The cruise industry is excited at the recent announcement that Nanjing shall be home to a cruise-ship port in the perhaps no-too-distant future, yet there are already signs that the project may take a lot longer than authorities might have us believe.
The Nanjing government and China Merchants Group are the masterminds behind the project that aims to build a cruise homeport close to Qixia Shan on the southern bank of the Yangtze River in the north of Nanjing.
The fact that the terminal is being described as a homeport is significant, economically. Cruise terminals are more often than not defined as homeports, ports of call or route-node ports. Being a homeport results in ten times more economic benefit, plus, than that for a port of call.
According to Seatrade Cruise News, there will be two berths for international ships with a gross tonnage of up to 80,000 at Qixiashan Cruise Port. To put that number in perspective, the giant cruise ship, Pride of America, that continuously sails between the islands of Hawaii, has a gross tonnage of 80,439 and capacity for 2,500 passengers.
An artist’s impression of the proposed terminal also suggests that the cruise port shall have its very own metro station.
There is little question that the port, should it be built, will be a hit with locals and foreigners alike. When The Nanjinger carried a story last year about the launch of the first regular, luxury-cruise service between Nanjing and Shanghai, the publication was inundated with inquiries from the general public.
Yet, there are indications that we may be waiting longer than we think before we can board an international cruise ship in Nanjing and sail off to the Philippines or beyond. Plans to build a cruise homeport in Nanjing date back to 2013, as The Nanjinger reported at the time, while Jinling Shipyard that will undergo transformation and development as part of the same agreement, is set to be be relocated to Yizhen, the county-level city under the administration of Yangzhou.
Jinling Shipyard is also supposed constructor of Titanic II, another project that is many many, years behind schedule. As brainchild of Australian entrepreneur, Clive Palmer, first announced in 2012, the launch of the ill-fated RMS Titanic’s replica was initially set for 2016. Subsequently delayed until 2018, it has more recently been pushed back as far as 2022. The state-owned Jinling shipyard has never built a large passenger vessel.
