The slowdown in the Chinese economy has been increasing and increasingly more evident impact on port activity which, previously more limited to trade in goods in is now also affecting foreign traffic. A July 2026 the overall traffic in China's ports is amounted to 1.48 billion tonnes, with a decrease of -3.4% on the previous year. same month last year, of which 943.9 million tonnes handled by seaports (-3.7%) and 541.5 million tons from inland ports (-2.9%). Domestic traffic alone is amounted to a total of 1.02 billion tons (-4.4%), including 522.9 million tons passed through ports maritime (-5.3%) and 493.0 million through inland ports (-3,4%). The overall figure for foreign traffic was 469.5 million tonnes (-1.1%), of which 421.0 million tonnes tonnes handled by seaports (-1.6%) and 48.5 million tonnes tons from inland ports (+3.2%).

Among the main Chinese ports by traffic volume, in July 2026 Ningbo-Zhoushan port handled 116.2 million tons (-1.4%), the port of Tangshan 72.5 million tons (-1.6%) and the port of Shanghai 67.1 million tons (-4.5%). A followed by the ports of Qingdao with 65.7 million tons (+2.5%), Guangzhou with 56.7 million tons (-1.5%), Rizhao with 55.4 million tons million tons (+2.8%) and Tianjin with 52.7 million tons tonnes (-2.0%).

With regard to foreign traffic alone, last month the increased volume of international traffic was handled from the port of Ningbo-Zhoushan with 50.9 million tons (-5.5%). This was followed by the ports of Qingdao with 48.8 million tons (+8.3%), Shanghai with 39.0 million tons (-3.0%), Tangshan with 32.9 million tons million tonnes (-0.4%), Rizhao with 31.7 million tonnes (-0.3%), Tianjin with 30.8 million tons (-5.4%) and Shenzhen with 21.9 million tonnes (-4.0%).

Last month, the total container traffic handled from Chinese ports was 29.9 million TEUs (-0.2%), of which 26.4 million TEUs in seaports (-0.1%) and 3.5 million TEUs TEUs from Inland Ports (-0.9%). The highest volume of containerized traffic was handled from the port of Shanghai with almost 4.7 million TEUs (+1.3%) followed by the ports of Ningbo-Zhoushan with 3.8 million TEUs (+5.9%), Shenzhen with 3.0 million TEUs million TEUs (-2.9%), Qingdao with 3.0 million TEUs (+5.6%), Guangzhou with 2.4 million TEUs (+0.4%), Tianjin with 2.3 million TEUs TEUs (+1.8%) and Xiamen with 1.0 million TEUs (0%).

In the first seven months of 2026, global freight traffic handled by Chinese ports amounted to 10.56 billion tons, with an increase of +1.3% over the corresponding last year, of which 6.81 billion tonnes handled by seaports (+2.1%) and 3.75 billion tons from inland ports (-0.3%). The only traffic with foreign countries totalled 3.32 billion tonnes (+3.6%), of which 2.99 billion in seaports (+3.8%) and 332.9 billion million tons in inland ports (+1.5%).

In the period January-July of this year, the traffic of the containers amounted to 212.8 million TEUs (+5.1%), of which 187.5 million TEUs passed through seaports (+5.2%) and 25.3 million TEUs through inland ports (+4.6%). The increased volume of containerized traffic was handled by the port of Shanghai and amounted to 33.4 million TEUs (+5.5%). Following the ports of Ningbo-Zhoushan with 26.7 million TEUs (+8.4%), Shenzhen with 21.6 million TEUs (+6.1%), Qingdao with 20.6 million TEUs (+7.0%), Guanzhou with 16.4 million TEUs million TEUs (+2.5%), Tianjin with 15.3 million TEUs (+5.5%) and Xiamen 7.1 million TEUs (+1.3%).