| Economic globalization relies on reliable and efficient container transport to carry goods around the world. After the opening-door policy of over30years, China has become the country which has the largest demand of container transport. Container ports in our country, essential nodes in the global container transport network, have become more and more important among the world ports. However, after the world economic crisis in2008, the development of world container transport has slowed down dramatically. With the weakening external demand, economic structural adjustment in China and new trends facing the shipping and port companies, competition between ports, especially ports in the same region face ever-tensing rivalry.The paper focuses on competition between two container ports in a region. Generalized Transport Cost Model including price cost, time cost and carbon emission cost is established to decide the initial hinterland of each ports, telling the superior one and the inferior one. As the liner companies has an advantage over the ports they call, gains of the liner company, the superior port and inferior port are calculated under three scenarios, i.e. trunk liner companies only calling the superior port, calling both ports with feeder services in the network, and calling both ports in order. Sub-game Refined Nash Equilibrium is figured out under each complete information dynamic games. The games are enriched by whether there are governmental subsidies, whether the carbon emission costs are calculated and whether the ports employ pricing strategies. Competition between Tianjin Port and Huanghua Port is used as the examining case. It is found out that, under all scenarios, Huanghua Port is not suitable to invest container terminals in that it does not attract sufficient containers to provide feeder services. Several suggestions are given to promote the benign co-competition between container ports in China, hoping to provide some guidance to the port companies. |
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