China’s Ministry of Transport has approved a plan to launch cruises from its lesser-known port of Beibuwan, in Guangxi Province, to ASEAN in the spring of 2015. Alan Lam reports.
The vessel deployed will be the 1990-built, 9,960gt YanJing, renamed Bei Bu Wan Zhi Xing (or Beibuwan Star), a ro-ro passenger unit owned and operated by Beibuwan Cruise Terminal. The ship has the capacity of about 400 passengers. It will call at major cruise ports throughout ASEAN.
In 2009 the Chinese government approved a programme to develop Beibuwan Bay – which covers the coastal areas of Guangxi Province, Leizhou Peninsula inGuangdong Province, western Hainan and the northern coastal areas of Vietnam –into a world-class tourism destination.
Its aim was to develop it into one of world’s top tourism destinations by 2020 under the slogan of "one core area, two tourism circles, three polar regions, and five development axes", featuring a cross-border style coastal leisure and landscape that involves destinations in Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia.
This development will effectively open up a new homeport in China, pioneered by a Chinese domestic cruise operator. Because of the ambitious programme and its geography, Beibuwan will soon attract the attention of other international cruise lines.
