While economists have been noting a slowdown in the China's gross domestic product, with a growth in production industrial and export which is held back by the weakness of the domestic demand, even the only traffic of goods by sea in China is affected by this situation. The effect is not recorded not only from national trade by sea, but also from trade seafarers with foreign countries, through which a part of the largely prevalent of physical flows of international trade Chinese.

After a still positive first part of 2026, in recent months volumes handled by sea recorded a marked increase Trend reversal. Last month, Chinese ports of call have handled a total of 1.50 billion tons of cargo, down -5.0% on August 2025, of which 959.9 million tonnes passed through seaports (-4.5%) and 545.8 tonnes million tons through inland ports (-5.9%). To decrease was the most important national traffic, which amounted to 1.03 billion tonnes (-5.8%) overall, of which 529.6 million tonnes handled by seaports (-6.3%) and 498.7 million tons from inland ports (-5.4%). But they are The volumes of foreign goods handled in August also decreased 2026 having stood at 477.5 million tonnes (-3.2%), of which 430.3 million tonnes totalled by seaports (-2.3%) and 47.1 million tons from domestic ports (-11.1%). Year-on-year increases of +18.6% in Chinese exports and +19.8% of total foreign trade recorded in August 2026 reported by the Beijing government, and expressed in value monetary policy, do not therefore seem to translate into an increase in volumes with foreign exports (in tons) handled by national ports.

Traffic alone was also down containerized which last month amounted to 30.1 million TEUs (-4.4%), including 26.7 million TEUs handled by the seaports (-3.9%) and 3.4 million TEUs from inland ports (-8,0%). Among the main ports by volume of traffic in the containers, as of August 2026 Shanghai handled 4.3 million TEU (-14.7%), Ningbo-Zhoushan 3.7 million TEU (-7.5%), Shenzhen 3.4 million TEUs (+6.5%), Qingdao 3.0 million TEUs (+6.4%), Guangzhou 2.4 million TEUs (-0.4%), Tianjin 2.2 million TEUs (+0.5%) and Xiamen 1.2 million TEUs (+12.1%).

In the first eight months of this year, total freight traffic Chinese ports was 12.06 billion tons, with a slight increase of +0.5% over the corresponding period of 2025, of which 7.77 billion tons handled by seaports (+1.4%) and 4.29 billion from inland ports (-1.0%). Traffic alone foreign was equal to a total of 3.80 billion tons (+2.8%), of which 3.42 billion passed through the seaports (+3.1%) and 380.1 million through ports of call internal ports (-0.3%).

In the period January-August 2026, global traffic of amounted to 242.9 million TEUs (+4.0%), of which 214.1 million TEUs in seaports (+4.1%) and 28.8 million TEUs TEU in inland ports (+2.9%).