CONCLUSION
This paper has tackled the difficulty analyzing port competition within a given
regional area through relative rather than individual measures of performance. Our results
show that several secondary ports have strived for competitiveness and survival through
direct competition with dominant hubs. This competition is notably based on the
geographical diversification of their connections through the extension of their market
coverage. The above changes indicate certain implications: when making port choices,
liners take the maintenance of market coverage and frequency of services as important
factors of consideration, while allowing certain diversities and flexibilities within niche
areas, depending on changing trade patterns and new opportunities. Last results show the
permanency of main ports located on main trunk lines as they maintain their predominance
over transhipment activities as opposed to local or feeder ports. In addition, local policies
of main ports succeeded keeping and extending their position in spite of strong external
and internal threats. While the tremendous growth in traffic volume at Chinese ports under
the period of study is reflected in the overall increase of their position in the network, our
results provide an alternative viewpoint that is the permanency of the dominance of
established hub ports along the East Asian maritime corridor. This research suggests that
the position of ports in the liner network is mostly a reflection of the impact of local port
policies (e.g. technological advance, infrastructure expansion) rather than the sole result of
shipping lines‟ strategies. Despite the growing spatial freedom of liner networks as
depicted in a vast literature, shipping lines remain highly dependent upon local factors.
In terms of methodology, this paper has compared results from three approaches:
direct links, complete links, and nodal flows. Results obtained from direct links tend to
corroborate well-known port rankings based on official port statistics. The inclusion of
indirect links, which is believed to better match the reality of shipping, provides slightly
different results valuing not only hub functions but also trade functions. Finally, the search
for nodal regions in the East Asian maritime network brings out a clear picture of the
geographic extent and evolution of the influence of main ports and emerging ports,
reflecting upon current strategies and obstacles. More efforts are needed to improve such
results, notably by searching for a relationship between network position and more
classical measures of port performance, such as traffic volume and infrastructure efficiency,
and by comparing our results with more qualitative aspects of nowadays‟ port development.
In addition, updating the data would allow evaluating the impact of current port
development projects.