They are eyeing Hong Kong's lucrative transhipment volumes, much of it part of the China cabotage market, which Hong Kong has special dispensation to circumvent.
A report by the South China Morning Post said that it had seen a document showing how a Shenzhen customs office has been advising an international shipping line how to use a paperwork loophole to skip Hong Kong and go directly to Shenzhen. This involved the foreign shippers naming Hong Kong as the port of origin in the manifest they submit to Shenzhen customs without actually loading any goods there.
The report added that it had found that at least two Shenzhen ports and two major international carriers have diverted hundreds of thousands of boxes a month away from Hong Kong's main Kwai Chung Container Terminals. It cited one port operator in Shenzhen saying that other ports and shipping lines feared they might lose out if they did not adopt the same practice.
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