General Sun Jiakang of COSCO Container Lines Company Limited (COSCON) said more and more manufacturers were moving from Chinese coastal areas to inland provinces due to lower costs. Therefore, the group is expanding business to China’s inland area along with Yangtze River. COSCON intends to raise container shipping volume by 25% in Yangtze River this year.

Beijing is considering foreign investments on Yangtze River shipping. However, according to current Chinese law, foreign shipping lines are not allowed to directly participate in Chinese coastal and inland shipping business.

Regarding Shanghai’s ambition on international shipping center, Sun Jiakang expressed his practical attitude. COSCON removed headquarter to Shanghai ten years ago. At present the container capacity of Shanghai port took about 25% of global share but that’s not enough.

‘We ordered over 50 boxships during 2005 to 2008 but none of them was supported by local financial institutes. As a result, we had to turn to overseas partners’, said Sun.

‘Currently, Chinese local banks don’t know how to do shipping finance while foreign branches in China are not allowed to do it. Obviously Shanghai has a long way to go,’ added Sun.

Sun estimated the talent gap of Shanghai covering shipping finance register, insurance and broker was around 40,000 to 50,000 persons.