Wuhan to start new air cargo service:

A new same-day air cargo route will start from Wuhan at the end of May, flying to Chengdu and Hong Kong and then returning to Wuhan. The service will operate four times a week on a B737 plane with a capacity of 14 tons.
In a separate development, Wuhan resumed a river container shuttle service at the end of March from Yangluo to Yangshan in Shanghai, taking just five days. This means that cargo from Wuhan to Europe will take 31 days rather than 35 days.
Previously, the shuttle service between Waigaoqiao and Yangshan was a major headache for shippers as it was regarded as unreliable and unpredictable. The Wuhan-Yangshan shuttle service started a couple of years ago but did not survive because there was only one vessel and very few customers. Now the local government is subsidising three vessels to provide a regular service in the hope that the customer base will grow to a critical mass.

Zhangjiagang port bucks foreign trade trend:

According to the China Shipping News, Zhangjiagang port recorded a total foreign trade volume of nearly 8m tons in the first quarter of 2009, up 6 per cent year-on-year. Of this total, imports amounted to 6.7m tons, up 35 per cent.
This was a particularly strong performance given the overall fall in foreign trade volumes. Cargo throughput on the entire Yangtze trunkline fell by 8.8 per cent in the first quarter to 27.24m tons.
The lower cost of iron ore, chemicals, grain and international shipping in general boosted Zhangjiagang’s import levels. Imported iron ore via the port stood at 1.73m tons in the first three months of the year, up 52 per cent year-on-year. In March alone, imported iron ore hit a record of 962,000 tons, three times more than the previous month. Imported chemicals hit 1.59m tons during the first quarter, up 47.9 per cent.

Rebound in Chongqing’s foreign trade container throughput:

Chongqing recorded a foreign trade container throughput of 21,787 teu in March, up 28.8 per cent from the previous month. However, in the first three months of the year, foreign trade container throughput in Chongqing was 58,000 teu, down 12.4 per cent over the same period last year. This was slightly greater than the average decline in Yangtze port container throughput in the first quarter of 11.4 per cent.

Chongqing repairs suspension bridge:

Chongqing is replacing cables at the country’s first major suspension bridge, the Stonegate Bridge, linking Shapingba and Jiangbei districts. The 1,096-metre bridge was built in December 1988 and the 216 cables had a life span of 20 years. In 2004, after a thorough health check, 36 of the rusted cables were replaced. The project to replace the remaining 180 started last October.
It takes an average of four days to replace a cable and the whole project will take 17 months to complete. The new cables will also have a 20-year life span.

Shanghai to harmonise bus fares:

Bus fares in Shanghai’s urban and rural areas are to be harmonised by end of June. The special bus fare plan, which was initiated on 1 April and will take three months to roll out across the entire municipality, will cover 16,600 buses on 1,041 bus routes. Under the scheme, passengers will pay only Rmb1 if they change to another bus within two hours of boarding first bus.
In another development, a public consultation process on bus reform in Chongqing has resulted in its postponement. The plan related to a raft of measures concerning management structure, ownership, consolidation of routes, and services and pricing. A proposal to increase bus fares was not well received in the current economic climate.

Wuhan Bonded Logistic Centre claims smooth start:

The East-west Lake Bonded Logistic Centre in Wuhan Export Processing Zone reported a total of 22 transactions in the first 20 days of its operation, worth a clearance value of US$2.2m. The centre is the first of its kind in Wuhan. Imports do not attract tax upon entering the centre, while goods entering are counted as exports.

Bridgestone increases Wuxi investment:

Japan’s largest tyre maker, Bridgestone, plans to invest an additional US$98m to expand capacity at its plant in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
The investment, scheduled to start in the second half of 2011, will enable the plant to make an additional 4,200 tyres a day, increasing total daily capacity to 12,000 tyres.

Fixed asset investment rises 29% in Q1:

China’s fixed asset investment in the first quarter of 2009 rose 28.8 per cent year-on-year to Rmb2,810bn, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The growth rate was 4.2 percentage points higher than the year before.
Many of the investment projects that form part of the Rmb4,000bn stimulus package announced last November are now coming on stream. “It usually takes three to six months between making decisions and putting investments in place,” said Zhang Hanya, a researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission.
According to the NBS, the total investment involved in new projects rose 88 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter. Zhang predicted that fixed asset investment in the second quarter may surge 30 per cent from a year earlier.

