May 15.
Ir is well over 18 months ago that in this column, we wel-! comed, us one of the most interesting documents issued in and concerning Shanghai, a preliminary report published by the Whangpoo Conservancy Board on the future development of this port. In interest and importance, the new report issued by the same authority on the same subject transcends that which precedes it, for it brings together in a most compact and easily readable style much information about this port which is obtainable in other forms but very often unappreciated. Shanghai on reading the report ought to be surprised at itself. Our} readers have seen and heard it repeated ad nauseam that Shanghai is the principal entrepot for the trade of North and Central China. Few, probably, have any real idea of the extent to which this is true, and fewer still are aware of the fact that upwards of 60 per cent. of Shanghai's gross trade is re-export business.
As showing the immense trade which this port is handling, and the rapid increases which it has successfully met in the immediate past, it is probably sufficient to record the fact that last year the turnover of imports into and exports from Shanghai totalled over Hk. Ts. 1,000,000,000. The figures for the years 1913, 1918 and 1919 are as follow 191319181919 Tmports 449.6 452.0 530.3 Exports 410.2 478.3 594.9 Turnover $59.8 930.3 1,125.2) Total Trade 533.5 5: 768.0 Net Local Trade 207.2 394.0 410.7) Transhinment 326.3. 303.1 357.2, (not including goods on passes)
The above figures represent millions of Haikwan Taels.
The "turnover" needs to be distinguished from the "Total Trade" as the former includes some of the; same goods twice, ie. as imports! and again as exports.
Turning from a purely monetary representation of the importance of Shanghai's trade, in itself a sutlicient justification for propounding the scheme under review, and considering the demands made upon the port's water area, we find that the tonnage entered and cleared during 1913 was 19,754,617 tons, compared with 14,143,575 tons in 1918 and 18,661,455 tons in 1919. At the end of last year over 300,000 tons of shipping lay in the harbour. To these figures have to be added 1,000,000 tons in junks in 1913 which mse to 3,600,000 in 1918. The figures for 1919 under this heading do not appear to be given. Leaving shipping and turning to what for lack of a better term we will call: "land statistics,"" we find that at the beginning of 1919, there were in operation 46 cotton spinning and weaving mills; 16 modern flour mills; 41 modern style rice-hulling factories; 15 large steam filatures and many small ones; five shipbuilding yards; five electric power plants and numerous other substantial undertakings. There isno means of determining the aggregate of individual incomes but it is estimated at certainly not less than Tls. 100,000,000 per annum, while the following figures give some idea of the estimated value of the land and buildings of the port. Again the figures are in millions of taels.
Total value of land 209) Total rent of buildings 26 Estimated value of buildings at 10 per cent.
Total estimated value of land and buildings These figures do not by any means exhaust the wealth of information concerning this port which the Whangpoo Conser-vane Board has brought together. Under the heading of Harbour accommodation we find the har-hour is nine sea miles in length, with a 24 ft. channel averaging 750 ft. in width. On the Shanghai side wharf properties take up 19,120 ft. of an available 54,700 while on the Pootung bank of a similar frontage 27,045 ft. are taken up with wharves.
"This is but a brief stock-taking of the present development of Shanghai, but it serves its purpose. It establishes the fact that to plan harbour works involving cost of Tls. 100,000,000 is not fancying something to be built on sand. Many of the items we have quoted would have to be capitalize ed by a better statistician than we pretend to be to enable their full bearing upon the question to be appreciated, but there seems to be not the slightest doubt that from a financial point of view Shanghai can stand and would benefit from such a scheme. What would have happened here during the last six years but for the disastrously depressing effect of the war on the world's trade is beyond easy conception. Wa might have been faced with a volume of trade wholly exceeding our capacity. We may be faced with that within the next few years and so surely as we fail to cope with the demands made upon us as the entrepot for Northern and Central China, so surely will we have missed our, opportunity of passing on to greater things. The exigencies of trade know no excuse: another port would have to be found and a competitor fostered by our own shortcomings.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.