China plans to add two new port "clusters" to its existing three surrounding Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tianjin, the Ministry of Communications announced.

The two additional port groups are located on the mainland side of the Taiwan Straits in southern Fujian, and in Hainan and southern Guangdong, China Daily quoted Communications Minister Li Shenglin as saying.

The plan is part of an effort to match the national 2006-2010 social and economic development program, Li said.

The southeastern port cluster would be built around its centre of Xiamen, a business centre of Fujian Province joined by Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Putian and Zhangzhou.

Zhangzhou will serve as a destination for China's import of crude oil and natural gas, and all others will be mainly handling containers.

The Fujian port blueprint is part of the central government's scheme of the Western Shore Economic Zone of the Taiwan Straits. It was designed to help develop economic ties between the mainland and Taiwan.

Li said this would anticipate the "mainland-Taiwan free trade relations" that, although there had been little progress so far, would benefit business communities on both sides of the Straits.

In the port cluster around Hainan and southern Guangdong, Zhanjiang, Fangcheng and Haikou will form a system of container transportation.

Zhanjiang, Haikou and other ports will also serve as places to download and reserve imported crude oil and natural gas. And Zhanjiang, Fangcheng and Basuo have been designed to become ports to import mineral resources.

Passenger transport infrastructures will be improved in Zhanjiang, Haikou and Sanya in the coming five years, according to the national program.

Li said the newly drafted port development plan was aimed at "expanding the transportation capacity of the Chinese coast to match the economy's fast growth."

He forecast that China's ocean cargo handling capacity will rise from 3.8 billion tons in 2005 to 5 billion tons in 2010, and its coastal throughput of containers, as measured in TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit), will grow from 74.41 million in 2005 to 130 million in 2010.

Source: Xinhua