Annual Report 2023

ANNUAL REPORT 2023 13 The global industrial chain and supply chain saw a fragmented and regionalized development trend. Two years after the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into effect, the policy benefits have been paying out. The industrial cooperation among member countries was continuously deepened, which promoted the significant reduction of trade costs in the region, brought actual benefits to the parties involved, and helped the stable development of the regional economy in win-win cooperation. In 2023, China, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia and other member countries recorded a year-on-year increase of 2.2%, 5.0% and 9.8% in RMB-denominated import and export value, respectively. The development of digital intelligence technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, Internet of Things and blockchain has brought new directions to the international economy and trade, reduced the information asymmetry in the trade process, changed the international supply and demand relationship, and had a far-reaching impact on the trade model, trade structure and trade pattern. The gradual advancement and improvement of the platform-based trade ecosystem will further improve the utilization rate of production factors and trade operation efficiency. The international maritime industry is deeply affected by the reshaping of the global industrial chain and supply chain, and the shipping routes layout in 2023 has been significantly adjusted. To ensure the safety and stability of the supply chain, the developed countries have implemented strong policy interventions for the well-established global industrial chain and supply chain, and accelerated the development trend of short-chain, nearshore and quayside. The number of “black swan” events such as the spillover and spread of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has increased, and the “Houthis Factor” has triggered chain effects such as routes detour, shipping costs and freight rates surge, which has affected the benefits of maritime transportation in many countries. The flow of global trade goods was disrupted, and the instability of global shipping and global supply chain increased. In 2023, the uncertainty of the container market increased, which led to the supply-and-demand imbalance in the container shipping market. On the demand side, the Global Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell, and the overall demand of container shipping remained weak. The Baltic and International Shipping Association (BIMCO) predicted that the growth rate of global container shipping volume would be -0.5% to 0.5% in 2023. On the supply side, a total of 350 container vessels were delivered by global shipbuilders in 2023, with a total shipping capacity of 2.20 million twenty- foot equivalent unit (“ TEU ”), breaking the record of 1.70 million TEUs in 2015, nearly doubling the delivery volume and total shipping capacity in 2022, and the supply of shipping capacity far outweighs the growth of demand. It is expected that there will be more shipping capacity released in 2024, and the operation of shipping companies will face further pressure, calling for cost control and business diversification to ensure revenue, including optimizing fleet capacity, reducing charter costs, slow sailing, extending to the two ends of the shipping logistics chain, and carrying out investment in the zero-carbon operation area. Affected by the global economy and trade as well as international maritime industry, the growth of container throughput at the world’s major hub ports was sluggish, but the terminal operations of Asian ports showed some resilience. In the second half of 2023, except for the continued decline in ports of Europe and the United States, major ports in other regions regained the growth momentum. According to a forecast report issued by Drewry, a global shipping consulting agency, global container throughput increased by 1.0% year-on-year in 2023. According to Alphaliner, a shipping consulting agency, the world’s top 20 ports achieved a total container throughput of 277.99 million TEUs, down by 0.4% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2023, and container throughput for major regions grew at a different pace. Among them, the ports in the Greater China region achieved throughput of 169.50 million TEUs, up 2.1% year-on-year; ports in Southeast