, volume, cargo flows and turnover are significantly differentiated. The article discusses the strategic role of the government in developing the modern transport and logistics systems of the PRC, creating an effective institutional system and improving the regulatory framework. The author comes to the conclusion that Chinese seaports are developing in the direction of increasing scale, intensif ication and modernization, enhancing the efficiency of transportation and creating a modern logistics system that meets the requirements of sustainable and rapid development.

China's global shipping connectivity had been somewhat overlooked as the bulk of related studies predominantly focused on the throughput volume of its own port cities. This article tackles such lacunae by providing a relational perspective based on the extraction of vessel movement archives from the Lloyd's List corpus. Two complementary analyses are proposed: long-term dynamics with all ships included (1890-2008) and medium-term dynamics focusing on container flows (1978-2016). Each analysis examines China's maritime connectivity in various ways and on different spatial scales, from the global to the local, in terms of concentration, vulnerability, and expansion. The main results underline the influence of technological, economic, and political factors on the changing distribution of connectivity internally and externally. In particular, China has managed to reduce its dependence upon external transit hubs, to increase the internal connectivity of its own port system, and to strengthen its dominance towards an increasing number of foreign nodes and trade partners through the maritime network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal plays a vital role in the socio-economic development of China. Yet, the spatial mismatch between production centers (inland Northwest) and consumption centers (coastal region) within China fostered the emergence of dedicated coal transport corridors with limited alternatives. Serious problems of energy shortage and power rationing have already affected southeastern China. At the same time, enormous interregional coal transfers face a lack of transport capacity along the transport system. Based on first-hand statistics, a disaggregated analysis of coal distribution patterns since the late 1970s provides novel evidences about the local effects of macroscopic trends, such as the shift from dominant exports to dominant imports in terms of changing traffic concentration levels and distribution patterns among routes and ports. The spatial evolution of coal distribution is also discussed in terms of related industry linkages and local influences, coal trade policies and market pricing, port system evolution, and transport network planning. The paper also discusses possible improvements of the current situation through enhancing multimodal transport based on a review of current policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial models of port system evolution often depict linearly the emergence of hierarchy through successive concentration phases of originally scattered ports. The Chinese case provides a fertile ground for complementing existing works by a long-term perspective, given the early importance of river ports and seaports and the development irregularities caused by periods of closure and openness over time and across such a large land mass. In both qualitative and quantitative ways, this paper describes and analyses the changing spatial pattern of China's port system since the first unified empire (221 bc). Main results underline a certain stability of the port system with regard to the location of main sea-river gateways, notwithstanding important regional shifts from one period to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with a global port organization increasingly polycentric and having to face a deindustrialization sometimes difficult, Western ports have experienced a downgrading in the world port hierarchy, now largely dominated by East Asia and the People’s Republic of China in particular. By reading articles specializing in logistics issues published by Asian authors, processing statistics issued by the Chinese government and international institutions, and making a field visit to a Chinese dry port, the author analyzes the Chinese policy that has enabled the Chinese port system to develop, catch up and then become superior on a global scale. The article begins with an examination of developments in port planning, which have resulted in the decentralization of port management to the provincial and municipal levels, as well as the integration of ports into broader national planning issues. The second part is devoted to the comparative advantages of the various players in the Chinese port system, enabling them to project themselves globally within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.