Prediction on freight function structure of China’s coastal ports under the Polar Silk Road: a cargo attraction potential perspective

ABSTRACT

The Polar Silk Road (PSR) will open up China’s maritime trade route through the Arctic to Northwest Europe and affect the freight function structure of China’s coastal ports. This study evaluates ports’ freight capacity and predicts the freight function structure of China’s coastal ports under the PSR from four dimensions, namely, comprehensive/professional, function status, function scale and function hierarchy. The freight function structure is also compared with the current one. Results show that the ports in the Bohai Rim and Yangtze River Delta will have more diversified development and become the main force of the port system under the PSR. Coal will have an important position in most ports’ cargo transportation under the PSR. The PSR will bring great economic development opportunities to the northern ports because of the influence of the sea route distance. The port function hierarchy is more obvious under the PSR, and the medium-sized ports are most affected by the PSR. We classify coastal portsaccording to the freight scale and freight function. An adaptive proposal for the government’s port function planning is proposed in the conclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Polar Silk Road
• China’s coastal ports
• maritime trade
• cargo attraction potential
• freight function structure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program Funding under Grant [2017YFC1405600]; Major projects of the National Social Science Fund under Grant [18ZDA207]; National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant [13&ZD170]; and Key Scientific Research and Cultivation Project of Dalian Maritime University under Grant [3132019307]