The rise of Chinese ports and its impact on major ports in East Asia

Abstract

The economic rise of China and its implications for the rest of the world are well discussed in the literature. However, the literature on the rise of Chinese ports and how they could impact the ports in East Asia is very limited. Moreover, although there are few studies on the effect of Chinese port growth on the ports in East Asia, these are theoretical, descriptive or do not cover all major ports in China and East Asia. In this light, the objective of this article is to fill this gap by empirically investigating how the growth of Chinese ports has affected the major ports in East Asia and in particular the ports of Singapore, Pusan, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Keelung, Kobe, Tokyo and Yokohama. Co-integration tests are employed to determine the long-term nature of the impact and error correction models are constructed to determine any short-run impacts, using time series data on container throughputs for the period of 1980–2010. The results show that the impacts have been varied, with ports of Singapore, Hong Kong, Pusan and the main Japanese ports losing the bulk of their container business to mainland Chinese ports.