The Study Of Competitiveness Of Coastal Ports In China Based On Principal Component Analysis

As the cargo throughput of the ports in China have leapt to the world,as well as the construction of Shanghai international shipping center continuously developes, the port is increasingly concerned by the people. Most of the international trade in China is conducted in the way of sea transport,and because China is a country with large import and export trading, the port is very important to economic development of China and irreplaceabal.Now, many coastal areas regard the development of economy about sea as the key of the transforming of economic development, adjusting the industrial structure and getting new economic growth,and the port becomes more and more important to local economic development. China has most of the largest ports in the world, but the ports are not very competitive. So it is necessary that improving the competitiveness of the ports which is very useful to the largest ports in China.In this paper, the object of study is the evaluation of the competitiveness of the port, and there are two main aspects of the port competitive evaluation research: the port competitiveness evaluation index system and the choice of research methods about port competitiveness evaluation. In this paper, based on the theory about port competitiveness, a new port competitiveness evaluation index system is constructed which include the growing scale of port, port infrastructure, the economic conditions of port hinterland and development potential of the port. And Shanghai Port, Ningbo - Zhoushan Port, Tianjin Port, Shenzhen Port, Guangzhou Port, Qingdao Port and Dalian Port and other ports in the coast of China, in all 18, are selected as the study samples. Principal component analysis is used to analyze the competitiveness of these ports,and scores and score ranking of competitiveness of these ports are obtained; based on the results of principal component analysis, cluster analysis is used to classify these ports and a variety of categories are obtained. Finally, basing the results of principal component analysis and cluster analysis, the competitiveness of the ports are classified analyzed and comprehensive analyzed, and suggestion about improving the competitiveness of these ports are given .