China's seaborne transportation continued to indicate rapid growth in 2009 in spite of the financial crisis. In the year in question, four more Chinese ports, namely, Jiangyin, Xiamen, Zhanjiang and Huzhou, registered cargo throughputs of more than 100 million mt, increasing the number of Chinese ports with cargo throughputs of over 100 million mt up to 20.
At the end of 2006, there were 12 ports in China with cargo throughputs of over 100 million mt. The number had jumped up to 14 by the end of 2007, and reached 16 by the end of 2008. In 2009, the total cargo throughput of ports with cargo throughputs above 15 million mt was up 8.2 percent year on year to 6.91 billion mt. Meanwhile, in 2009 Shanghai port remains the world's largest port with a cargo throughput of 590 million mt.