The study tour committee in cooperation with Dispuut Transportkunde will organize this year’s study tour to China. The land of the dragon, forbidden city, great wall and the Tiananmen square. But it’s also the country with the largest population, largest seaports, cheap manpower and the fastest growing economy in the world. This is why we think China will be a very interesting destination to see a completely different culture and work attitude which will be a great experience for everyone.

The numbers and facts

China is the third largest country in the world (after Russia and Canada) but with more than 1.300.000.000 citizens it is the largest country according to population. It has the fastest growing economy in the world with a staggering economic growth of 310% in the last 10 years against only 16% in the Netherlands. This growth was possible because of the relatively low wages the Chinese earn. Their gross national product per head of the population is only $4900 against $38.600 in the Netherlands. This growth comes with large energy consumption. 10 years ago China used only half the amount of energy the United States used; nowadays China consumes 4% more energy than the USA, which comes down to a consumption of 2.520.000.000 ton oil a year.

All these facts and numbers are interesting for us as transportation engineers. Because all these people and their needs have to be transported in some way. To make this possible China has developed several of the largest ports in the world of which 7 ports are in the top 10 of largest seaports in the world. Last year the port of Shanghai has become the largest port in the world handling 29 million TEU and 650 million tons of cargo. The other large ports in China are Hong-Kong, Tianjin, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Shengzen.

All these containers and cargo can be transported inland by using two of the largest rivers in the world. The Yangtze and the Huang He river both have a length of over 5400 km. The total length of navigable waterways stretches over 110.000 km which transport about 2.100 billion tons-km of cargo and 12 billion passengers-km. This amount is handled at 70 inland ports with more than 5000 berths. The largest inland port is the port of Nanjing with a capacity of handling 3.2 million tons of cargo.

China has about 91.000 km of railway. It is nowadays even possible to travel by train from the Netherlands all the way to the Chinese coast. Every day more than 8 million Chinese people use the train to reach their destination; annually this comes down to more than 2 billion passengers a year. The conventional railway is expanded with the longest high speed railway track which is about 8.358 km long. Trains travel here with speeds over 200km/h and they reach top speeds of 350 km/h on 2.197km of this track. They also have the world’s first high-speed commercial magnetic levitation (maglev) line from Shanghai airport to the center of the city which reaches a top speed of 431 km/h.

In contrary to many western countries the transportation by road isn’t very interesting. Although China has more than 3.300.000 km of road network only 770.000 km is paved. The conditions of most of this network are poor and therefore it makes the cargo haulage by road expensive. Freight transport by road only takes up around 13.5% of the total cargo haulage. They are however rapidly upgrading their road network but it will still take till 2020 until all major cities will be connected to each other by highway.

The trip

Are you just as enthusiastic as we are about going to China, then the following information will be important. The trip will be held half way September with 20 students and 2 staff members. We will stay for 11 days, visit several companies and sniff up some of the Chinese rich culture. This will be done in two of china’s largest cities, Shanghai and Beijing. The exact program still has to be determined but we already want to invite you for this beautiful trip.

Cost

Despite our best efforts to find as much sponsors as possible, the expected costs of this trip will be €900,-. this includes the ticket, stay, meals and transportation.

Subscribing

If you want to join this trip you can sign up by subscribing on Inschrijfformulier studiereis 2011 – China. If you have any other questions or suggestions please feel free to send an email to studiereistransportkunde-3me@tudelft.nl.

Your Study Tour Committee, Maarten Klop, Sjelle Luijten, Frans Nieuwkoop and Ted Selderbeek.