Prediction of Cargo Flow Passing through Mouth of Yangtse River and Study of Imperativeness of Harness of Deep-Water Navigational Channel at Mouth of Yangtse River

摘要

The present development tendency of the international shipping industry is to speed up the progress of vessel enlargement and general cargo containerization. An international shipping centre should enable the third and fourth generation container vessels (50,000 t and up) coming-in and going-out in all weathers. Thus it must have a navigational channel with the water depth over 12m. While the navigational channel at the mouth of the Yangtse River, at the moment, can only let the vessels of 10,000t and less pass through, large bulk carriers can not enter the habor at full load and 50,000t ocean-going container liners are absolutely impossible to call at the habor. This makes Shanghai not feasible to be an international shipping centre, which seriously restricts the economic development of Shanghai and the Yangtse River valley. Statistics of the cargo flow passing through the mouth of the Yangtse River from 1990 to 1994 shows an average annual increase rate of 6.5%, among which, the annual increase rate of container is 30%. It predicts that the cargo flow passing through the mouth of the Yangtse River will reach 300 million tons at the year 2010. Most cargoes are important goods and materials for the national economy. The cargoes carried are large in quantity and are quick to be increased. That's why it is imperative to deepen the navigational channel at the mouth of the Yangtse River to let large vessels pass through freely and to increase the throughput at the mouth of the Yangtse River. After three years of hard work jointly by some research and design institutions, an initial report is finished on the feasibility of the deep water navigational channel at the mouth of the Yangtse River. It puts forward the principle and the target for harnessing the channel, works out the engineering plan, gives proposals for every work stages, evaluates the influence on the hydrology environment and indicates that the development of the deep water navigational channel at the mouth of the Yangtse River will surely yield great economic benefit and promote a new leap in the economic development of both Shanghai and the Yangtse River valley.