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འ་ ་ ་ ་་ བ་ སྟ་
UK/CHINA ECONOMIC COOPERATION AGREEMENT
UK Shipping relations with China
33
SHIPPING
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'Hayward' As agreed
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It is now several years since there was a UK liner service to
China, the last companies to run services being Ben Line and
Glen Line (an Occan Fleets subsidiary). Glen Line finally withdrew
in 1970 ostensibly after two officers had been imprisoned by the
Chinese for marking their charts in a manner which the Chinese
considered suspicious. British operators had been experiencing
increasing difficulty commercially however due chiefly to the level
of freight rates laid down by the China Foreign Trade Transportatio
Corporation which are about 30% below conference rates; the Chinese
are able to apply these because of their control of the terms of
shipment, with fob purchases of imports and cif sales of exports.
Subsidiary factors inhibiting the resumption of services have beer
the difficulty of obtaining priority of despatch in Chinese ports,
a 3% tax levied on the basis of gross transportation income derived
from each voyage of a foreign nation's ships carrying outbound
cargo or passengers from a Chinese port and various regulations
forbidding the use of navigational equipment such as echo sounders
in estuarial waters. Liner services between the UK and China are
therefore at present handled by the China Ocean Shipping Company,
which is Chinese, and Rickmers, a subsidiary of the West German
There is also a limited service by the Danish- st Asiatic Company Hapag-Lloyd./ British shipping companies have however
continued to keep in touch with the Chinese, notably Ben Line and
OCL, and UK owners, particularly Cunard, Stag Line and Jebsens,
have supplied vessels on charter to the Chinese for use in the
trap trades. In 1977 British flag vessels carried 8% by value of
our exports to China and 3% of our imports.
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