The volume of freight transported via waterway last year increased by 3.8 per cent compared with 2021.
The container throughput at ports increased by 4.7 per cent last year, and the volume of rail-water multimodal transport routes increased by 16 per cent year on year (YoY).
"By the end of last year, the Chinese fleet reached a carrying capacity of 370 million deadweight tons, double the volume of 10 years ago," vice transport minister Fu Xuyin told a forum.
The country now ranks second in the world in terms of fleet carrying capacity after Greece, he was quoted as saying by a state-controlled media outlet.
About 95 per cent of Chinese cargo shipments in global trade are handled via ocean freight.
Chinese ports handled about 15.7 billion metric tonnes of cargo last year—up by 33 per cent from the 2012 figure—and nearly 300 million containers—an increase of 56 per cent during the same period, he noted.
By the end of last year, China was home to over 1.9 million registered sailors, up by 5 per cent over the 2021 figure and more than that of any other country in the world, another forum was told on the day. A million of them are river ship sailors, and the rest are mariners.
Last year, 127,000 Chinese sailors worked on foreign vessels.
ALCHEMPro News Desk (DS)
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