Research On The Evolution Of China’s Coastal Port System Facing The “Polar Silk Road”

With the obvious acceleration of global warming,the melting of the Arctic Ocean ice also accelerated.The melting Arctic Ocean will open up a new channel for commodity exchanges between the three continents of Asia,the United States and Europe.From then on,the contact between the two continents will be more convenient,rapid and safe.As a direct beneficiary of the opening of the Arctic route,Russia has been developing the northern sea channel under its jurisdiction to the greatest extent,and invited China to jointly build the“Polar Silk Road”.At present,the joint construction of the “Polar Silk Road” between China and Russia has been confirmed by China’s top leadership.Subsequent related projects are advancing in an orderly manner,and the potential of the “Polar Silk Road” is expected.China’s coastal ports are basically located along the “Polar Silk Road”.The development,construction and operation of the “Polar Silk Road” will open up China’s trade path with northwest Europe through the Arctic Ocean,facilitate regional trade exchanges,change the location conditions of China’s coastal ports and promote the evolution of China’s coastal port system.In this context,predicting and analyzing the evolution trend of China’s coastal port system facing the “Polar Silk Road” will be conducive to the rational positioning and layout of the coastal port system and promote the optimization and upgrading of the port system.Focusing on the above research ideas and purposes,the main contents of the evolution of the port system — freight function structure,freight spatial structure,hinterland and foreland have been paid close attention to,and the following work has been done:(1)This paper determines the important cargos for China’s maritime trade with northwest Europe through the “Polar Silk Road”,sets up the evolution scenario of freight function structure,defines the concept of port cargo attraction potential,constructs the port cargo attraction potential model,and forecasts and analyzes the evolution trend of freight function structure of China’s coastal port system facing the “Polar Silk Road” from four aspects: comprehensive / professional,port function status,port function scale and port function hierarchy.This paper divides the types of port freight function according to the characteristics of port freight function.The results show that the development of northern and central ports will be more diversified,and is expected to become the main force of cargo transportation through the “Polar Silk Road”.Coal will play an important role in the cargo transportation of most ports.The “Polar Silk Road” will bring greater economic development opportunities to the northern and central ports.The functional hierarchy of ports under the“Polar Silk Road” will be more obvious,and medium-sized ports will be most affected by the“Polar Silk Road”.(2)On the basis of determining the important goods for China’s maritime trade with northwest Europe through the “Polar Silk Road”,the evolution scenario of freight spatial structure is set up,the cargo attraction potential of the port is calculated by using the port cargo attraction potential model,and the evolution of freight spatial structure of China’s coastal port system facing the “Polar Silk Road” is analyzed.Based on the spatial clustering results,the freight spatial types of China’s coastal port system are divided.The results show that all kinds of cargos under the “Polar Silk Road” show the characteristics of spatial agglomeration,and the spatial differentiation between high value ports and low value ports is obvious.The local spatial pattern of northern and central ports tends to be high,while that of southern ports is the opposite.The northern and central coastal areas have a certain hierarchical structure system for the “Polar Silk Road”,including main and auxiliary hub ports,branch ports and feeding ports.The focus of China’s coastal port system structure is in the northern and central coastal areas.The comprehensive cargo flow aggregation capacity of large ports in the northern coastal areas is stronger than that in other areas.Coastal ports basically conform to the trend that the larger the freight scale is,the higher the comprehensive freight grade is.(3)Three scenarios are assumed to predict and analyze the evolution trend of the hinterland of China’s coastal port system facing the “Polar Silk Road”,and a Mixed Cross Nested Logit Model based on random utility theory is constructed to describe the shipper’s port selection process under the three scenarios.According to the shipper’s port selection results obtained by the model,the dominant hinterlands,probabilistic hinterlands and major competitive hinterlands of ports are divided,and the evolution trend of the hinterland of China’s coastal port system facing the “Polar Silk Road” is described.The empirical results are discussed from three aspects: Enlightenment,reasons and policy implications.The results show that cost,time,container throughput and navigation risk have a negative impact on shippers’ choice of ports,while liner frequency will have a positive impact.Under the influence of the “Polar Silk Road”,the hinterland of the northern port continues to expand,the hinterland of the central port first decreases and then increases,and the hinterland of the southern port continues to shrink.The hinterland of the northern port is most vulnerable to the change of the attribute of the “Polar Silk Road”.(4)This paper puts forward a complex network delineation method of port foreland,constructs the evolution model of port foreland network,and forecasts and analyzes the evolution trend of China’s coastal port system foreland network,port foreland and port country foreland facing the “Polar Silk Road”.The results show that in terms of inter country trade,GDP has a significant positive impact,shipping distance and common language have a significant negative impact.In addition to monetary freedom,free trade agreements,liner transport connectivity index,financial freedom,trade and transport related infrastructure index,exchange rate against the US dollar and tariff burden rate have a positive impact.By comparing and analyzing the network characteristics of evolutionary network and real network,the effectiveness of port foreland network evolution model is verified.The “Polar Silk Road” will reduce the network collectivization effect of the network port nodes from the sea to the foreland,improve the efficiency of maritime transportation,and the port scale distribution will be more balanced.The “Polar Silk Road” will bring opportunities for the development of some small and medium-sized ports.The importance of ports in northwest Europe to China will be raised,the status of ports in the southern hemisphere will decline,and ports along the Arctic Ocean will play an important role in China’s maritime trade.The “Polar Silk Road” will enhance the transportation efficiency between China’s coastal ports and other ports and countries.Among them,the shipping development of China’s northern ports will be greatly improved,and the southern ports will benefit relatively least.(5)By summarizing the above research results,it is concluded that the evolution trend of China’s coastal port system facing the “Polar Silk Road” is as follows: first,the trend of centralization is prominent,and all kinds of cargos show obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics.Second,the hierarchy of port development is strengthened.The focus of China’s coastal port system structure facing the “Polar Silk Road” is in the northern and central coastal areas,and the imbalance and hierarchy of port system development will be more obvious.Third,the maritime spatial connection will be strengthened.The “Polar Silk Road” will shorten the maritime spatial connection between China and other countries in the world as a whole and improve the efficiency of maritime trade between China and foreign markets.Fourth,the development trend of regionalization appears.The “Polar Silk Road” will promote the regionalization development process of China’s coastal port system with port economic activities as the core,cities as the main body and free trade as the basis.