The impact of "Maritime Silk Road" on trade between China and OBOR countries

This final year project seeks to analyses the impact of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road on container shipping lines. This deviates from our original title as our project’s scope was changed to accommodate the requirements of Pacific International Lines (PIL) which we have collaborated with to produce a report that can be used practically in vessel routeing decision making. The report investigates the developments of OBOR and the suitability of the countries as a container hub port within the region confined between China to East Africa. This is done from the perspective of a container shipping line and how it can position itself to harness the benefits of the project. The first section of the report evaluates the current trends and events and their influence on future developments of China’s “One belt One Road” (OBOR) scheme. The speculations and suggestions are supplemented through extensive research of articles and opinions from newsletters and reports from reliable maritime and media sources. The second section utilises an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) modelling method to derive a weighted evaluation of factors concerning the establishment of a hub port from the surveys gathered from industry professionals. The various countries within four targeted regions are evaluated based on the top three priorities of overall cost, political stability and port efficiency to identify best countries to establish hub ports. The findings reveal that current trends and events within the container industry could influence the OBOR’s decision-making policy by requiring them to build multiple ports per region that cater to both mega vessels and container shipping alliances. It also shows that Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India and Tanzania are the best locations to set up hub port in the South East Asian, Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and East African respectively. Limitations of the research are the lack of suitable interviewees, up-to-date data concerning certain factors.Bachelor of Science (Maritime Studies