Research On Foreign Trade Container Generation Mechanism And Segmentation Of Port Hinterland In China

Container transportation in China has developed rapidly,and has experienced most stages of container growth cycle in a short period of more than 30 years.The development of container transportation in China shows a special development track.Port scale in China is much larger than the rest of the world,but in the face of global economic instability and pressure from domestic economic transformation,the demand growth for coastal container ports will decline significantly.At present,the coastal port groups characterized by shared hinterland,especially around the Bohai Sea,the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta port group.Each port homogenization degree is relatively high and the competition for container cargo sources is increasingly fierce.In order to improve their own competitiveness,coastal ports increased investment and construction,resulting in a series of problems,such as repeated construction,excessive expansion,overcapacity and so on.The ports and shipping enterprises need meticulous management to reduce the cost and improve competitiveness.It is of great significance for the overall development of container transportation and the optimization of port layout to exploration of container formation mechanism and hinterland segmentation,judge the development stage of China’s container transportation and reasonably determine the relationship between port and hinterland.The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:(1)Summarized the regularity of the relationship between container formation and economic development.Based on the historical data of container throughput and GDP in typical economies of the world,the regularity of the relationship between container transportation and economic development stage was explored from the perspectives of container generation volume and container generation density.The relationship between container generation and economic development stage in China is basically in line with the general development law of middle-income countries.The elasticity of GDP to container throughput is low and the marginal output is high.But the relationship between container generation density and economic development stage shows particularity,and the generation density begins to decline in middle income countries.(2)By means of trend analysis and circle analysis,the study discussed the spatial distribution characteristics of China’s foreign trade containers.The results of study on distribution characteristics show that foreign trade container generation has obvious sea-approach distribution pattern which rapidly declines from east to west side.The land area and container generation ratio of 51 coastal prefecture-level cities versus nationwide are 4.56%and 65.4%,this ratio for prefecture-level cities within 350km of coastline are 16.23%and 94.12%,this ratio other cities are 83.77%and 6%.Future research priorities should be placed on the areas which are within 350km of coastline.This can be important reference for container port hinterland division,port layout and construction of port transportation system.(3)By means of mathematical statistics and spatial statistical analysis,this study measured the spatial difference of China’s foreign trade container.The results showed that foreign trade container generation has obvious imbalance characteristics;there were more and more absolute differences and smaller relative differences.Significant hot-spot areas included:Shandong Peninsula,Yangtze River Delta,the west coast of the Taiwan Straits and the Pearl River Delta region;significant cold-spot areas were most places in western region and cities in north-eastern region.(4)By using dynamic panel data model and geographical weighted regression model,this study analyzed the influencing factors of foreign trade container generation at provincial level and prefectural level in China.The results showed that there were significant regional differences in the influence of each factor on the generation of foreign trade container.The regional differences of different influencing factors were also different.(5)By using the Membership-Huff Model,this study segmented the hinterland of the main foreign trade container port.Firstly,on the basis of identifying China’s main container transport hinterland,133 prefecture-level cities within the coastal 350km were selected as the hinterland division objects.Secondly,the study selected three first level indexes of port hardware level,competitiveness level of port route and port container throughput level,and used the projection pursuit evaluation model to evaluate the influence of the main foreign trade container ports.Finally,the hinterland of the main coast foreign trade container ports was divided by using the Membership-Huff Model.