Posted on September 2, 2026
By Frank Chen
China’s Yangtze River Delta is now home to the world’s two busiest container ports, a milestone that one industry analyst said reflects the continued resilience of the country’s export sector and the tech-driven efficiency of its maritime hubs.
The Ningbo-Zhoushan Port in eastern China’s Zhejiang province overtook the Port of Singapore to become the world’s second-busiest container port in the first half of 2026, according to France-based shipping data provider Alphaliner.
During the period, Ningbo-Zhoushan handled 22.9 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) – a standard measure for cargo container volume – compared with Singapore’s 22.74 million TEU. Shanghai, which has held the top spot for years, saw 28.7 million TEU flow through its berths. The two Chinese ports sit less than 100km (62.1 miles) apart.
Qu Ke, a transport analyst at CCB International in Hong Kong, said the strength of Chinese ports had been propelled by efficiency gains and the large-scale adoption of smart technologies.
“Autonomous trucks, cranes and automatic loading and unloading are becoming a usual sight at Chinese ports, leading to better safety and efficiency,” Qu said. “This is also supported by sound infrastructure, including roads and railways, for seamless, intermodal logistics to continuously feed containers to these ports.”
Official customs data showed that total exports soared 18.5 per cent in the first seven months of the year to reach US$2.52 trillion, with a surplus of US$687.3 billion.
For Ningbo specifically, exports rose 8.3 per cent over the same period to 1.27 trillion yuan (US$188.9 billion), helped by resilient orders from the United States – its largest single overseas market – and expanding shipments to Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Vietnam.
“The Yangtze River Delta, which includes both Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan, is one of China’s most dominant export hubs, where tech-intensive goods, like electric vehicles, are loaded onto ro-ro ships at Shanghai or Ningbo, not very far away from their factories, and land in Europe or Southeast Asia,” Qu noted.
“This is the kind of regional integration, efficiency and synergy underpinning competitiveness.”
Factories in the delta region have been running at elevated capacity since the summer to fulfil orders for the coming US festive season, while exporters have also moved to capture demand amid stabilising US-China trade ties.
Ningbo-Zhoushan’s busiest routes connect to major American ports including Long Beach near Los Angeles and the Port of New York and New Jersey, while Shanghai Port also ships most of its goods to America, followed by European hubs Rotterdam and Hamburg.
Looking ahead, Qu suggested Shenzhen could be the next major Chinese port to overtake Singapore, anchored by the manufacturing and export might of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province.
Overall, Chinese ports dominated the global container port ranking compiled by Alphaliner, claiming six of the top 10 hubs worldwide.
Hong Kong, once the world’s busiest container port in the 1990s, ranked 14th globally in the first half of the year, with container throughput down 3.5 per cent.
