Qingdao Port: A Series Of Reports On The "Belt And Road" Port Research

Zhou Zhiyu, a researcher at Guangdong Haisi Research Institute, and Zhai Shaohui from Qingdao

Editor's note

The 21st century economic report and Guangdong Maritime Silk Research Institute conducted a survey on key ports along the belt and road, focusing on Qingdao port.

Qingdao port is endowed with unique talents. After more than 100 years of development, it has become the port with the largest number of routes and the largest density in northern China. However, it has always been mainly a transport port. Compared with other world-class ports, the pace of evolution to trade port seems to be slower.

As a "hub" of the Silk Road, Qingdao has turned to the "hinterland" of the "Silk Road" and "the hub" of the silk road. Dong (Liming)

From the beginning of 2019, Li Fengli, chairman of Qingdao port group, is very busy. In more than a month, he took the management of the group together with the customs, railway and shipping companies to hold promotion meetings in Zhengzhou, Xi'an, Henan Province and many cities in Shandong Province.

The promotion meeting is the epitome of expanding and strengthening the hinterland of Qingdao port. With the further deepening of the shift, Qingdao port hopes to expand the influence and radiation of Qingdao port in the inland market, and extend this influence to the economic circles of Central Asia and Europe.

In Li Fengli's words, Qingdao port strives to connect the four economic circles of Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, Central Asia and Europe through the construction of a modern logistics system focusing on sea rail intermodal transport, so as to speed up the overall planning of land and sea, and realize the interconnection and mutual benefit of the East, the West and the West.

However, forging iron still needs its own hard work. "At present, Qingdao port is building a very important international cruise home port in northern China. It is not only necessary to strengthen logistics, but also to gather flow of people. At the same time, it should attract capital flow and information flow, so as to truly form a hub port for us," Li Fengli told the researcher of Guangdong Haisi Research Institute.

By extending the inland port and expanding the hinterland of the port, Qingdao port has also helped to transform itself and realize digital re upgrading. Li Fengli said that through a series of measures, Qingdao port is transforming from a logistics port to a trade port, from a destination port or portal port to a hub port. With the implementation of the belt and road initiative, Qingdao port is moving towards the world by sea and land.

Seizing the resources of large ships with geographical advantages

After more than one hundred years of development, Qingdao has become the largest port in the north of China. In 2018, the cargo throughput of Qingdao port reached 540 million tons, and the container throughput exceeded 19.3 million TEU.

According to the information provided by Qingdao port, the port has 167 routes, including 137 international routes. Starting from Qingdao port, you can reach more than 700 ports in more than 180 countries and regions.

Among the four major ports of Qingdao port, Qingdao Dagang Port area is engaged in grain and general cargo business; Huangdao Oil port area is engaged in loading, unloading, transferring and storage of oil and liquid chemicals; Qianwan port area is engaged in bulk dry bulk cargo business such as container and mineral coal; Dongjiakou port area is planned to cover an area of 72 square kilometers, and is striving to build a large dry bulk cargo, energy logistics, trade center and large port Industrial base.

At the same time, Qingdao port has the world's largest container terminal, 400000 tons of ore terminal, 450000 tons of crude oil terminal, 227000 tons of cruise ship dedicated terminal, the terminal facilities in the world-class level.

"Qingdao port has as many wharves as there are ships in the world." This slogan of Qingdao port confidently shows its inherent advantages. Relying on Qianwan port area and Dongjiakou port area, Qingdao port has 23 special container berths, which can accommodate the world's largest 22000 TEU ships.

"The harbor is wide and deep, free from silting and freezing, and it is a natural harbor. This feature makes it unnecessary for us to dredge or freeze. It has strong navigation capacity and lower cost than other ports." In Li Fengli's view, the geographical location is the prerequisite for the development of Qingdao port. He said that Qingdao port is "gifted" and located in the center of the Bohai Rim port group, the Yangtze River Delta port group and the Japan South Korea port group, it is one of the closest ports to the main international routes, which is 100-400 nautical miles closer than other coastal ports in the north.

Since the opening of Qingdao port, Qingdao port has formed its own "circle of international friends", superimposed on the degree of opening up of Qingdao. In Li Fengli's view, these "congenital factors" are the "core competitiveness" of Qingdao port.

Among them, the route advantage is especially obvious. "For example, for the Japanese route, we have 20 ships a week, and there may be 5 or 10 ships in other ports. For customers, there are less opportunities for customers to choose flights, and the relative convenience is worse." Li Wucheng, general manager of Qingdao Port International Logistics Co., Ltd., told the researchers of Guangdong Haisi research institute that this makes Qingdao port absolutely dominant in the northern ports.

