Port of Tianjin - History

History

The lower course and estuary of the Haihe is the main stem of a large navigable basin, as well as the westernmost seashore of the North China Plain, and there have been major ports on the area at least since the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The river port at the junction of the Grand Canal served as both an inland port and seaport supplying the Northeast border of various Chinese states, and since 1153, it was the critical supply hub for what is now Beijing.

However, it was not until after the conclusion of the Second Opium War in 1860 that the port of Tanggu became an important transshipment center, allowing oceangoing ships to lighter their cargoes in order to cross the very shallow sandbar barring the entrance to Haihe, the Taku Bar (大沽坝 - the name of this barrier was often used by foreign powers to refer to the entire port). After the Boxer Rebellion, the whole of Tanggu came under foreign occupation, and those foreign powers developed an extensive network of quays on the riverside.

The capacity of the Tanggu and Tianjin river port was limited, and so the Japanese occupation forces started in 1940 the construction of the Tanggu Xingang seaport (later the Tianjin Xingang port) outside the river estuary. By the end of the war, the new port was incomplete, and damage during the Chinese Civil War left it unusable by the time of its capture in 1949.

The Communists reconstructed the Tanggu New Port slowly, and on 17 October 1952, the Port reopened for traffic. At the time, the main channel was dredged to 6 m depth, could handle ships of up to 7,000 DWT and had an annual throughput of only 800,000 tonnes -less than 1/500 of present capacity. The Port remained small throughout the Maoist era, although it pioneered the first container routes and dedicated container terminal in China.

The export boom that followed the post-1979 Reform and Opening period put enormous pressure on the rickety port infrastructure of China. Congestion became serious enough to force reform by the central government: in 1 June 1984, the Port of Tianjin was transferred from direct control of the Ministry of Communications to a "dual" system of shared central and local control.

Production then increased in leaps and bounds. In 1988 throughput passed the 20 million tonnes milestone, and in the ten years from 1993, annual throughput growth averaged 10 million tonnes every year. In December 2001, the Port was the first port in North China to reach the 100 million tonnes mark, in 2004 it reached 200 million tonnes, in 2007 300 million tonnes and in 2010 400 million tonnes. The container handling capacity of the port increased from 0.4 million TEU in 1992, to 2.4 million TEU in 2002, 7.1 million TEU in 2007, and more than 10 million TEU in 2010.

The structure of the Port also changed. In 1992, Tianjin Port Storage and Transportation Company was made into a joint stock company under the full ownership of the Tianjin Port Bureau. In 1996, it was converted into the Tianjin Port Holdings Company (TPC) and listed in the Shanghai stock market. In 1997, Tianjin Development Holdings, which owned the container-handling assets of the Port, was listed in Hong Kong. Its port assets were later spun out as the Tianjin Port Development Company (TPD) and listed in the Hong Kong exchange in 2006.

The PTA delayed corporatization to steer the passing of the 11th five year development plan for the port. The transition was only completed on 3 June 2004, when the PTA became the last major Port Authority in China to become a corporation: the Tianjin Port (Group) Company (天津港(集团)有限公司, or TPG by its English acronym).

The financial tsunami of 2008 hit Chinese ports particularly hard, as they depended heavily on foreign trade flows. The Tianjin Port did better than average due to its diversification: while container business plummeted, bulk trade (in particular iron ore) remained strong. Nevertheless, the crisis hit profits hard, and it convinced the Tianjin government to reorganize and streamline the structure of the Port, which they did in 2009 by having TPD (the smaller operator, but one with the useful foreign registration and access to foreign capital markets) take over TPC. Simultaneously, ownership of TPD was transferred from Tianjin Development Holdings (a subsidiary of the Tianjin Ministry of Commerce) to TPG. By the time the merger was concluded, on 4 February 2010, all operations in the Tianjin Port had been consolidated under TPG.