Plans to increase hydro schemes along Yangtze:

China will boost the use of hydroelectric resources along the Yangtze River in the coming decades despite, according to a strategic development plan of the river unveiled by the Ministry of Water Resources. This is despite increasing public concern about the environmental impact of these schemes.
Some 36 per cent of the Yangtze’s hydropower resources are currently exploited. This is set to rise to about 50 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2030, according to Cai Qihua, director of the Yangtze Water Resources Committee, affiliated with the ministry.
Hydro projects will be developed on tributaries in upper reaches of the Yangtze, including the Yalong, Dadu and Wujiang rivers.

Yangtze alligator numbers increase:

The number of wild Yangtze alligators is expected to reach 300 from the current 120 in the next five to 10 years, an expert told China Daily.
The endangered species are living and breeding in a wider area than in 2005, said Wang Chaolin, deputy director of the Chinese Alligators Protection Nature Reserve in Anhui province. He attributed the improvement to a series of protection measures such as wild breeding, protection of baby alligators and the releasing of captive-bred alligators to the wild.

Sichuan reconstruction spurs cement output growth:

China produced a total of 280.49m tons of cement in the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 12.95 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Cement output in southwest China, which was hit by a major earthquake last May, surged 36 per cent from a year ago to 16.8m tons in March. However, output in eastern China decreased 3 per cent to 44.6m tons during the month.
Crude steel output decreased 0.3 per cent from the previous year to 45.1m tons in March, although this was 12 per cent higher than in the previous month. In the first quarter, crude steel output reached 127.4m tons, representing a year-on-year growth of 1.4 per cent.
Luo Bingsheng, vice chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association, said China’s 71 large- and medium-sized steel enterprises suffered a combined loss of Rmb1.51bn billion in the first two months of this year due to the waning demand.

Chongqing Airlines receives first A319:

Chongqing Airlines has taken delivery of an Airbus A319, the first of three such planes leased from the International Lease Finance Corp.
The aircraft can accommodate 122 passengers and will be deployed by the carrier on routes to popular tourist destinations in southwest China.

Funding pledge for small airports:

Small airports are expected to receive government subsidies after being reclassified as public infrastructure under a new regulation, reported China Daily. The regulation stipulates that governments at all levels must take necessary measures to support airports from 1 July.
The regulation is expected to benefit small airports because large ones are profitable. China has 103 airports that serve fewer than 1m passengers a year, and an estimated 91 per cent of them are losing money.
Wang Jian, secretary-general of China Civil Airport Association, said many regional airports survive on subsidies from local governments. The Civil Aviation Administration of China also began subsidising small airports last year, but the amount is limited.
A number of airports that did not secure local government funding have been closed.
“Small airports need local governments’ support because they are built more out of a strategic need than the need for profit,” Wang said.

World Bank supports key transport schemes:

The World Bank has approved loans to two important transport projects in China. The first is a US$3000 loan that supports the GuiGuang Railway Project and the second is a US$150m to the Hubei Yiba Highway Project.
The GuiGuang Railway Project involves the construction of an 857km electrified railway line between Guiyang in Guizhou province and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, providing for the first time a direct connection between some of the poorest areas of China and the more developed Pearl River delta region. The new line will operate passenger and freight trains at speeds of up to 200 and 120 kph respectively. Upon completion of the project, travel time for rail passengers between Guiyang and Guangzhou will drop from the current 24 hours to just five hours. For freight, the distance travelled between the two cities will be reduced from the current 1,440km to 820km. The new railway line will also provide a more efficient and lower cost rail transport access to Guangzhou and Shenzhen for passengers and freight to and from the western provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan. The total cost of the project is US$12.5bn.
The Hubei Yiba Highway Project includes the construction of an expressway, running along the northern bank of the Yangtze River from Yichang to Badong in Hubei province in central China. This is part of the national trunk expressway network connecting the country’s eastern and western regions.

E-commerce retailer sets up logistics subsidiary:

360buy.com, a Chinese retail e-commerce company, has established a logistics subsidiary in Shanghai to improve distribution quality and efficiency, reported China Economic Review.
The company has invested Rmb20m in the subsidiary, which will distribute orders in Shanghai and other parts of eastern China, areas that account for 40 per cent of the company’s total orders.
360buy.com is also building 20 distribution stations in cities such as Tianjin, Wuhan, Jinan, Xian and Chongqing to enhance its national distribution network.