Qingdao: Building a new modern logistics system

Recently, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance announced the list of "2024 National Comprehensive Freight Hub Chain Supplementation and Strengthening Support Cities". It is gratifying that Qingdao has the honor of being successfully shortlisted. This means that on the basis of the national logistics hubs of airport type, production service type, port type and trade service type, Qingdao's urban hub level has been further improved. It is reported that compared with other similar cities, Qingdao has considerable competitive advantages. According to Bian Cheng, director of the Qingdao Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Qingdao can provide diversified international logistics channel options such as sea, land, air and rail to meet the needs of major companies for logistics timeliness, cost and other aspects, which undoubtedly greatly enhances its attractiveness.

To this end, the Qingdao Municipal Government actively links global resource elements, thus giving birth to important industries such as smart home appliances, new energy vehicles, and rail transportation equipment. Taking the smart home appliance industry as an example, the convenient international logistics channels have attracted many upstream and downstream companies to settle down. These rich and diverse logistics and transportation modes fully demonstrate Qingdao's strong carrying capacity as a production service (port type) national logistics hub, and also highlight its unique advantages in trade service and airport type national logistics hubs.

It is worth mentioning that as a production service-oriented (port-type) national logistics hub, Qingdao has added 20 new routes in the past year, with a total of 225 routes, covering more than 700 ports in more than 180 countries and regions around the world. The number and density of routes remain the leading position among domestic northern ports; as a trade and service-oriented national logistics hub, from January to September this year, Qingdao has opened a total of 843 China-Europe trains (Qilu), a year-on-year increase of 16.6%. The widely acclaimed "Lu-Europe Express", cross-border e-commerce special trains and other special China-Europe trains frequently travel between Shandong Province and European countries; as for the airport-type national logistics hub, in 2023 alone, Qingdao Airport's total business revenue reached 2.42 billion yuan, cargo throughput exceeded 470,000 tons, and the total value of imports and exports of goods for the whole year soared to an astonishing 1 billion yuan. Director Bian Cheng said that although the added value of Qingdao's logistics industry exceeded 160 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%, accounting for more than 10% of the city's GDP, they are not satisfied with the status quo, but plan to build a new modern logistics operation system of "hub + channel + network" by creating an "efficiency fast port", deepening cooperation with leading enterprises, and strengthening digital empowerment.