Development Tendency of Water Transportation Under the“One Belt and One Road”

By Xie Xie

Sea channel is the primary direction for breakthrough for transportation in China, that is the water channel defined in“21stCentury Maritime Silk Road”. From the perspective of key areas, the construction and development of IOR ports echoes the “Silk Road economic belt” and increases comprehensively the level of accessibility of Central Asia, west Asia and Europe, areas where the maritime industry is relatively under-developed and therefore are the key areas for future exploration.

On one hand, outdated harbor infrastructures are in badly need of improvement. In the next five years, member states of GCC will invest more than 15 billion dollars in harbor construction.Ranked as the 7thcountry in the world in terms of GDP, India has surpassed China in its GDP growth in 2015, and has huge potential for economic development. However,India’s whole container output is less than 10 million TEU.Compared with 182 million TEU output in 2014 of Chinese coastal ports, it is far way behind. This also indicates that there is great potential for the development of Indian ports.

In addition, the channel connected with "Silk Road Economic Belt" needs ports as hubs. Gwadar port of China Pakistan Economic Corridor is important for Chinese petroleum transportation, which relieves the constraint of Strait of Malacca on China in petroleum transportation and promotes opening up of Chinese western region. Kyaukpyu Harbor of BCIM economic corridor is also important; it is the marine hub connecting our southwest region with Indian Ocean and a new channel for opening up. Colombo port and Hambantota port of Sri Lanka will be transfer stations of Indian Ocean lines. Djibouti Port of Djibouti will be key connection point between Indian Ocean and Red Sea.Zanzibar port of Tanzania will be key connection point between East Asia and East Africa.

At the same time, UAE is trying to open the channel between Sharjah and Khor Fakkan. Large container ships of 18 thousand TEU can berth in Khor Fakkan port, which gets rid of dilemma that MINA JEBEL ALI port is trapped in the Persian Gulf. Israel is building land routes connecting the Red Sea which may help to get rid of constraints of the Suez Canal. Fahai port invested by Shanghai port may get a chance under this situation.

In a word, Chinese coastal port is entering a general pattern of being appropriately advanced from bottleneck restraint. Development space and profit of ports are gradually reducing. Opening Indian Sea market and finding new profit growth points are development direction of Chinese port enterprises. Therefore, low positioned sustainable development of shipping industry still has some support. Relatively high prof i t of newlydeveloped region is a strategic direction of shipping enterprises getting out of predicament. Corresponding harbor investment and route arrangement should be also actively carried out.