In recent years, the construction of smart ports in China has been steadily advancing, with approximately 60 automated terminals already built. Both the number of completed and under-construction automated terminals rank first in the world.
The intelligent transformation of ports helps reduce costs, improve quality, and increase efficiency in transportation and logistics. Taking Shanghai Port, the world’s largest container port, as an example, ship stowage planning previously required 4 hours. With the development and application of information technology, it now takes only about 5 minutes to complete the stowage planning for a ship.
Ports still have significant potential for advancing to a higher level of intelligence. It should be noted that constraints on port operational efficiency are not only the speed of single-point loading and unloading but also include information coordination before and after vessel berthing, the level of coordination in sea-rail intermodal transport, and the smoothness of document flow. Moving towards the “16th Five-Year Plan” period and building modern infrastructure, ports should accelerate the transition from smart port areas to smart sea-rail hubs. In terms of hardware, efficiency of sea-rail intermodal transport channels should be enhanced through designs such as integrated railway-in-port yards and specialized /unloading and marshalling equipment. In terms of software, efforts should be accelerated to promote the “single document system” and “single container system” for multimodal transport, break down barriers to cross-departmental data interconnection and coordinated scheduling, and build a hub network with lower costs, higher reliability, and stronger resilience by shifting from speeding up single-point operations to achieving systemic coordination across the entire chain.
(Author is a professor at the Shipping Economics and Management School of Dalian Maritime University, interviewed and compiled by our reporter Han Xin)
People’s Daily (November 03, 2025, Page 03)
