Ningbo, Zhoushan Port Combination Development Strategy

The world shipping industry has stepped into a historical new era of fast-developing since the latter part of 2003. Because of the lacking of real international hub port in Yangtze River Delta, large amount of container cargos are exported from China continent through the transit ports in its neighboring countries and regions. In the scenario of international economy development, all the nations are moving fast in setting up trade policies for containerization and port expansion projects, and the larger size of vessels and alliance of shipping companies make the terminal operators to form alliance with their competitors as a co-operative strategy, so as to increase market power. At the same time, the economy globalization is gradually integrating the resources in the whole world, and making new challenges to the traditional transportation organizations, operation methods and ways of service offerings.Ningbo Port and Zhoushan Port, the two main ports in Zhejiang Province, are the two natural deep-water ports in Asia, are the important south wing of Shanghai Maritime Center. Taking a model of two hub ports for Shanghai Maritime Center, with the north part of Zhoushan and Shanghai as the north hub, and the south part of Zhoushan and Beilun as the south hub, will surely advance the south hub-combined port of Ningbo-Zhoushan to develop at fast speed in this good chance for shipping industry, so as to improve the competence of Shanghai Maritime Center and ensure the final victory in the severe competition in the Asian-Pacific shipping industry.This dissertation takes the combination of Ningbo Port and Zhoushan Port as the object for studying, with an objective to identify the strategy for the combined development of the two ports. With the perspective of the basic theory of transportation, port economy and regional development, the functions of port in transportation net and regional economy development are reviewed. Then the influence from transportation technology and operation methods is analyzed, and the new function of modern port is discussed. With the theoretical analysis of the regionalization of world ports and reviewing the successful models of regional port combination in the world, some interesting conclusion is derived from the experiences of other nations, such as thesupporting policies for port combination. Detail analysis is done on the present construction and operation, social and natural resources of Ningbo and Zhoushan ports. This dissertation traces the characteristics and the trends of the economy development of the direct and indirect hinterlands, their transportation request, and the necessity and possibility of combined development and resources integration of the two ports. On the basis of the theoretical and practical analysis, the dissertation identifies the strategic objective of the two ports combination, functional positioning and resources integration plan, and then makes suggestions of operation model for port integration, building integrated worknet of transportation and supporting policies for Ningbo-Zhoushan port combination.