The projects aim to enhance its hub status and take advantage of new international shipping trends, a harbor source said.

As economic globalization gathers pace, the international shipping industry challenges ports with larger ships, which require deeper berths.

In recent years, Tianjin Harbor used a large sum of money to develop a deeper and wider main navigation channel. Costing 400 million yuan (US$48 million), the two-phase project began last August to dig a 26-km long and 180-m wide main channel, three meters deeper than the current 12 meters.

By the end of the next year, ships of 100,000-ton displacement can move in and out of the harbor, the source said.

In ten years' time, Tianjin Harbor is to construct one berth for 150,000-ton oil tanker and another berth for 100,000-ton ore ship. In total, the harbor will build and rebuild 23 deep-water berths in the upcoming two Five-Year Plans (2001-2005, 2006-2010), according to the source.

(People's Daily 11/21/2000)