Sitting at the point where the Yangtze River feeds into the Pacific, Shanghai is endowed with a natural edge in the global shipping trade. With the rise of China's manufacturing sector as the world's paramount supplier of goods over the past 30 years, the city's port has been elevated to stardom. Now, with Beijing's recent blessing of an ambitious dual-goal road map for the metropolis, Shanghai is aiming to transform into both a global shipping hub and a financial centre by 2020.
Despite the equal weighting given to both goals, shipping has not aroused much public interest because of the nature of the sector, and has easily been outshone by the more glamorous financial industry. On the ground, however, the shipping story has greater potential to become a blockbuster sooner.
The shipping hopes are built around the 30 billion yuan (HK$34.04 billion) Yangshan Port, which was completed last year after six years of construction. Though the port is still being trial tested and more works are in progress, deep-water berths capable of handling the world's biggest container ships have firmly stamped it on the global map. Yangshan, originally a cluster of deserted small islands south of Shanghai on the East China Sea, is already standing on the shoulders of giants.
Last year, despite the economic downturn from the second half, the Shanghai port with its advantage of being situated relatively close to downtown, topped the world in cargo throughput at 528 million tonnes and handled 28 million containers, second only to Singapore.
Already, a strategic shift to Yangshan is taking place, leveraging on the deeper berths which are also closer to the international shipping route, and will ensure Shanghai's long-term edge in the industry - provided the authorities get it right with the associated infrastructure and services.
To achieve those goals, insiders say, the administration has to take up a bigger co-ordinating role among the mainland's competing government agencies, take into account cargo owners' changing demands and be more innovative and liberal in serving shipping agencies, logistics companies and related industries.