ABSTRACT
Hong Kong as a major container port has been studied by many from a port development perspective (Chu 1989; Comtois 1994; Wang 1998; Airriess 2001; Song 2002; Slack and Wang 2002; Cullinane et al. 2004; Notteboom and Rodrigue 2005; Wang and Olivier 2007a and 2007b). After more than three decades of development since the first specialized berth for container ships was put into use in 1972 in Kwai Chong, this container port has experienced four stages of development, as initially theorized by Hayuth (1978), modified by Wang (1998), and now in another stage – port regionalization, as suggested by Airriess (2001) from a firm-based approach and Notteboom and Rodrigue (2005) from a geographical approach. The latter is in line with most of the recent port studies on the third generation port, in recognizing a common strategy offering more comprehensive logistics services to lock in port users, both shipping lines and shippers, and to add more value along the global supply chains (GSC) at the port. However, when a region has several gateway ports and when the service quality of terminals at various gateways becomes similar and the prices competitive, we know little about how the GSCs should be reorganized and its impacts on the logistics sector; and hence about port development in a region such as the Pearl River Delta (including Hong Kong).
