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An aerial view of Jiaxing's Zhapu port area. [Photo provided by Gu Jiachen for Tide News]

Jiaxing in East China's Zhejiang province is accelerating its waterway infrastructure development in 2026, starting with the completion and acceptance of Dushan port area's Area A No 10 Berth on Jan 1, the first 10,000-metric-ton berth built during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for Jiaxing Port.

Jiaxing, with its unique seaport in northern Zhejiang, utilizes its proximity to both the sea and river to establish a transport hub within the Yangtze River Delta region.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the city invested 25 billion yuan (about $3 billion) in waterway infrastructure, with Jiaxing Port's container throughput exceeding 4.25 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2025, a 14.88 percent increase from the previous year.

Li Ming, logistics manager at Wankai New Materials, said that switching to water transport has saved 150 yuan per container, resulting in annual savings of over 5 million yuan.

Over 2,000 supply chain companies in Haining, a county-level city in Jiaxing, have adopted the sea-river transport model, reducing logistics costs by 362 million yuan in 2025.

With breakthroughs in both cargo volume and shipping routes, Jiaxing's sea-river transport has developed rapidly. This year, the city plans to invest about 4.4 billion yuan in waterway projects and handle 1.45 million TEUs of sea-river transport containers.