According to the 2022 China Shipping Development Report released by the Ministry of Transport on the country’s 19th National Maritime Day yesterday, China accelerated the construction of major water transport infrastructure last year, with investment in fixed waterway assets increasing by 10.9 percent from 2021.
The number of goods delivered by rivers grew by 3.8% last year compared to 2021.
Container throughput at ports climbed by 4.7% last year, while rail-water multimodal transport routes increased by 16% year on year (YoY).
“By the end of last year, the Chinese fleet had reached a carrying capacity of 370 million deadweight tones, which was double the volume 10 years ago,” vice transport minister Fu Xuyin said at a seminar.
According to a state-controlled media agency, the country currently ranks second in the world in terms of fleet carrying capacity, after Greece.
Ocean freight handles over 95% of Chinese cargo shipments in global trade.
He highlighted that Chinese ports handled around 15.7 billion metric tones of cargo last year, up 33% from 2012, and roughly 300 million containers, up 56% during the same period. Another forum said on the day that by the end of last year, China had over 1.9 million registered sailors, a 5% increase over the 2021 total and more than any other country in the globe. One million are river ship sailors, and the remainder are seafarers.
127,000 Chinese sailors served on foreign warships last year.