In addition, Qingdao port will also benefit from the trend of "large-scale and alliance ships" in the port transportation industry. For example, Li Wucheng said that the current container ships have reached the scale of 22000 TEU, which is only slightly less than the total number of foreign trade containers exported by Henan Province in one month. "One ship can be used to load Henan Province's export containers for one month, and its large-scale development is very obvious."

The trend of large-scale ships will naturally test the draft and equipment capacity of the port. Li Wucheng pointed out that the current draft of large ships is more than 15 meters. If the water depth of the wharf or channel can not meet this requirement, large ships are not willing to come to the port, and the wharf equipment is not "qualified", such as the bridge crane is not high enough, which will have a great impact on the ship's operation. Therefore, the basic port conditions become one of the main factors for large ships to consider.

Yu zhanfu, partner of Roland Berger Management Consulting Co., Ltd. and vice president of Greater China, also analyzed that the ports in Northeast Asia are dense, and the changes in the global economy have a subtle impact on the volume competition. "If a large ship can reduce the average cost of a single container, then whoever can control the large ship and further use the small boat for distribution will be likely to change the micro pattern of several port circles in Northeast Asia and the balance of strength among them." Yu zhanfu pointed out that the competition between ports today is mainly to see who can catch the big ship and berth in its own port.

Multi party linkage transformation and upgrading

From the perspective of the "sea rail" and "land transport" of Qingdao port, we can see from the two aspects of the opening of Qingdao port. In Li Fengli's words, it is necessary to set up a "golden channel" for customers to seamlessly connect with other parts of the world and operate efficiently.

In order to achieve this goal, Qingdao port, together with railway and customs, will work together to improve the business efficiency and customer service quality of the port.

Dong Hui, executive deputy director of the freight marketing center of Jinan Railway Administration, said that the Railway Bureau and Qingdao port are "inseparable". As a customer service community, both sides will participate in daily visits to port customers to understand their freight demand and improvement suggestions.

Zhang Yuhong, deputy director of the Port Supervision Office of Qingdao Customs, told the researchers of Guangdong Haisi research institute that Qingdao Customs will regularly hold joint meetings between ports and ports to discuss specific matters. For example, the meeting in 2018 discussed how to optimize the business environment of enterprises, solve enterprise difficulties, bottlenecks and the construction and development of logistics hub.

In addition, Qingdao Customs supported Qingdao port to build Qingdao multimodal transport customs supervision center at the end of 2014. By the end of 2017, the center had completed 421000 TEU, more than twice the amount of work at the end of 2015 (200000 TEU). After entering the central station, the goods are regarded as arriving at the frontier of the terminal, which can realize the "one-stop" sea rail intermodal business operation.

Zhang Yuhong said that Qingdao Customs has also created a "multimodal transport port customs" supervision mode for the multimodal transport supervision center to improve the efficiency of multimodal transport. To meet the regulatory needs, Qingdao port has opened a special sea port for sea rail intermodal transport, which has solved the long-standing port bypass problem of the goods entering by sea rail intermodal transport, and improved the logistics efficiency by 30%. More importantly, in 2018, Qingdao Customs launched the "intelligent supervision" system. Through the "integration and interconnection" among systems, equipment and departments, Qingdao Customs realized the real-time acquisition of port logistics data chain, the simplification and compression of operation links, and the cost reduction and efficiency increase of enterprise operation. Specific to the enterprise, it is to realize paperless warehouse receipt, paperless change and electronic procedures online.

The current version of "smart version 2.0.1" of Zhang Yuhong is the key point. In the new version, Qingdao Customs will cooperate with Qingdao port and waterway administration to build a closed industrial platform. Customs and enterprises will connect more directly, promote the change of inspection mechanism, and share inspection information at the first time.

Li Fengli said that at present, Qingdao port has maintained a very high efficiency in container, iron ore and pulp shipping. In particular, the automated terminal has fully realized unmanned operation, and has made a good attempt in the construction of 5g smart terminal. "At the world mobile communication conference in Barcelona this year, next to Huawei's 5g mobile phone exhibition hall, we launched the world's first 5g smart terminal." Li Fengli said that through 5g technology, the data exchange rate of Qingdao port will be further improved.

At the same time, through EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) platform, Qingdao port has also built a logistics supply chain system and regional public information platform to share information with port units, shipowners and cargo owners, inland ports and feeder ports.

Building inland port network and expanding hinterland

From a strategic point of view, speeding up the design of rail sea intermodal routes and the layout and development of inland ports is indeed an urgent task for Qingdao port.

In the view of industry insiders, as China's port throughput growth is facing bottlenecks, the deepening cooperation between ports and inland cities has released a signal that "the situation of insufficient food in ports is more urgent".

