[photopress:tianjinharbor_1.jpg,full,alignright]Just beyond China’s largest northern imports harbor, Tianjin Harbor, is an island formed from repossessed land. The concept started with the Dongjiang Bonded Harbor Area, set in Tianjin Harbor, which was established in 2002.
In August of 2006, China officially authorized ten square kilometers for the establishment to be China’s second official bonded harbor area, the largest one to date.
With the State Council’s permission, Tianjin’s Dongjiang Bonded Harbor Area will enjoy the same preferential policies as Shanghai’s Yangshan Bonded Harbor Area. Goods that enter the port will be bonded, and goods that leave the port to enter the mainland for sale will follow the same regulations as do normal imports.
Domestic products that enter the bonded area will be treated as exports and have the right to claim a tax rebate. Companies in the area, when doing business with each other, do not have to pay increment duties and sales taxes.
Dongjiang Bonded Harbor Area will have more privileges than Yangshan Bonded Harbor Area in that it will be experimenting with new customs and finance reforms and innovations, as well as developing offshore businesses.
To date, Dongjiang Bonded Harbor Area’s reclaimed area of land has already extended over thirteen square kilometers, and has used over 100 million cubic meters of what is best called mud which later becomes earth.
The port will start to operate at the end of the year with four square kilometers up and running as part of the closed port operations.
Dongjiang Bonded Harbor Area’s single-term project will focus on two areas: container terminals and logistics processing.
The container terminal, with an investment of RMB6.5 billion, is developing smoothly. Then, at the end of this year, six 100,000 ton container terminal berths will go into production. By that time, the logistics processing zone will be 400,000 square meters of construction.
All of which might sound a bit like accounting procedures taking over logistics. In fact, it is a way of making logistics smoother, easier to handle and, importantly, more profitable. Because of the size of the future plans one can make a guess that within, say, ten years, in world container traffic we will have Shanghai one, Tianjin two and the rest of the field some way back.
Source: People’s Daily Online
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