Kwai Tsing port still important

There have been suggestions that Kwai Tsing Container Terminals is no longer needed. Some even suggest it would be better suited as a location for housing.

This might alleviate the city's housing shortage, but how would this affect Hong Kong's logistics industry which employs some 200,000 people?

The phenomenal growth of southern Chinese ports has led some to say that the Kwai Tsing port operation is a sunset industry. But the success of mainland ports does not preclude the success of our own. As well as retaining a sizable trucked import and export throughput, Hong Kong is well-positioned to handle international trans-shipment cargoes destined for the East and West as well as intra-Asia. Hong Kong port consolidates these cargoes for onward shipment to final destinations.

Rather than being in direct competition, Hong Kong and other Guangdong ports have a complementary relationship, in large part due to China's cabotage laws.

Much like the Jones Act in the US, cabotage laws in China prohibit foreign flagged vessels moving cargoes from one mainland coastal port to another.

Under the principle of "one country, two systems", Hong Kong has a unique advantage as these cargoes, originating from a port in the mainland, are allowed to be carried by a foreign flagged vessel to Hong Kong to be trans-shipped to a hub port in China for export.