The Spatial-temporal Evolution Of The World Marine Transportation Pattern

Since the21th century, the sphere of interest has been expanded rapidly all through the world under the dual function of economic globalization and "Ocean Century". As the significant link and solid bridge for international trade, the status and effect of ocean transportation national marine safety have been improved unprecedentedly. Therefore, by exploring the "geographic space" of the evolution pattern of the world ocean transportation and Chinese marine safety guarantee, which are is taken as the research subjects in this paper, can make them into an organic whole and some relevant analysis concerning theory, real case and decision-making can be carried through in the hope of providing some references scientific decision services for national strategy and the discipline integration of world geography, traffic geography and economic geography.The author seeks to make an explicit structure of this paper, which consist of eight chapters. The first two chapters mainly focus on the theoretical discussion about ocean transportation. It starts with the literature review at home and abroad from the spatial perspective, research theme and methods of ocean transportation, and summarizes the deficiency of the research on the world ocean transportation. Then, the author discusses from the theories of transport geography, international division of labor and international trade, and the scale economy of container transport, which built a theoretical framework for the empirical and decision-making analysis in the following passage. Based on the analysis of seaborne trade and global shipping system on the sea, the third and sixth chapters make a detail discussion on the spatial-temporal differentiation, formation mechanism and influence factor of the ocean transportation pattern in the world from three aspects:the global region, country and its regions, and port cities. The seventh chapter explores the global spatial correlation of Chinese ocean transportation from the perspective of international container trade in Chinese ports. The eighth chapter is the conclusion and outlook.The first chapter, the introduction of this paper, mainly elaborates the research background and significance, literature review of some relevant theories, research thoughts and methods, contends and innovative points and so forth. The research significance can be clearly revealed through the section of research background and significance from the discussion on three aspects:ocean transportation is the basis for globalization; the shipping routes on the sea are the important support for national strategic resources and international status; and it is urgent and necessary for China to study on the world ocean transportation system. In the section of the literature review of some relevant theories, the deficiency of the latest research advances at home and abroad and some global transportation problems are pointed out through the review of domestic and foreign literatures. Then, the author make an introduction of the research thoughts, frame, contends and innovative points of this paper.The second chapter serves as the theoretical analysis and summarizes parts of the whole paper. Firstly, it starts from the analysis of the spatial linkage between regional economic development and economic development through the spatial transportation linkage and economic relation, the transportation’s effect on regional development, transportation and industrial location, traffic networks and comprehensive system of traffic follows. Then, three different stages, the international division of labor and international trade have experienced, are elaborated. Besides, it points out that the theory of international trade and international division of labor are the economic theory foundation of ocean transportation, which paves a way for the analysis of the dynamic evolution of global ocean transportation networks in the following parts. In the end, some ideas about the economies of scale theory in container transportation are expounded based on the scale economy in container transportation system, the formation of scale economy and transport system of container port, the differentiation and influence of port function, and the evolution of the transport system of container port. All of these provide the following discussion on container trade among global ports with necessary theoretical support.The world ocean transportation is elaborated from the third chapter to the sixth chapter. The spatial-temporal differentiation, formation mechanism and influence factor of the world ocean transportation pattern are analyzed in detail. The third chapter firstly reviews the overall situation of global economy and world merchandise trade and then, combs the development tendency of world seaborne trade, the shipping quantity and distance on the sea, and the variation trend of global energy trade flows. At last, the current situation of global shipping system on the sea is outlined from the circulation areas of seaborne shipping, the main global shipping routes and strategic throats, the division of shipping routes, the world’s major transfer market and so on.The fourth chapter is about the global regions, mainly focuses on the cooperation in regional and global ocean transportation and the spatial-temporal correlation pattern. It can be observed from the research on the index of load and unload of ocean transportation all through18global regions, that the pattern of global ocean transportation can be described as a decreasing distribution successively ranging from advanced economic entity, developing economic entity and transitional economic entity. An obvious spatial differentiation pattern called "Core-Periphery" has assumed in the coupling network of global ocean transportation loading-unloading capacity structure, leading to the formation of Grand Trine Pattern which consist of some developing countries in North America, Europe and Asia, and Secondary Trine Pattern which covers the north part and east coast of south America, the transitional economic entity and the developing economic entity in Africa.The fifth chapter discusses the spatial-temporal correlation pattern of proximity index of ocean transportation in national and regional level. It can be observed from the study on the proximity index of ocean transportation including157counties and regions that countries and regions provided with high proximity index of ocean transportation mainly distribute in group and tends to a "three-pole pattern" which takes East Asia-Southeast Asia, West Europe, and North America as its core areas. Besides, the spatial correlation between proximity indexes of ocean transportation is decreasing and so does the spatial agglomeration.The sixth chapter describes the status alternation of containerized trade flows among global ports from the port level. According to the estimation of containerized trade flows among106global ports, a new pattern has assumed around the world which takes the containerized trade links among three regional ports (North America, West Europe, and East Asia-Southeast Asia) as the principal part and the containerized trade links among their internal ports as the support part. The containerized trade flows among global ports has experienced a decreasing process from the near to the distant. Besides, the link-value of container trade between different ports in the world is adopted to measure the level of the linkage between one port and other ports. As observed from the result and based on the internal effect exerted by scale economy, a remarkable trend has been emerging under the development and improvement of global container trade system and the increasingly obvious trend of the functional differentiation in container ports:the separation of pivotal port and feeder port of container in the world shapes an independent ocean transportation network constituted by several regional container trades.The seventh chapter makes a study on the international spatial connection of the ocean transportation in China based on the container trade in Chinese ports. It firstly uncovers the spatial distribution over the world of the container trade in Chinese ports and the evolution of the status Chinese ports hold in the container trade pattern of global ports, based on which, this paper divides the trade between Chinese ports and global ports into different levels. Then, the international spatial connection of the container transportation in Chinese ports is measures, which helps with the spatial distribution of container transportation system in Chinese ports shapes its the influencing mechanism.The eighth chapter is the part for conclusion and prospect. Based on the summary of the main points through the whole paper, the author indicates some research directions and fields that still need to be explored deeply and synthetically, including the comprehensive and cross research on traffic geography, economic geography and world geography; the social network analysis for the world ocean transportation network; the study on global transportation based on ocean and air transportation; and the research on national security and maritime safety on china.