The Port of Shenzhen is not a single harbour but a chain of port areas strung along the 260-kilometre coastline of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, southern China. Hong Kong's New Territories split it in two: a western port on the Pearl River Estuary, around Shekou, Chiwan and Dachan Bay, and an eastern port at Yantian on Mirs Bay, which opens onto the South China Sea. Together these terminals handled 30,036,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containers in 2022, according to Lloyd's List, making Shenzhen the fourth-busiest container port in the world after Shanghai, Singapore and Ningbo-Zhoushan, and the third-busiest in China. The modern port traces its start to 31 January 1979, when the Shekou Industrial Zone was founded on what had been a customs post of Bao'an County. It matters because it is a principal sea outlet for the factories of the Pearl River Delta: some 40 shipping lines run around 130 international container routes from its quays, and about 560 ships call every month.
Because the port is spread over so much coast, the clearest way to understand it is to travel it. What follows is a trip from the northwest corner of the western port, south through the Nanshan peninsula, across Shenzhen Bay and around Hong Kong to the deep-water terminals of the east.
Bao'an and Dachan Bay: Setting Out on Lingdingyang
The western port faces Lingdingyang, the broad lower reach of the Pearl River Estuary. Shenzhen's port administration divides these waters into several port areas: Bao'an in the north, then Dachan Bay, Dachan Island and Xiaochan Island, and finally Nanshan at the tip of the peninsula. Standing on the Bao'an shore, a visitor looks west across the estuary towards Zhongshan and Zhuhai, while ships heading upriver to Guangzhou pass through the channel in front.
This position is the western port's advantage. It is a deep-water harbour with natural shelter, and it connects directly with the river system of the delta, so barges and feeder ships can move boxes between Shenzhen and the towns along the Pearl River, including Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The port runs 21 regular feeder routes to other Pearl River Delta ports, which let smaller factories upriver reach the ocean-going services calling at Shenzhen.
South of Dachan Bay the coast has been reshaped. Qianhai, a district of about 15 square kilometres encircled by the Shuangjie River, Yueliangwan Boulevard, Mawan Boulevard and Qianhai Bay, is almost entirely reclaimed land. The State Council approved special policies for it on 27 June 2012, making it a pilot zone for cooperation between the mainland and Hong Kong, with experiments in offshore renminbi finance and encouragement for Hong Kong and international banks to set up headquarters there. The Shenzhen Western Port, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan corridor and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Yanjiang Highway all pass through Qianhai, so much of the road traffic serving the western terminals runs through it.
Chiwan: Container Cranes Beneath a Beacon from 1394
Continue south and the road drops into Chiwan, a small bay enclosed by three hills: Chiwan hill to the east, Xiaonanshan to the north and Yingzui hill to the southeast. The Chiwan Container Terminal fills the waterfront. It is a Sino-foreign joint venture whose investors include Chiwan Wharf Holdings, Kerry Properties of Hong Kong, China Merchants Holdings (International) and Modern Terminals. Besides container ships, Chiwan is used by bulk carriers and by the offshore supply vessels that serve oil exploration in the South China Sea, and many crews change over here.
What makes Chiwan unusual is how much older history sits beside the cranes. On the summit of Xiaonanshan stands the Chiwan Beacon, built in 1394 and used for centuries to raise the alarm against attack from the sea. The Chiwan Left Fort on Yingzui hill dates from 1717 and was among the forts used by the Qing commissioner Lin Zexu during the First Opium War. The Chiwan Tianhou Temple, dedicated to the sea goddess Mazu, traces its origins to the Song dynasty; the present buildings were put up in the early 1990s, and it is the largest temple complex to Tianhou in Guangdong. Nearby is the tomb of Emperor Bing, the last Song emperor, who died aged seven. Shenzhen Metro Line 2, known as the Shekou line, ends at Chiwan station.
Shekou, Where China Merchants Began in 1979
East of Chiwan lies Shekou, at the southern tip of Nanshan District, looking across Shenzhen Bay to Yuen Long in Hong Kong. This is where the port, and arguably the city, started. On 31 January 1979 Shekou was designated the Shekou Industrial Zone, developed by the Hong Kong-based China Merchants Group under Yuan Geng (1917–2016), a native of Bao'an County who had fought as a guerrilla against the Japanese occupation. That was earlier than the founding of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone itself. Yuan Geng went on to create China International Marine Containers, China Merchants Bank and Ping An Insurance.
