Henan serves as a key national base for grain production, energy and raw materials, and manufacturing, generating strong demand for bulk cargo transport. Constrained by the navigation conditions of the Yellow River, most bulk cargo in the Central Plains region relies on road and rail for outward transport, keeping logistics costs persistently high. By comparison, water transport costs roughly half of rail, one-fifth of road, and one-twentieth of air. Behind this enormous price gap lies the unrealized potential of inland water transport in the Central Plains.

On July 1, the Regulations on Inland River Shipping of Henan Province, the province's first comprehensive local regulation in the inland waterway shipping sector, officially took effect, marking Henan's inland shipping transition from "restorative development" to "high-quality development." Guided by the Regulations and supported by the construction of waterways, ports, and multimodal transport systems, vigorous practices aimed at leveraging water transport are unfolding across the Central Plains.

Legal Foundation Opens a New Paradigm for Water Transport Governance

As Henan's first comprehensive and systematic local regulation in the inland waterway shipping field, the introduction of the Regulations is regarded as a landmark event marking that inland waterway shipping governance in Henan has fully entered a law-based track. For a long time, Henan's inland waterway shipping development has faced issues such as insufficient factor guarantees and an incomplete management system, along with shortcomings including unstable river runoff, navigation interruptions during dry seasons, a single type of transported goods, and a high rate of empty return voyages. These have severely constrained water transport capacity efficiency, logistics benefits, and industrial radiation capacity, making it difficult to fully realize the advantages of low-cost water transport.

In response to these practical challenges, the Regulations put forward a systematic institutional design. In terms of navigation guarantees, a provincial-level joint water dispatch mechanism for navigation is established to coordinate flood control, drought relief, ecological water replenishment, and navigation needs, strengthen unified water-level coordination and dispatch between upstream and downstream areas, and address the core problems of runoff fluctuations and navigation interruptions during dry seasons at the institutional level, ensuring normalized and stable navigation of waterways. In terms of development guarantees, the Regulations establish a ship lock toll system and broaden investment and financing channels for water transport projects; they clarify that land for inland waterway shipping projects may be allocated, greatly reducing infrastructure construction costs and solidifying factor support for shipping development.

At the same time, the Regulations specifically set up a chapter on "Development and Guarantees," focusing on operational pain points such as a single cargo type and empty return voyages. By vigorously cultivating port-adjacent industries and promoting deep integration of ports, industry, and cities, they enrich cargo categories such as industrial finished products and containers, breaking the current single cargo structure dominated by bulk cargo such as sand, gravel, and grain; relying on the construction of a multimodal transport system, they accelerate the implementation of port-connecting railways, dedicated port lines, and other collection and distribution supporting facilities, coordinate cross-provincial two-way cargo source organization, optimize cargo flow matching efficiency, effectively reduce ship empty-sailing rates, and improve the overall operational efficiency of water transport.

In addition, the Regulations actively empower green and smart port and shipping construction, promote the application of new energy and clean energy vessels, and help build an efficient, smooth, green, and low-carbon Central Plains "water economy corridor." A relevant official from the Henan Provincial Department of Transport said at a routine provincial government policy briefing that the implementation of the Regulations not only fills the gap in local legislation for Henan's inland waterway shipping, but also straightens out the institutional mechanisms for water transport development at the institutional level, incorporates inland waterway shipping development into national economic and social development plans, and includes funding in the fiscal budget at the corresponding level for guarantees, providing stable institutional support for subsequent waterway upgrades, port construction, and improvement of the multimodal transport system in Henan.

Corridor Upgrades Build a Framework Connecting Rivers to the Sea

Waterways are the foundation of water transport. According to the Revised Layout Plan for Inland Waterways and Ports in Henan Province (2025-2035), Henan plans to form an overall pattern of "two vertical, two horizontal, four main, six branch, plus other waterways," with a planned total length of 3,745 kilometers, including 1,432 kilometers of high-grade waterways at Grade III and above. At present, Henan is focusing on accelerating the upgrade of four national high-grade waterways: the Shaying River, Huai River, Tang River, and Tuohui River, creating new collection and distribution corridors that connect rivers to the sea. In the Special Action Plan for the Adjustment of Henan's Transport Structure (2026-2028), these four waterways are clearly identified as core construction tasks for Henan's water transport during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, with the goal of basically meeting standards by the end of the "15th Five-Year Plan" and forming as soon as possible a water transport corridor network linking main and branch waterways and connecting rivers to the sea.

As Henan's core water transport corridor, the Shaying River "connecting ports and parks" project is being advanced at full speed. Among its components, the Zhoukou Navigation Hub project is designed to Grade III waterway standards, with two lock chambers each 240 meters long, and after completion it will be able to accommodate 2,000-tonne cargo ships. The Jialu River navigation restoration project includes about 17.5 kilometers of waterway improvement from the Shaying River estuary to the Xihua section, built to restricted Grade III waterway standards, with a designed water depth of 3.5 meters and bottom width of 45 meters, capable of accommodating 2,000-tonne bulk carriers and 110 TEU container ships. In terms of the Huai River waterway, projects in the Gushi, Xi County, and Huaibin sections of the Huai River are being advanced in sequence. Among them, the Huaibin-to-Sanhejian waterway upgrading project and the Huaibin-to-Xi County navigation project on the Huai River have both entered the final stage, and will greatly enhance navigation capacity in southeastern Henan.

