The Changing Face of Hong Kong: A Mighty Port

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Europe

By CGTN’s Laura Schmitt, Fan Lu

When the British established themselves in Hong Kong in 1842, the city was a sleepy fishing village of around 7,000 people. Today, there are over seven million residents, making Hong Kong one the most densely populated cities in the world. It remains closely connected to the sea, and its strategic location pushed the city to grow rapidly over the 20th century to become the busiest port worldwide by the year 2000.

Most of Hong Kong’s shipping happens at the port of Kwai Tsing, which has been operational since 1972. Around 190,000 people work there, making up over five percent of Hong Kong's workforce.

Modern Terminals is the port’s second largest operator, and the oldest one which had the first purpose-built container-handling facility in 1972. It is a feat of human logistics and one of the most efficient ports in the world.

A view of port in Hong Kong. /CGTN Photo

Around 240 ships a month, and approximately five million containers a year are handled here. That’s about ten containers every minute.

Containers at the port are stacked to a breath-taking height of up to seven stories, as space is in rare supply. Shipping dates need to be considered during the stacking process. You wouldn’t want to see a container that meant to be transported this minute is at 15 meters away.

Hong Kong's iconic red cranes are controlled by equipment operators who pile up the containers. Their "offices" are located in glass cabins that dangle at a height of around 45 meters above the ground. Weather conditions are essential at this point, because containers can swing because of winds. Operations are active 24/7 (24 hours a day for seven days a week), unless services are suspended due to storms and typhoons.

Is Hong Kong's ports a never-ending success?

Ports of Hong Kong ranked in the top 3 busiest ports worldwide until 2012. /CGTN Photo

Ports in Hong Kong have been making headlines with the release of the latest throughput figures. In 2016, 19.6 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit, measurement for containers' cargo capacity) were shipped through Hong Kong, marking the first time in 14 years for the number to drop below 20 million. So are the glory days of Hong Kong's ports now relegated to just a page in history?

The sluggish global economy is one of the reasons for the slowdown. "We are very dependent on the global economy, so we see what’s going on in the global economy here before anybody else does. If we don’t see things moving around out there, then we know things are slowing down," says Peter Levesque, CEO of Modern Terminals.

Another reason is increased competition from the Chinese mainland. Now ranking at number five, Hong Kong's port, over the last decade, was surpassed by those in cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and most recently Ningbo in 2015.

However, despite the reducing figures, Levesque is not much worried about the future of Hong Kong’s ports.

“It’s still a highly efficient port area and quality attributes of Hong Kong, rule of law, ease of doing business, all those things make Hong Kong attractive for global companies to come set up.”

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