Research On Port Cooperative Competitiveness Of Ports Along The Northeast Passage Of The Arctic

The Northeast Passage is the eastern part of the Arctic route,which is the shortest maritime transport corridor connecting Europe and East Asia considered as two major international markets.Compared to the Northwest Passage,countries along the Northeast Passage shows stronger intention to develop the passage.Port construction is the most important part of the development of the Northeast Passage.However,the infrastructure of the Northeast Passage's ports is far behind other ports,which caused that most large ships cannot be docked and the quality of port service is not satisfactory enough.The current situation cannot meet the freight demand when the passage opens.Therefore,port cooperation becomes an effective method to enhance the overall level of the Northeast Passage.China is a Great Arctic country locating at the Northeast Passage extension line,the distance advantage of the Northeast Passage can not only save substantial transportation cost of overseas trade,but also help to ease our problem that our energy import channel is single and energy structure is unreasonable since the Arctic area is rich in oil and gas resources.Therefore,China has a lot of demand for this passage and China can improve the participation of China's Arctic route development,effectively enhance our influence in the Arctic region through port cooperation with other Arctic countries.Under the background,the paper selected eight ports along the coast of the Northeast Passage including Murmansk Port,Arkhangelsk Port,Tiksi Port,Dikson Port,Pevek Port,Providensky Port,Narvik Port and Reykjavik Port as research targets.Based on the port competitiveness,this paper constructs the index system of port cooperation competitiveness of the Northeast Passage,then after considering the problem in the framework of multi-attribute decision-making issues,the paper uses a combined method including PCA(Principal Component Analysis),DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis)and Entropy Weight-TOPSIS(Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution)to objectively evaluate the cooperative competitiveness of these eight ports from different countries.In other words,the paper evaluates their potential for cooperation.The result shows that Russia's Murmansk Port has obvious advantages above others and should be given priority as our partner.Other ports perform differently.Finally,this paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions on the cooperation between China and countries along the Northeast Passage for the relevant decision-makers' reference.