Shanghai, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Singapore, Busan, and Qingdao: in the third quarter of 2026, the top five global ports by maritime connectivity according to UNCTAD are entirely Asian. This concentration generates considerable efficiency gains for global trade, but it also creates chokepoints whose failure spreads thousands of kilometers away.
The essentials
- Five Asian ports dominate global maritime connectivity without competition, with Shanghai leading at an index of 2,439, roughly 29% higher than Singapore’s (1,883).
- Port connectivity measures the number of connections, frequency of services, and size of vessels served; a well-connected port reduces delays and transshipment costs throughout the entire supply chain.
- This concentration improves overall trade efficiency but transforms these five hubs into points of failure whose disruptions—health crises, geopolitical tensions, technical incidents—ripple across entire global value chains.
- The Red Sea episodes in 2024 and Panama Canal restrictions reminded us that the resilience of maritime networks is not guaranteed, and that dependence on Asian hubs can become a tool for political leverage.
- The question for coming years is whether the efficiency gains of these giants can coexist with a more distributed maritime architecture.
Shanghai surpasses competitors by a structural margin
The Maritime Connectivity Index, calculated by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), aggregates four variables: the number of shipping companies serving a port, the number of vessels deployed, their total capacity, and the number of destinations accessible via direct connection. A high score on connectivity components can improve market access, but does not mechanically reduce costs and delays for all users.
Shanghai shows 2,439 in the third quarter of 2026. Ningbo-Zhoushan follows at 2,110, Singapore at 1,883. These two figures deserve comparison: Singapore, long considered the reference maritime hub, trails Shanghai by 556 points in Q3 2026. Busan and Qingdao round out the top five, at 1,655 and 1,422 respectively.
Rotterdam ranks among the leading non-Asian ports in the ranking, with a notable gap that has widened progressively. The gap widened gradually, at the pace of Chinese fleet expansion and the rise of shipping companies like Cosco and China Merchants. Geography also matters: China’s southern maritime coast benefits from unique industrial density, which generates sufficient volumes to justify frequent calls by the world’s largest container ships.
The formation of an irreplaceable port
Maritime connectivity works like a telephone network: the more subscribers there are, the more value each connection has. A port that attracts many companies can negotiate lower infrastructure rates, which attracts more companies, which further improves frequency and service, a cumulative advantage hard to break.
Shanghai handled approximately 55.06 million TEU in 2025, according to official port data; approximately 47 million corresponds to 2022. This volume is a condition of its attractiveness: a company opening an Asia-Europe line has every reason to call where it can fill its containers to maximum capacity. Shanghai meets this condition better than any competitor.
Ningbo-Zhoushan has a different but complementary logic. Located a few hours’ drive from Shanghai, it captures some of the overflow and serves as a gateway to the industrial provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The two ports form a system rather than competing with each other, which explains why the two top global rankings belong to the same geographic region.
Singapore occupies a different position: a transshipment hub rather than a departure/arrival port for locally produced goods. Its score of 1,883 reflects its capacity to redistribute flows among Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. This redistribution function makes it valuable, but also vulnerable to any massive rerouting by major companies, as demonstrated by the partial diversion of flows to Port Klang in Malaysia during certain phases of the pandemic.
The Red Sea and Panama put fragility in numbers
The efficiency of the global maritime network rests on implicit assumptions: routes remain passable, hubs function without major interruption, shipping companies freely optimize their routes. These assumptions have been tested repeatedly since 2021.
Attacks by Houthis on container ships in the Red Sea beginning in late 2023 forced dozens of shipping companies to reroute around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, adding ten to fourteen days of transit on Europe-Asia routes. Longer crossing times immobilize vessels that can no longer serve other routes, mechanically tightening available capacity. Freight costs rose sharply; average spot rates for containers from Shanghai more than doubled between early December 2023 and early February 2024.
The Panama Canal posed a different problem. The 2023-2024 drought, the most severe in decades, lowered the level of Gatún Lake and reduced water available for canal operations, forcing Panamanian authorities to limit the draft of vessels. Waiting lines reached several weeks, forcing some operators to opt for passage via Suez or Cape Horn.
These two episodes have a common point: they put pressure on Asian hubs. When routes are disrupted, some shipping companies concentrate more volumes on ports capable of handling logistical complexity, and major Asian hubs, notably Singapore, and large Mediterranean ports were drawn to handle traffic diversions. Port concentration can intensify during crises, potentially reinforcing dependence over time.
The question of supply chain resilience joins directly with that of public procurement policies, an angle we covered from the perspective of European public markets: when flows are concentrated on a few geographic nodes controlled by a few actors, dependence becomes structural before a crisis even reveals it.
The geopolitical stakes go beyond logistics
Maritime connectivity is no longer a purely commercial matter. Three of the top five ports are Chinese: Shanghai, Ningbo-Zhoushan, and Qingdao. Cosco Shipping, a Chinese state-owned shipping company, is one of the three largest container ship operators globally. China Merchants operates or invests in dozens of ports, notably in Djibouti, while Hamburg and Piraeus are associated with COSCO stakes.
