Abstract
With the establishment of the Belt and Road national strategy, Quanzhou Port is a significant development opportunity. Quanzhou Port is the origin of the 21st century Maritime Silk Road and part of the Belt and Road, but as a pioneer project of the Maritime Silk Road and the main port in the Belt and Road strategy, its development has encountered some challenges and problems. Hence, this paper aims to evaluate the competitiveness of Quanzhou Port based on the criteria selected by experts and corresponding improvement suggestions are put forward for its weaknesses. Using fuzzy-AHP and ELECTRE III, port competitiveness is evaluated according to the total weights obtained based on the different criteria used. The key criteria consist of six factors (port size, port location, hinterland economy, port costs, operations management and growth potential) that are divided into 18 sub-criteria. Five competing ports were selected with respect to geographical proximity. The order of ranking according to ELECTRE III are as follows: Kaohsiung Port, Xiamen Port, Fuzhou Port, Taichug Port and Quanzhou Port. The findings show that the port of Quanzhou appears last in the ordering sequence, resulting in a need for integrative approaches to promote its competitiveness. Compared with competitive ports, Quanzhou Port has relatively weak overall infrastructure and relatively high port costs, which leads to a lack of obvious flow of port materials and a decrease in professional unloading services. Particularly in hinterland port economies, the industrial structure is extensive and backward. Hence, the question of how to achieve a green transformation of the manufacturing industry will be important for Quanzhou Port. This paper points out directions for the future development of Quanzhou Port and applies comprehensive evaluation methods, namely fuzzy-AHP and ELECTRE III.
Highlights
Ports are fundamental transport links in supply chain networks, and important links for the development of the national economy and for changing the structure of world shipping
Fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied based on the obtained responses to derive the weight of the evaluation criteria
The results of this study are as follows: the growth potential was 27.10%, the port location was 25.4%, the hinterland economy was 23.3%, the operation management was 16.2%, the port size was 6.7% and the port cost was 1.3%
Summary
Ports are fundamental transport links in supply chain networks, and important links for the development of the national economy and for changing the structure of world shipping. Ports are considered to be an important factor in the development of national industries and the economic vitality of the country and need the strong support of national policy [2]. Proposed and led by China, the Belt and Road initiative involves massive infrastructure investments and ambitious plans to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade in Eurasia and Africa. Beijing has already committed around 300 billion dollars for infrastructure and trade financing in the coming years, including 40 billion dollars for the “Silk Road Fund” and initial capital of 50 billion dollars for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), initiated by China [3]
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