Hou Wenlong, deputy general manager of the project department for the Shaying River "connecting ports and parks" project, said that the project is a major livelihood project for optimizing the transport structure of the Central Plains, reducing logistics costs, and promoting integrated development of ports, industry, cities, and parks, and is also an important water transport corridor for Zhoukou's integration into the national unified market. The port collection and distribution system is being improved simultaneously, and the construction of two port-connecting railways has entered a critical stage, making every effort to open the "last mile" between ports and railways. The dedicated collection and distribution railway line at the central port area of Zhoukou Port has a total length of 12.663 kilometers, starting from the newly opened Huangzhai Station on the Luofu Railway and extending directly to the port operation area. Track laying has now exceeded 7 kilometers, sprinting toward opening in October. Although the line is not long, it connects Zhoukou Central Port with national trunk railways such as the Luofu Line, Beijing-Guangzhou Line, and Beijing-Kowloon Line, achieving a "hand-in-hand" connection between railway and port and becoming a nerve ending that activates "rail-water intermodal transport." The port-connecting railway at the Huaibin port area of Xinyang Port has a total length of 11.9 kilometers, connects to Huaibin Station on the Beijing-Kowloon Line, and recently completed the erection of its first T-beam. It is scheduled to be completed and put into use by the end of the year. Once the two port-connecting railways are completed, they will achieve seamless rail-water intermodal connection, greatly improve port cargo turnover efficiency, and reduce transshipment costs. Henan also plans to consolidate and expand rail-sea intermodal routes such as Zhengzhou to Lianyungang and Zhumadian to Ningbo, striving to build more than 25 rail-sea intermodal routes by 2028, further extending water transport access to the sea.

Green Empowerment Creates a Low-Cost Water Transport Model Corridor

While upgrading waterway and port hardware, Henan is simultaneously advancing the green and intelligent transformation of water transport capacity. Between Pingdingshan Port, Luohe Port, and Zhoukou Port, a new energy vessel "shuttle bus" service is being created, using pure electric inland vessels to reshape the cost advantage of inland shipping and promote the shift of water-appropriate cargo from road to water. In September this year, four "Yuxinneng" series new energy intelligent vessels arrived at port for delivery and were officially put into regular operation on the Pingdingshan-Zhoukou route. "This series of vessels is based on the technical prototype of Henan Province's first thousand-tonne new energy intelligent cargo ship, 'Yujiaotou 001.' Tailored to Henan's waterway characteristics, it specifically adopts a shallow-draft hull design, with an overall length of 59.65 meters, molded breadth of 10.98 meters, and full-load draft of 2.4 meters. It can maintain stable cargo capacity in both dry and rainy seasons and is adapted to the water level conditions of the Shaying River waterway," said Li Xiaochi, head of the preparatory group of the Science and Innovation Center of Henan Port and Shipping Group.

In terms of power, the "Yuxinneng" series vessels use pure electric drive, equipped with two container-type battery sets with a total capacity of 1,904 kilowatt-hours and a range of about 160 kilometers. They can be directly charged via shore power and fully charged in about 10 hours. Compared with traditional diesel vessels, their energy cost is only 30%, an advantage that directly lowers the per-tonne-kilometer transport cost on the Pingdingshan-Zhoukou section and brings tangible cost-reduction benefits to enterprises along the route dealing in bulk cargo such as coal, building materials, and grain. In terms of intelligence, the "Yuxinneng" series vessels are equipped with advanced technologies such as onboard biomimetic vision and multi-sensor fusion, and have supervised autonomous navigation and remote driving control functions. They can rely on a unified intelligent system for coordinated dispatch, building a large-scale, intelligent shipping capacity matrix. As new energy vessels are put into operation in batches, the "shuttle bus" model on the Ping-Luo-Zhou waterway is gradually taking shape, forming an integrated water transport solution of "waterway + port + new energy vessels + multimodal transport." This model not only helps Henan meet carbon reduction targets, but also activates industrial vitality along the route through low-cost water transport capacity, attracts water-appropriate industries to locate near ports, and promotes the upgrade of Henan's inland waterway shipping from a traditional transport corridor to a green economic corridor.

From legal protection to hardware upgrading and then to green capacity iteration, Henan's inland waterway shipping is undergoing a systemic transformation. The logistics map of the Central Plains, once dominated by roads and railways, is accelerating toward a new pattern of coordinated water-land transport and river-sea connectivity as waterways are linked and electric cargo ships sail, allowing the landlocked Central Plains hinterland to embrace the opening-up dividends of river-sea connectivity and injecting new water transport momentum into the high-quality development of the Central Plains Economic Zone.