The Forecasting Science Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been forecasting and analyzing the container throughput of the world's top 20 ports and their ranking for many years, which reflects the overall development of world trade and the development of trade in different regions to a certain extent.

The reporter recently learned from Xie Gang, a professor at the Forecast Science Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the World Port Forecast Research Group, that the Forecast Report of the Global Top20 Container Ports in 2021 has been completed by stages. The current research shows that most of the world's ports have recovered to the level before the epidemic. The COVID-19 outbreak will also have an uncertain short-term impact on some ports, but the impact will be small.

According to the current report, China has nine of the world's top 20 container ports, and seven of them are among the top 10. The top 10 ports are Shanghai, Singapore, Ningbo Zhoushan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Busan, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Rotterdam in order of ranking. The port of Xiamen ranked 14th and the port of Kaohsiung 16th.

The container throughput of Shanghai Port is expected to be 456 ~46 million TEU (TEU) in 2021, which is far ahead and maintains a fast growth rate. It is expected to increase by 4.8% to 5.7% year on year. In the future, Shanghai Port will keep the first place for a long time. The second-ranked port of Singapore is expected to handle 38 million to 38.3 million TEU in 2021, with year-on-year growth of 3.1% to ~3.9%.

As China took the lead in controlling the epidemic and quickly resumed work and production, it has boosted the recovery growth of the container transport industry in 2021. Compared with 2020, the growth rate of China's port container throughput has increased to a large extent. In addition, the demand for container transport services at most ports in China will increase in 2021, especially at Zhoushan Ningbo, Shenzhen and Tianjin Port. It is estimated that the container throughput will increase by 8.2% to 10.0%, 9.3% to 11.2% and 9.0% to 10.6%, respectively, in 2021. According to the model calculation results, the development of China's container transport is still the center of gravity and foundation of the global stable development.

The reporter noted that the world's top 20 container ports are concentrated in East Asia, Europe and North America. In West Asia, only Dubai's Jebel Ali port in the United Arab Emirates ranked 11th. South America, Africa and Oceania did not make the list.

At the present stage, the report also shows that according to regional analysis, container throughput of most ports in the world will show a recovery trend of rise, except for Kaohsiung Port in Asia, which maintains a negative growth.

On the whole, it is estimated that the world's top 20 container ports in 2021 will not change much from that in 2020. The specific changes in port ranking are as follows: Port of Los Angeles of the United States will surpass Port of Kaohsiung of China to rank 16th in the world, while Port of Kaohsiung will drop to 17th; The US port of Long Beach will overtake the port of Hamburg, Germany, to rank 18th in the world, while the port of Hamburg has slipped to 19th.