Yu zhanfu analyzed the researcher of Guangdong Maritime Silk Road Research Institute and said that due to the dense number of big ports in the Bohai rim area, the hinterland of ports is easy to overlap. It has become a choice for many coastal ports to extend inland through the railway and seize the coverage area of the ground network as much as possible. Yan Song, deputy director of intermodal transport products in Maersk Greater China, also said that as a shipping company, Maersk hopes to extend its offshore advantages to inland, which requires finding a joint point with the port to maximize the demands of both sides.

At present, Qingdao port has opened 42 trains in 28 cities, from Shandong, Shaanxi, Henan, Shanxi to Gansu, Ningxia, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, building a broad inland network. According to the introduction of Qingdao port, the key inland ports under construction and planning include three categories: port function extension area, inland port in Shandong Province and inland port along the Yellow River Basin outside the province.

In addition to building functional extension zones in Jiaozhou, Jimo and Pingdu of Qingdao to release port functions, Qingdao port has also opened 28 container trains with 15 cities in Shandong Province, striving to realize the layout of "one city, one station, one port". Among them, the "whole process operation mode of bill of lading", which was launched in Linqing in 2018 in cooperation with Maersk, has been recognized by many parties for effectively reducing intermediate links and reducing transportation risks.

Qingdao port is also working with inland cities to build a sea rail intermodal transit base. Li Fengli said that Qingdao port is striving to be "the best sea port in the central and western regions" along the Yellow River Basin and railway lines while increasing sea routes and shipping space in the sea direction. "The ultimate goal of our inland port layout is to provide convenience for our customers." "To enable them to enjoy the same service and convenience in Xi'an as in Qingdao, the requirements of all logistics nodes can be realized," Li said

Or impact on the European shipping routes of Japan and South Korea

In addition, Maersk is also cooperating with Qingdao port to try to open up the cargo channels of Japan and South Korea, so as to realize the real "land to land" and "sea to sea" connection. "The product is in the process of research and development. It can let Japan and South Korea enter China through Qingdao port, and then cross-border trains to Central Asia and central Europe. In this way, the transportation efficiency will be stronger."

At present, the second-hand goods have been sent to the west of Xinjiang by sea, such as the rubber products of Xinjiang, Herr, Japan and so on. "It's a very large market, including direct access to Europe." "In the next step, we may take some products from Central Asia and Europe to Qingdao by rail, and then distribute them."

Yan Xisong said that "at present, he is trying to bring the goods back", but he also hopes to "gradually bring back the goods". Shipping companies usually hope to "import heavy containers and export heavy containers" to minimize the cost. However, the difficulty lies in that, affected by the regional industrial structure, most of China's exports are greater than imports, and the container type and source are difficult to match.

At present, sea rail intermodal transportation mainly aims at the goods with high requirements of timeliness and service reliability. Some data show that through sea rail intermodal transport, the logistics time of transit trains in Central Asia can be reduced from nearly one month to 12-16 days.

Yu zhanfu believes that countries such as Japan and South Korea have strong strength in ports, shipbuilding and other fields, and what they need is sufficient cargo volume. If the goods are transported by rail through Qingdao, it means that the European routes of Japan and South Korea will be affected.

He pointed out that if the goods are transported to European coastal cities by rail via Qingdao port, the shipping companies may think that the freight is too high. "The goods that are slow in cycle and not time effective and therefore pursue the lowest cost of sales are the ones who choose to ship by rail." However, there are also exceptions that will give both time and cost advantages to China Europe Railways: if both the starting point and the arrival point are inland cities that are not close to the seaport, there is no need to connect from the seaport to the land port.

"This kind of connection transportation cost is high, the time is also slow, is not in the same level as the efficiency protection of the China Europe train, plus there is no freight advantage." He said, "Qingdao can realize natural sea rail intermodal transport. If it is transported to inland cities in Europe, it may have an impact on the economic rationality of the original shipping routes."

Sea rail intermodal transport still has room for improvement

The construction of inland port is regarded as an important fulcrum for the development of sea rail intermodal transport and the realization of port functions. Then, can Qingdao port serve as a model for domestic rail sea intermodal transport?

Yu zhanfu believes that the capacity of sea rail intermodal transport can be measured by four indicators, namely, the annual volume of sea rail intermodal transport operation, the proportion of the total container volume in the port, the longest radiation radius of the railway, and the overall connection efficiency. "The total volume is actually the most powerful indicator." He said.

In 2018, Qingdao port completed 1.154 million TEU of sea rail intermodal container, an increase of 48.7% over the same period of last year; Qingdao port became the first coastal port in China to break through million TEU while the container volume of sea rail combined transport ranked first in China for four consecutive years. However, in its total container throughput (19.32 million TEU) in 2018, sea rail intermodal transport accounted for only 6%, compared with the 10% to 40% level of more mature international ports, there is still much room for improvement.

