"Shanghai lacks deepwater port facilities which is hampering the city's attempts to become an international shipping centre," said Gao Wenzhong, a director of Shanghai Man-made Half Island Building and Development Co Ltd, which is sponsoring the project.

The scheme will reclaim 9,840 hectares of land from the sea with an investment of 1.8 billion yuan (US$130 million).

The peninsula will stretch from Shi Pile Port, in eastern Shanghai's Nanhui District, to the north of Hangzhou Bay in a 30-kilometre-long belt.

The first phase of the project, which was completed in June, reclaimed 2,460 hectares of land at a cost of 200 million yuan (US$24.15 million). This will be a harbor handling area.

The other two phases of the project are due to be completed by June 2002. Shanghai will then have about 38.7 square kilometres more dock land.

Shanghai's port is now the biggest in China, handling about 4.22 million TEUs (Twenties Equivalent Units) of containers last year.

Up until July this year, the volume of freight it handled had reached about 3.05 million TEUs, 35.8 per cent more than the same period last year.

"The general handling capacity is increasing by 30 per cent every year," said an official from Shanghai Port Authority.

He said the capacity of Shanghai's port is not as much as that of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the biggest ports in the world which handled about 16.1 million TEUs last year.

But he added Shanghai's handling capacity, transportation conditions and the administrative system were up to international standards, except for the lack of deepwater docks.

"This project is an important step in turning Shanghai into a new harbor city," said Fan Xingliang, director of Shanghai Real Estate Holding Co Ltd, a share holder in the new project.

Shanghai has carried out several projects to reclaim land from the sea, including the Pudong International Airport scheme and one at Chongming Island, in eastern Shanghai, which increased the amount of land for cultivation.

(China Daily)