"亚洲地中海"航运连通性研究

With the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Asian integration has entered a new stage. Two major issues need to be clarified: what are the characteristics of interconnectivity between ports in the "Asian Mediterranean" over time, and what are the patterns of port connectivity in the process of trade integration. This paper uses maritime route data from 1890 to 2008 to construct a dataset of shipping networks with long time series. The characteristics of shipping connectivity in this region are studied from two dimensions of port function and shipping connectivity, and the Michael Porter Diamond Model is adapted to analyze the evolutionary mechanism. The main conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) From the perspective of the strength and breadth of connection between ports, Japanese ports rose to prominence before World War II. After that, Singapore and Hong Kong maintained their hub status for a long time. Since the reform and opening up in the late 1970s, and particularly after China became a member of the WTO in 2001, the volume of traffic in Chinese ports has grown rapidly. (2) In terms of the transshipment function, there was little difference in the transshipment capacity of ports before World War II. After World War II, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Busan successively become the three major transit hubs in the southern, central, and northern parts of the Asian Mediterranean. (3) The long-term port connection has gone through four stages: the disorderly distribution of shipping lines (from the 1890s to the 1920s), the formation and development of the maritime network (after the 1930s), the emergence of multiple hub ports (since the 1950s), and regional port cluster development (since the 1990s). (4) Factor conditions and management policies facilitate the long-term stability of ports. Port prosperity is driven by demand conditions and external opportunities. Replacement of managers profoundly impacts port organization patterns. Port connectivity is influenced by enterprise strategies and inter-port competition. The long-term dynamic law shows that in general, the port network tends to move from fragmentation to integration. A small number of ports have long been ranked in the first echelon due to their superior geographical locations on land and sea. The post-developed ports and non-hub ports should be actively integrated into the pattern of route interconnection.