Ports ride wave brought by boost in foreign trade

To many international port operators, investing in China's port facilities is like tapping into an inexhaustible money-making machine.

When ports in other parts of the world have reached their saturation point, those in China are handling over 4 billion tons of throughput a year, maintaining a double-digit growth rate annually.

This has been mainly due to the country's blistering growth in foreign trade. China's trade volume exceeded $2 trillion last year. Exports volume grew 25.7 percent from a year earlier to reach $1.22 trillion while imports increased 20.8 percent year-on-year to $955.8 billion. The country has emerged as the world's third largest trading power and the world's fourth largest economy with a GDP of 24.66 trillion yuan last year.