East Asian ports are at the vanguard of container ship development.

East Asian ports are at the cutting edge of the deployment of bigger ships by shipowners. The East-West tradelane will make or break the economic arguments behind vessels of 18,000 teu and upwards and therefore the ports of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan must decide if they wish to position themselves to handle the mega ships, and if so, what investment is required in new infrastructure.

That decision is not easy to make. East Asian ports are not immune from the global slowdown in container traffic, albeit ports such as Shanghai, Ningbo, Busan, Qingdao and Guangzhou have still managed to grow.