Agencies
China’s Yangtze River, the longest waterway in Asia – and one of the busiest – has long suffered from choke points that hinder transport efficiency, and now calls are growing for major improvements to the artery to help boost the local economies that it connects.
Shipping industry professionals, experts and local officials from four provinces and a municipality along the river – Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Shaanxi – gathered in Chongqing earlier this month to discuss “high-quality” shipping development in the upper Yangtze region.
Since their first forum in 2021, the five regions have discussed cooperation on shipping data, emergency river rescues and interprovincial regulations.
More than 33 companies have signed contracts to collaborate on river tourism, new routes for container ships, shipbuilding and general water transport.The four provinces and the municipality of Chongqing are key to China’s “Go West” plan to boost development in its western and central regions.
The forum has also tried to solve ongoing problems that hamper shipping along the key transport route, which have worsened, according to the experts at this year’s forum.
Frequent traffic jams occur as boats pass by the Three Gorges Dam, and travel on important tributaries like the Wu, Jialing and Min rivers continues to be impeded. Those waterways lack optimal connections to the main body of water body, news portal The Paper reported, citing experts at the forum.
Last year, the average waiting time for cargo ships to pass through the locks of the Three Gorges Dam stretched to 12 days due to a lack of capacity, according to the Southwest China Chapter of the European Union Chamber of Commerce.
“The significant increase in waiting time has led to an uptick in transport costs and difficulties in shipping companies’ operations, as well as more pollution in the area.
It had a negative impact on supply chains, especially as delays in the delivery of goods such as fuel and raw materials passing through the locks disrupted industrial production,” the chapter told the Post.“Enhancing the shipping capacity of the Yangtze River’s upper region will be imperative for advancing the regional development of Sichuan and Chongqing.”Experts at this month’s forum said procedures for ships to pass locks should be simplified. Ships hauling aviation oil, iron ore, steel, grain and other essential materials should be given priority, and governments should support the construction of inland shipping, they added.
The sustained emphasis on improved river transport efficiency on the Yangtze comes down to costs, according to Zhao Jian, director of Beijing Jiaotong University’s urbanisation research centre.
“This is the cheapest way, especially for large quantities of cargo,” Zhao told the Post. “The ships usually transport cargo at ports, which will also be beneficial for these cities as they develop the ‘port economy’.”
The chamber also said the navigation capacity of the Yangtze River shipping channel affected the quality of sea access for the central and western regions, as well as their connections to international trade routes.
Measures to improve the efficiency of cargo transport and upgrade links between land and water along the Yangtze River would boost efforts to open up central and western China, they said.
Like the Mississippi River in the United States, the Yangtze consists of vast watersheds and deltas, and has long been considered China’s “highway on the water”, a key contributor to the country’s economy.
According to official statistics, cargo throughput at Yangtze River ports last year rose by 8 per cent from 2022 to 3.8 billion tonnes, while tourists made 1.38 million trips on the river between provinces, an increase of more than 26 per cent compared to 2022.
The rapid growth of shipping on the Yangtze River can be credited to its much lower costs, compared to rail or air, Zhang Hongbin, an analyst at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, wrote in an article for China Review News in January.
“Because of its high efficiency, the Yangtze River has accounted for 80 per cent of China’s mineral ore shipping, 80 per cent of coal and 70 per cent of crude,” he said.
However, further transport development has been stalled by the river’s choke points, such as the heights of some bridges, including near the eastern city of Nanjing. He said that bridges built to a height of 24 metres (79 feet) in the 1950s were not compatible with today’s larger ships.
Efforts have been made to fix some of the choke points. In 2017, a government project was launched to dredge a major section of the river from the city of Yichang in Hubei province through Wuhan to Anqing in Anhui province.
