Official figures show that the total of sea and river ports with a throughput tonnage of more than 100 million tonnes rose to 26 last year from 2010's 22, according to the Ministry of Transportation, an increase of almost 20 percent.
The figures show that among the 17 seaports and nine river ports, Ningbo-Zhoushan ranks at the top with 694 million tonnes throughput. Huanghua, another major port for coal transportation after Qinhuangdao, breached the 100 million tonnes milestone last year.
As recently as 2008, China only had 12 ports handling over 100 million tonnes. Of 2011's 26 ports, eleven are on the Yangtze River delta, making it the region with the highest number of such mega-ports.
To put the Chinese ports into international perspective, Rotterdam saw 434.6 million tonnes in 2011, Los Angeles saw 158.2 million tonnes and Hamburg saw 132.2 million tonnes.