This cross-presence gives China significant visibility over global commercial flows and a certain capacity to influence maritime networks. The United States has begun to take measure of this: the Federal Maritime Commission monitors the effects of vessel detentions in Chinese ports on maritime transport conditions, and several American allies have reviewed their conditions for entry into capital of their strategic port infrastructure.
Europe is in a delicate position. A large portion of intercontinental traffic uses the Asia-Europe corridor, which favors Asian ports in connectivity rankings. Rotterdam and major Nordic ports have less frequent and less direct service to major Asian hubs.
This configuration creates vulnerabilities: disruptions in major Asian hubs ripple through to delivery schedules in Europe. The chain has no spare wheel at the volume levels it handles. Supply chain resilience, a central issue for economies like Australia, also depends on port geography and the capacity to diversify entry points.
Can you distribute without losing efficiency?
The real difficulty lies in a structural tension: efficiency gains in maritime transport come from concentration. Next-generation container ships, CMA CGM’s Jacques Saadé capable of carrying 23,000 TEU and Maersk’s Triple-E with a capacity of 18,000 TEU, require ports adapted to their size and capabilities, but their profitability also depends on other factors, and their economies of scale do not necessarily benefit the entire logistics chain. These ports require deep dredging, large-reach cranes, and logistical platforms of several dozen square kilometers. Few places in the world combine all these conditions.
The most common response is the hub-and-spoke model: a large hub receives the giant ship, and small feeders then redistribute containers to secondary ports. Singapore and its role in redistribution to Southeast Asia are the best example. Colombo in Sri Lanka, Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia, Port Klang, and, more recently, investments in Vietnam and the Philippines play this role for traffic segments.
The challenge for coming years is whether this model can be made more robust without sacrificing efficiency. Several approaches are being studied. The first is route redundancy: maintaining two or three alternative practicable routes for each major commercial relationship, even if they are less efficient in normal times. The Red Sea crisis accelerated this reflex among several shipping companies that had rationalized their routes to extremes. The second is digitalization of cargo tracking: if an incident occurs at a hub, automated rerouting systems can redirect cargoes in transit before they even arrive at the affected port.
Several companies, including Maersk, have invested heavily in this type of capacity since 2021.
The third approach is institutional. UNCTAD has recommended for several years a strengthening of port investments in under-connected regions—West Africa, Central Asia, small island states—to create credible alternatives. These investments are progressing, but slowly: the African example of TradeMark Africa, which cut customs delays by two-thirds, shows that logistics performance is decided also outside ports themselves. Reduction of administrative delays can partially offset lower maritime connectivity.
The race for infrastructure that Asian hubs have already won
Looking at the UNCTAD ranking out to 2040 requires understanding who is investing today. China devotes considerable sums to expanding and modernizing its ports, deeper dredging to accommodate the next generation of container ships, automation of terminals, extension of adjacent logistics zones. Shanghai’s Yangshan Phase IV automated terminal is presented as the world’s largest automated terminal; significant automation investments continue in Chinese ports.
Singapore anticipates differently. The maritime and port authority has announced construction of the Tuas terminal, scheduled to double the port’s current capacity by 2040, with full integration of automated handling and digital flow management. The city-state has understood that its comparative advantage, in a world where connectivity tends to concentrate, is to make its node indispensable, not through volume but through reliability and sophistication of services.
Europe responds with ongoing port investments in Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Antwerp, but with a structural handicap: these ports are in the North Sea, far from manufacturing extraction zones. Connectivity to Asia depends on shipping companies deciding to call. These decisions are commercial, not political, making it difficult for European governments to influence the geography of global maritime routes.
The situation out to 2040 depends on several variables that current data cannot settle. If geopolitical tensions push more shipping companies to diversify their routes, secondary hubs outside Chinese sphere of influence could gain power—Colombo, Salalah in the Sultanate of Oman, or rapidly expanding Indian ports like Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai. If, conversely, major maritime alliances continue to rationalize toward the most efficient ports, the gap between the top five and the rest of the ranking could widen further. Both dynamics can coexist: a still more concentrated core and a slightly more diversified periphery.
Maritime economies of scale favor concentration in some cases, but they do not mechanically prevent any deconcentration and can increase costs on land. The challenge therefore consists in making existing hubs more transparent, their governance more open, and alternative routes sufficiently maintained so that a local crisis does not become global shutdown. Shipping companies, regulators, and governments will have to jointly set the acceptable cost of redundancy, knowing it seems superfluous in normal times and that in a crisis it is too late to build.
Sources
- UNCTAD, Maritime and other transport data insights, Liner Shipping Connectivity Index, Q3 2026: https://unctadstat2.unctad.org/insights/theme/271
- UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2025 (available on the UNCTAD website, no stable URL guaranteed)
- Drewry, World Container Index, weekly freight data (Drewry Shipping Consultants, London)
- Alphaliner, Monthly Monitor, capacity and fleet data (Alphaliner, Paris)
