China's Logistics Service Enterprise Structure: Institutional Impediment to Multimodalism

As one of the fastest growing economies in the 21st century, China is pushing to increase its multimodal share of freight transport. While an extensive range of studies has been devoted to examining how this may be achieved, the focus has largely been directed at enhancing supply side factors – improving intermodal interconnections; offering fiscal incentives to encourage shifting to modes of higher capacity, such as the railways and inland waterway; and providing well-articulated multimodal interchange systems. Scant attention has been paid to exploring the role of demand imperatives on multimodal development in China. Drawing on the findings of three years of investigation on the logistics industry in China, this paper shows that the institutional set-up of China’s logistics industry, which continues to nurture the growth of the single truck-owner operators, poses a significant impediment to multimodal transport development in China.