This is related to the low overall level of China's railway multimodal transport. At present, it only accounts for 2.9% of China's total freight volume, far lower than the level of 40% in developed countries in Europe and the United States. Jia Dashan, vice president of the Institute of water transport Sciences of the Ministry of transport, once pointed out that in 2015, China's containers transported by rail accounted for only 1% of the port throughput, and even the total traffic volume of the six sea rail intermodal transport demonstration lines only accounted for 1.7% of the total container throughput of the six ports. The volume of sea rail intermodal containers in Shanghai port in this year was only 53500 TEU, accounting for 0.16% of the total.

In recent years, China has made an important decision to adjust the transportation structure and increase the railway freight volume, and China Railway Corporation is also making targeted deployment. Dong Hui, executive deputy director of Jinan Railway Administration freight marketing center, said that at present, Qingdao port's cargo loading volume has accounted for one third of Jinan Railway Administration.

For ports and shipping companies, sea rail intermodal transportation has become one of the important growth points. As far as Qingdao port is concerned, in addition to 42 multimodal transport trains, Dongjiakou port dredging railway was officially opened in March this year.

Yan Song also told the researchers of Guangdong Haisi research institute that sea rail intermodal transport has become the top priority of the company's work. In 2019, Maersk will further cooperate with Qingdao port to establish a faster and more comprehensive hinterland economic network, and extend Maersk's container service to "the place nearest to customers".

He said frankly that the difficulty lies in coordinating the resources of all parties, including the inland railway, "but at present, our cooperation is very smooth", and I believe that we can reach a consensus and form an optimal combination. In addition, Maersk also has a team specially responsible for cross-border multimodal transport, "including the China Europe Express. We have been making this product for several years and are becoming more and more mature. The container data is also growing geometrically." "As the junction of the maritime Silk Road and the Silk Road on the road, Qingdao port will play a very important role in it," Yan Song said

Li Wucheng believes that as the only way for the "belt and road" from east to west, under the guarantee of route density, Qingdao is fully qualified to comply with the requirements of the "belt and road" and do a good job in logistics channel.

Turning into hub port to assist marine economy

In the belt and road initiative, Qingdao is positioned as a "major node city of the new Eurasian Continental Bridge Economic Corridor" and a "strategic fulcrum for maritime cooperation". In recent years, with the promotion of Shandong Province's "marine province" strategy, Qingdao has launched 13 "offensives", and the "marine offensive" ranks first.

"The prosperity of Qingdao depends on its marine economy." Li Fengli said that at the level of economic development, the "marine offensive" involves many aspects of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Qingdao has formed a relatively complete marine industry from the primary industries such as marine fishery, deep-sea aquaculture, cold water mass culture, to the secondary industry dominated by shipbuilding and marine engineering equipment, and then to the tertiary industry including logistics services and infrastructure services.

According to the data, in 2018, Qingdao's marine GDP reached 332.7 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 15.6%; among them, coastal tourism, marine transportation and marine equipment manufacturing industry accounted for 20.5 billion yuan, an increase of 14.5%, accounting for 60.9% of the marine economy.

The port is an extremely important part of the "ocean offensive". At present, Qingdao has made clear the positioning of each port area, including promoting the professional production logistics industry in the old port area of Qingdao port, focusing on building the core area of cruise home port; accelerating the international container transit business of Qianwan port area and building the container hub port in Northeast Asia; promoting the transformation of Huangdao port area and developing logistics and port industry in Dongjiakou port area, forming the fourth trade oriented port To replace the deep water port.

"We are an infrastructure and public service platform, and if developed, we can help the local economy. The platform can gather logistics and people flow, and attract capital flow and information flow at the same time, so that the city's role as a hub port can be brought into play. " Li Fengli stressed that this is not only the concept of "logistics", but also the flow of elements.

In order to "speed up the construction of a world-class marine port", Li Fengli believes that "port" can no longer be simply understood as a "port" of a port, but should be regarded as a "port" in a broader sense that can gather various resources and boost the development of other marine elements.

Yan Song commented that on the way to the shipping center, Qingdao port has been in the forefront of the industry in many aspects, "such as automation, data, sea rail intermodal transportation, and service concept." "From the concept of" Hong Kong boss "in the past to the service situation," he said

In this regard, Li Fengli said that in addition to maintaining the traditional loading and unloading business, Qingdao port is also actively promoting the development of logistics, cruise, finance, port adjacent industries and overseas expansion, so as to realize the transformation from logistics port, loading and unloading port and destination port to trade port and hub port.

Taking the financial strategy as an example, Qingdao port believes that this will create a new growth pole for the port, so it has taken a series of actions, including the establishment of a financial company, the provision of financial services such as deposits, loans, credit, investment, etc., and the beginning of a large-scale financial industrialization operation, "promoting industry with finance and combining industry with finance", and expanding the financial ecosystem of the port.