广州将建设一个国际港口

For 2000 years, Guangzhou has functioned as a shipment hub due to its geographic merits. It's widely recognized as a bond between Chinese commodities and its culture, and East Asian and Persian Gulf countries.

In accordance with the construction of the 21st century Maritime Silk Road, and to meet international trade demand four main harbours in Guangzhou have been put under expansion plans.

Seven shipping routes have been opened this year for Nansha Port, one of the four main harbours.

Song Xiaoming is the vice manager of the project.

"The newly opened seven shipment routes are designed for the Road and Belt Initiative. In actuality, the Nansha Port performs better with lanes to Africa, boasting 19 shipment routes. "

Statistics show that by the end of May the four harbours had 147 shipping lines. 59 of them are bound for Europe, America, East Asia, Africa, Middle East and Australia.
 
Chen Siyong, director of the Guangzhou Shipping Exchange, says the city has potential to become a major shipment hub.

"Guangzhou has comprehensive facilities. It ranks in the top 5 nationally and top 6 internationally in terms of throughput. Every year, 50 million tons of cargo is shipped from Guangzhou ports."

But Chen adds that there is still a lot of work to do to improve the city's "software" as a harbor.

Currently, the city is trying to establish a shipping price index, a shipping financial investment platform and a shipping billing platform.

Song Xiaoming believes the efforts will make Guangzhou different from other major harbors like London and Singapore.

"For London and New York, the sheer amount of cargo isn't large. New York has five million tons of cargo shipments whereas London has 2 million. But because of a great number of shipment transactions and irregular contract shipping, the buisness volume is considerable. That makes it a higher level of shipment center. For Hongkong and Singapore, the amount of transacted cargo is large, so these harbours are "transaction type." I think that what makes Nansha Port different from them is that Nansha is the crux mainland as well as of the international market. It also serves the pan Pearl River Delta too."

According to a plan of Guangzhou Harbour Bureau, by 2030, the city will be an international harbour with fully functioning shipment service system; on that is modern, efficient, and environmentally-friendly.

For CRI, I'm Guo Yan.