PERSPECTIVES ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE AUTOMOBILE ...

Automotive Industry in China
Yangtze River has three major operators:
1. Yangtze shipping company also called Changjiang shipping company (CSC) 31 ;
2. Mingsheng in Chongqing;
3. Ansheng shipping, which is under the control of Shanghai Anji (Shanghai
Anji only navigates down to Wuhan while Mingsheng shipping and
Changjiang shipping cover the whole Yangtze River).
The big international shipping compaines can use the current facilities of these
domestic companies. In other words, they seem not to be thinking in acquiring
terminals or navigate in the Yangtze river but in stablishing alliances with the
companies that control the river.
Most of the shipping of cars are by the following companies:
NYK has an alliance with COSCO;
ToyoFuji is an in house shipping company of Toyota and they have and
alliance with CSC;
K-Line has an alliance with CGS;
MOL has an alliance with Sinotrans;
COSCO and Sinotrans are leading shipping lines in China. They provide North-South
service (regular service between Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and down to Hainan
from the south to north line).
Some experts in the logistics industry in China think that the Yangtze River will play
a major important role in China in a near future. Due to the increase of labor cost in
East China, many companies are moving their production centers to the west. As the
water transportation is cheaper than the road transportation and China lacks of a good
land transportation infrastructure, most of these companies are moving to cities along
the Yangtze River.
However, one logistics company told us that what might happen is that once the train
following the Yangtze River, from Chongqing to Shanghai is constructed, the cargo
will be moved to the coast by train and not by ship. They think that the navigation in
the Yangtze River is not easy. The train could cut down the transportation days from
10 to 5 days from Chongqing to Shanghai.
31 CSC RoRo, a company belonging to CSC Group, it is said to be the first and largest RoRo shipping
company in China, and has the highest RoRo market share and wide customers group; however we
have not verified this information. Now, probably it owns the largest RoRo fleets in China. Its business
network can cover Yangtze River, domestic coast and ocean. CSC RoRo has set up good and longterm
relations with domestic automobile manufacturing company in China. Its customers are: Toyota,
FAW, Shanghai VW, Dongfeng, Haima, Chery, etc.
Changjiang Shipping is going to merge with Sinotrans. CSC has two main companies, one is in the
Yangtze River, another is in Shenzhen. The company from Shenzhen has built a JV with ToyoFuji
named CFML.
Port of Barcelona Chair of Logistics 40