Port investment along the Maritime Silk Road considering mutual selections of the industries planned for transfer and recipient countries with location advantage

This paper addresses the issues of port investment, considering the mutual selection process of the industries planned for transfer and recipient countries with location advantage, along the Maritime Silk Road (MSR). We propose a method for determining the production scale of different industries in each country by analyzing location advantage, the regional imports of commodities from each recipient country, the import transportation route scheme, the port network structure, and the port investment scheme along the MSR. This method is constructed on the basis of a hub-spoke network model, a location model, and a matching game model. We select 14 countries along the MSR as a case study and treat them as the supply zones of commodities, while six continents are taken as the demand zones. The numerical analysis show that Sihanoukville Port in Cambodia, Port Klang in Malaysia, and Mundra Port in India will become hub ports, and that 81, 41, and 24 container berths will be constructed at each of these harbors, respectively. Whether a port will become a hub depends on the industrial growth potential in its direct hinterland, its geographical advantages in the global shipping network, and its relative spatial relationship to other hub ports.