Reported by Alex 2023-06-27
From January to April of 2023, the cargo volume of Chinese ports was 5278.4 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%; the container throughput of Chinese ports was 95.4 million TEU, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%. The chart below shows the cargo throughput and container throughput data of the twelve major ports in China.
Source: Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China
The ports in China have also reported over 5.2 billion tonnes of cargo between January and April of 2023, representing a rise of 7.6% compared with the same period last year.
However, we must remember that in April last year some Chinese ports were closed due to Covid measures. A more meaningful comparison is between the first 4 months of 2023 (total exports of 19.5 million teu) and the same period of 2022 (total exports of 20.0 million), which tells us that China is basically no longer growing its container exports. The numbers were gathered by Drewry’s China-based port consultants.
Trade tensions between China and the US, consumer demand declines in both the US and Europe (when compared with the Covid era of consuming more durable goods) and decisions by manufacturers to diversify production locations away from China all contributed to the lower demand for exports from China.
In fact, 2021 was the only recent year of double-digit growth in Chinese container exports – a year where exports were artificially inflated by Covid-related government payments and lifestyle changes.
Additional leading indicators, such as China’s Purchasing Managers Index in April and May decrease continuously from the previous month, below the threshold, and the prosperity level of the manufacturing industry slightly fell that point to a further contraction in manufacturing in this country later this year.
In Drewry’s view, China is not experiencing a sustained free fall in container traffic, an impression that was given when 2H22 data was available (see chart), but 2023 will be a second year of near-zero growth in China’s container exports. Last year saw a small decline in exports.
In the latest Drewry Container Forecaster (May), we forecast annual growth in total Chinese port traffic (including exports, imports and empties) of just 1% in 2023. This is also a far cry from the years of 30% annual growth in the 1990s and 2000s.
