The 2024 North Bund Forum will take place at the Grand Hall in Shanghai from October 22 to 24, aiming to contribute to a new ecosystem of global shipping and aviation, local authorities announced on Tuesday.
The event, organized by the Ministry of Transport and the Shanghai government, invites domestic and foreign ministerial-level officials, heads of international organizations and renowned economists to have talks and discussions.
This year’s forum on the theme of “Digital, Smart and Green: Co-creating a New Ecosystem of Global Shipping and Aviation” will focus on internationalization, specialization, and high-end development, said Yu Fulin, director of the Shanghai Transportation Commission.
The city is hosting the event for the fourth time, hoping to further strengthen international cooperation and enhance exchanges in global shipping and aviation sectors.
The forum includes two main forums and five thematic forums. The two main forums will focus on tackling uncertainties through high-quality development in the shipping industry and shaping the future of civil aviation by using digital and intelligent means. The five themed forums will focus on dialogue and exchange in areas such as maritime traffic safety, digital intelligence, green and low-carbon technologies, judicial arbitration, and financial insurance.
There will be around 4,000 attendees at the forum from around 50 countries and regions.
“The size of China’s international shipping fleet has continued to rank among the top in the world,” said Gao Haiyun, an inspector with the transport ministry’s Water Transport Bureau.
As of September, the total size of China’s shipping fleet has reached 430 million deadweight tons, accounting for 18.7 percent of the world’s fleet.
China has vigorously promoted the construction of smart ports and waterways. With some 49 automated terminals, including Luojing Port in Shanghai, completed nationwide, China continues to maintain a leading global position.
The mileage of published electronic navigation charts on shipping has continued to increase, covering more than 7,800 kilometers of high-grade waterways.
China has continuously expanded the breadth and depth of international shipping cooperation, and has negotiated and signed bilateral and multilateral shipping agreements with 69 countries and regions.
Shanghai remained a containers port giant last year after ranking third among the world’s shipping hubs in the latest Xinhua -Baltic International Shipping Center Development Index Report. It has maintained its position as the largest and busiest container port in the world for the 14th year in a row.
In the first nine months of this year, Shanghai ports completed a container throughput of 39.102 million TEU (20-foot equivalent units), showing an 8-percent increase year on year.
Featuring digital-twin as well as blockchain technology, the city released a one-stop intelligent platform which combines the transportation and logistics information of containers by rail, road and water in September. It covers tracking data for container trucks and ships across 18 nodes in the export process and 14 nodes in the import process of international container transportation, successfully establishing a logistics information network for railway-water transportation.
Taking the event as an opportunity, Yu emphasized that the city aims to establish Shanghai’s brand for high-end shipping services, accelerate the construction of a new generation of smart and green ports, and engage in international cooperation on a larger scale, in broader fields, and at a deeper level, thereby contributing China’s strength to the development of the global shipping industry.
,https://www.shine.cn/news/metro/2410150979/