Connection Analysis of Container Ports of the Bohai Rim Economic Circle (BREC)

The Bohai Rim Economic Circle (BREC) is an emerging economic area that has been developing rapidly and has benefited from support from the Chinese government; however, due to the unique geographic location and the late start of development, the cargo volumes and capacities of the ports in the Northern Region are comparatively smaller than the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta. To resolve this issue, one effective strategy is to create additional connections with ports and container ports of nearby countries. Consequently, a Social Network Analysis (SNA), including degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and hub and authority centrality, was used to analyze the route networks of the top three ports (ports of Tianjin, Qingdao, and Dalian) of BREC. A list of ports that are highly influential to these three ports in building additional connections to obtain higher cargo volumes is provided.