Study On The Evaluation Index System Of The Competitiveness Of The International Shipping Centers Based On Set-Pair Analysis

From the 19th century to the mid-20th century, the rate of international trade growth of the whole world has been higher than the rate of economic growth. From the early 19th century to the early 1980s, the world total industry volume has increased by 13.5 times, while the world trade transport volume has increased by 16 times. China has actively joined the historical process of economic globalization since its reform and opening-up policy. According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, China GDP average annual growth has increased by 13.65%, and the average annual growth of foreign trade was as high as 31.11% between 1995 and 2004, which is far higher than the world average level. The sea transportation, as its commitment to the 80% to 90% of the total import and export freight, played the more important role in the China national economic and social development in this fast-growing economy process. Therefore, shipping industry, as a strategic industry, has its own stable position.According to the "11th Five-Year Plan", China will gradually build Shanghai, Tianjin and Dalian international shipping centers. Therefore, the study on the theory and practice related to the international shipping centers are of endless stream. However, summing up the work of previous scholars, there is almost no study on the international shipping center or port competitiveness evaluation index system. Also, the study of one system consisting of international shipping center or port with the competitiveness evaluation indicators is even less. The paper first applies Set-Pair Analysis method to process competitiveness evaluation index system of selected international shipping center or port, and then makes the comparison and analyses of the sample rank and the original result of the literature. The economic environment, natural environment, port capacity, set and release transport capacity, transportation service level, shipping market development degree, new technology adoption rate and government efficiency have been selected as the first order index, and New York, Rotterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and London six international shipping centers have been chosen as samples, followed by application of experts investigation method is used to achieve the international shipping center competitiveness third order index system and its initial target weight, and entropy-weight method is used to make the comprehensive calculation to get the final weight, and finally, Set-Pair Analysis method is applied to process the data to get the final result rank as New York, Rotterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and London. New York, Rotterdam and Singapore are of the same micro trend based on the analyses of this system, which is part of "international shipping center" with more ingredients and Shanghai, Hong Kong, London are of micro different trend, which is part of "international shipping center" with less composition of such reasons in accordance with all samples from the sample system and its differences with the set of anti-expression.