Published : 17/04/2024
Qingdao Port in Shandong Province is one of the largest comprehensive ports in the world, with its container throughput breaking 700 million tonnes in 2023, ranking fourth globally.
Qingdao Port was initially just a barren beach covered in sand and gravel. However, it has undergone tremendous changes in just over 40 years of reform and opening-up.
So, what has exactly happened?
Qingdao Port was underdeveloped back then
In the early years of the New China, Qingdao Port was awaiting development. The entire port only had 6 small piers, and almost all piers had problems like foundation sinking and wall slanting.
At that time, the throughput of Qingdao Port was only 720 thousand tonnes.
After a full recovery period and continuous renovations, by the end of the 1980s, which marked the beginning of the reform and opening-up, Qingdao Port was one of China's five major foreign trade ports, but the annual throughput was still only over 30 million tonnes.
The development space of the Dagang port area in Qingdao Port was quite small, and it could only handle around 50,000-tonne ore carriers.
At the same time, the capacity of the port's berth was severely insufficient, which often led to a backlog of cargoes.
Opportunities came with Qingdao being listed as open coastal city
The turning point came in 1984, when Qingdao became one of the 14 coastal open cities in China, and Qingdao Port encountered a once-in-a-lifetime development opportunity.
Subsequently, in 1987, during the country's "7th Five-Year Plan" period, the key port projects with the largest one-off investment, Qianwan Phase I, was started in Qianwan Village, marking the beginning of the largest port construction in the history of Qingdao Port.
This project caused a "qualitative change" in the scale of Qingdao Port.
From this point on, 6 major projects and 8 major piers such as the second phase of the Huangdao Crude Oil Pier project, the first phase of the Qianwan Port project, and the third berth of the second phase of Qianwan Port, have been successively completed.
Entering the 21st century, Qingdao City blew the horn of "marching into the West Coast", vigorously advancing the construction of the Qianwan Port Region.
Qingdao Port finally spans across Jiaozhou Bay, breaking free of the constraints of limited throughput capacity of the old port, and stepping into the true "Qianwan Era".
In addition, the Dongjiakou Port area on the West Coast has also been developed, with liquid bulk piers, a general bulk pier area, container pier operation area, and logistics park all being built up, creating another comprehensive port area for the transportation of hinterland materials and coastal industries.
Construction promotes development of Qingdao Port
Thanks to continuous large-scale port construction, the capacity of Qingdao Port as a shipping hub has greatly upgraded.
In 2001, Qingdao Port's throughput exceeded 100 million tonnes for the first time.
Since then, it stood on the next hundred million tonnes level of stage every few years: surpassing 200 million tonnes in 2006, 300 million tonnes in 2008, 400 million tonnes in 2012, 500 million tonnes in 2016, and 600 million tonnes in 2019.
Starting from a barren beach, the Reform and Opening-up has made Qingdao Port grow and strengthen at an unprecedented speed and scale, gradually becoming a world-class large port integrating coal, minerals, containers, and crude oil.
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