China's mainland coast is over 18,000 km long, and its rivers total 220,000 km in length. Such excellent natural conditions provide convenience for developing inland river transport and ocean shipping. The major inland navigable rivers in China are the Yangtze, the Pearl, the Heilongjiang, the Huaihe, the Qiantang, the Minjiang and the Huangpu, not forgetting the Grand Canal between Beijing and Hangzhou. In 1999, navigable inland waterways in China totaled 110,300 km, the volume of cargo transportation was 2,126.3 billion tons/km, and the volume of passenger transportation was 10.73 billion persons per km.

Now there are more than 5,000 berths at some 70 major inland river ports. The Yangtze, the golden waterway of China's inland river transport, has considerable annual volume of both freight and passenger transport. Nanjing Harbor, the largest river harbor in China, has an annual capacity of more than 40 million tons. Ocean shipping in China is divided into two major navigation zones: the northern and the southern ones. The northern one has Shanghai and Dalian as the centers, and the southern one has Guangzhou as the center. There are more than 20 major coastal harbors in China, and the passenger turnover of 64.01 million Shanghai Harbor ranks among the 10 largest trade harbors in the world, with an annual capacity of over 100 million tons. China has an ocean fleet with a capacity of 22 million tons of goods, sailing among 1,100 harbors worldwide.

The construction of China's coastal harbors has been focused on the transportation of coal, containers, iron ore and grain and roll-on-roll-off ships, as well as deep-water access to the sea. China has especially strengthened the construction of the container transport system. Work in this regard has been concentrated on the construction of a group of deep-water container wharves at Dalian, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen and Shenzhen, laying the basis for the shaping of China's container hubs. The construction of the coal transport system has been further strengthened. A number of coal transport wharves have been constructed. In addition, wharves for importing crude oil and iron ore have been reconstructed or expanded. By the end of 2000, the coastal harbors had more than 2,400 berths at or above the medium-size level, including over 640 deep-water berths, with a total handling capacity of 988 million tons. The specialized container berths have a handling capacity of 12 million standard containers.