Qingdao Port in East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Official website of Shandong Provincial People's Government]

Qingdao Port, which has 223 international shipping routes, has been ranked first in Northeast Asia in terms of international shipping competitiveness, officials announced at a news conference hosted by the Information Office of the Qingdao Municipal Government in Shandong province on Nov 20.

Officials added that Qingdao will accelerate its transformation into an international comprehensive transportation hub and an international gateway hub city, and become the most convenient outlet to the sea in the Yellow River Basin.

In recent years, the coastal city in East China's Shandong province has been taking steps to enhance the construction of port infrastructure and its service support capabilities.

Presently, Qingdao has 124 port production berths, including 98 10,000-metric-ton berths, and an annual throughput capacity of 387 million tons.

Qingdao Port is also one of the ports with the most comprehensive cargo services in the world. It is home to a 450,000-ton crude oil terminal and Asia's first fully automated unmanned terminal, which can accommodate the world's largest 24,000-TEU container ship.

The busy Qingdao Port. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Qingdao has also been optimizing the layout of domestic and foreign trade routes, with the key focus being strengthening the route configuration for Belt and Road countries and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement member countries. Since the beginning of this year, Qingdao Port has added 16 new routes, bringing the total to 223.

Qingdao has also accelerated the resumption of international and regional passenger and cargo routes. As of the end of October, Qingdao Airport had an international and regional passenger throughput of 1.063 million passengers and a cargo and mail throughput of 104,000 tons, year-on-year increases of 999.7 percent and 25.7 percent respectively.

The coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong province. [Photo/WeChat account: qd12301]