The annual container throughput on the Chinese mainland is set to exceed 100 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) as of 2007, following the loading of 9,500containers in north china's Tianjin port on Wednesday.

    "China's container transportation sector was about 20 years behind other countries, but its development speed in the past 34 years has been rarely seen in the world," said Song Dexing, a Ministry of Communications official, at a ceremony held at the Tianjin port on Wednesday.

    China's container transportation industry started operations in September 1973 at the Tianjin port. The first international container route was from Tianjin to Kobe, Japan.

    To date, eight large ports along China's eastern coast, including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Guangzhou, have each recorded annual throughput of 1 million TEUs or more.

    Xu Fu, a professor of international trade at Nankai University in Tianjin, said the rapid growth of container throughput reflected the sustained growth of the country's export-orientated economy since its opening up in late 1978.