China Merchants built the port first, then an industrial park beside it, then housing for the people who worked there. The approach became known as the Port-Park-City model, or simply the Shekou model. From the 1980s Shekou also served as the base for foreign oil workers employed by companies such as Agip, Chevron, Texaco, Statoil and Shell, which held exploration concessions offshore; until the early 2000s it was home to most of Shenzhen's expatriates.
The passenger side of the port is here too. The Shekou Cruise Center opened on 13 November 2016, replacing the old Shekou Passenger Terminal. Its high-speed ferries run to Hong Kong International Airport, Central in Hong Kong, the Macau Outer Harbour, Taipa, Zhuhai and Wai Lingding Island, and passengers arriving from Hong Kong or Macau clear customs when they step off.
A short walk inland shows how far the shoreline has moved. The Minghua, a 14,000-tonne, 168-metre vessel built in 1962 as a French ferry and bought by China in 1973, was grounded at Sea World and became the centre of an entertainment district remade in 2003. Land reclamation has since left it completely surrounded by land. Shekou is now in the middle of a redevelopment costing more than 60 billion yuan, with office and residential towers such as the China Merchants Tower replacing older industrial blocks.
Crossing Shenzhen Bay and Rounding Hong Kong
To reach the eastern port, a ship must sail right around Hong Kong: south out of the estuary, past Lantau and the southern islands, and up the eastern side into Mirs Bay. By land the journey is shorter but still passes the border. Just east of Shekou, the Shenzhen Bay Bridge, the main part of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Western Corridor, runs 5.5 kilometres from Dongjiaotou in Nanshan to Ngau Hom Shek in Hong Kong. It opened on 1 July 2007, the tenth anniversary of the handover, with a border checkpoint, Shenzhen Bay Port, built on reclaimed land at the Shenzhen end.
The two halves of the Pearl River Delta's container trade grew up side by side. In 2004 Hong Kong handled about 22.0 million TEU and Shenzhen 13.6 million. Shenzhen passed its neighbour in 2013, with 23.3 million TEU against Hong Kong's 22.4 million, and by 2022 it was moving almost twice as many boxes. For the story from the other side of the border, see our guide to the Port of Hong Kong.
Yantian on Mirs Bay: The Deep-Water East
Mirs Bay, called Dapeng Bay in Mandarin, is ringed on its north and east shores by Shenzhen's Yantian District and Dapeng New District, with Hong Kong's Sai Kung Peninsula and Kat O to the southwest and the island of Ping Chau in the middle. Its waters are broad and calm, and it is often claimed to be the best natural harbour in South China. The eastern port's deep-water container terminal sits on its northern shore, at Yantian.
Yantian International Container Terminals handles every size of container ship, from small feeders up to very large container ships. Its approach channel is 400 metres wide and 17.4 metres deep and lies only two kilometres from the public shipping lane. The terminal has eight kilometres of waterfront, 373 hectares of container yard and 16 deep-water container berths, worked by more than 70 quay cranes, most of them Super Post-Panamax models. Across all its areas, the Port of Shenzhen counts 140 berths, 51 of them able to take ships of 10,000 deadweight tonnes or more.
The terminal reshaped the district around it. Yantian was split off from Luohu District in March 1998, after the port area was built, and covers about 72.63 square kilometres. The State Council approved a 0.85-square-kilometre Yantian Port Free Trade Zone on 27 September 1996, and a 0.96-square-kilometre bonded logistics park followed on 30 December 2005 for printing, packaging, warehousing and distribution firms. Just along the coast, the beaches of Dameisha and Xiaomeisha draw visitors, the property developer Vanke has its headquarters in Dameisha, and at Shatoujiao, Chung Ying Street runs along the border with one side in Hong Kong and the other in mainland China. A ferry from Yantian Seafood Street crosses to Nan'ao in Dapeng New District.
Counting the Boxes: 30 Million TEU in 2022
Taken together, the western and eastern ports have kept Shenzhen in the world's top five by containers in every year since at least 2004. Lloyd's List figures show throughput rising from 24.2 million TEU in 2015 to 25.8 million in 2019 and 30.0 million in 2022. Shenzhen was formerly the second-largest port in China, but Ningbo-Zhoushan overtook it and it has not regained that place; it now ranks third nationally, and fourth worldwide. The port is part of China's 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, and its sister port is Santa Cruz de Tenerife in Spain.
The route traced here, from the estuary wharves of Bao'an to the deep berths of Yantian, explains that position: one port faces the rivers and factories of the delta, the other faces the open sea and the trans-Pacific trade. To see where Shenzhen sits among its rivals in Shanghai, Singapore and Ningbo, read our ranking of the world's busiest ports, or follow the river system that feeds it in our guide to the Pearl River Delta.