HONG KONG: The first chart shows Hong Kong’s container throughput is pretty much static at the level of 10 years ago while the throughput of ports in Guangdong has soared.
But even the flat line for Hong Kong does not tell you how fast the port business is passing us by. Transshipment now accounts for about 65 per cent of our throughput where 20 years ago it was less than 20 per cent.
Transshipment means taking a box off a ship calling from one port on the mainland and putting it on a ship bound for another port in the country. A Beijing-imposed rule says no box can travel between two mainland ports in a foreign-owned ship.
But Hong Kong does not count as a mainland port for the purpose of this rule and so it is just the right place to get around the rule. I wonder if some of this transshipment trade even consists of real boxes rather than just bits of paper that say they come with boxes.
Our port, in other words, is in the business of restoring a small measure of efficiency to shipping arrangements that Beijing has deliberately made inefficient. Let someone in Beijing see common sense and our throughput numbers will plummet immediately.
