As China has joined the WTO, its service trade is gradually opened up, international trade is heating up, especially as global manufacturing center shifts to China the potential energy of China's logistic market is rapidly released catching the attention of international logistics giants.

On May 10 German Hamburg port established friendship relations with Shanghai Port. The two ports are to strengthen cooperation in the areas of port planning, management, development and information technology. On the same day DHL under Deutsche Post World Net started the sea-air shipping logistics center in Pudong Waigaoqiao free trade zone. With a floor area of 11,500 square meters it is the biggest logistics facility in Waigaoqiao.

Hamburg port and DHL are by no means the only ones leaning toward the Chinese logistics market. On the 2004 China International Logistics, Communication and Distant Information Processing Expo opened recently in Shanghai, 214 Chinese and overseas logistics companies from 27 countries and regions took part in it. International exhibitors made up more than 65 percent of the participants. The exhibition covered four fields of the industrial chain of logistics transportation, that is, logistics, distant information processing, internal transportation task and material portage and passenger-freight transportation. Exhibitors included Deutsche Post World Net, Schenker, German Magnetic Levitation Group, Hamburg Port, Bremen Port, Kerry Logistics, Emirates Airline, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Atlantic Airlines, British Airways as well as airports from Munich, Paris, Vancouver and Madrid.

According to statistics container throughput of Chinese ports approached 50 million in 2003 increasing 32 percent over the previous year and surpassing the US as the largest worldwide. It has estimated that by 2010 world sea-shipping freight would approach 7 billion tons, of which Chinese ports would account for about 4 billion tons of freight throughput and 0.11 billion standard-container throughput.

Detthold Aden, chairperson of Munich Logistics, Communications and Distant Information Processing Expo Consulting Committee, said "globalization is the most powerful driving force of logistics industry".

Authoritative data show that as for now the Chinese market has nearly 510,000 logistics companies. Among them foreign-invested companies make up 0.13 percent, that is, 680 companies who take 8 percent of the market share - about $6.5 billion.

Dai Dingyi, deputy president of China Logistics Alliance Network, said Chinese logistics companies have problems such as "existing in large number, being small, scattered and weak". They are in urgent need of growing big and strong in the cooperation and competition with international logistics giants; of improving supply chain and service network in order to form their own brand and core competence.

By People's Daily Online