If You Choose Any Old Port It's Not Likely To Be In The Far East..

Amazing set of statistics  on the Economist website, which outlines one dimension to the unstoppable rise to preeminence of Asia over the last 20 years - namely the dominance of far Eastern container ports, by volume of traffic...the same figures also show the huge rise in capacity of ports in general over that time..

In 1989, the Dutch port of Rotterdam was third on the list with 3.9 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs), evidently the unit of measurement in such things. Since then, Rotterdam's capacity has more than doubled to 9.7 TEUs, and yet it's fallen down to 10th place on the list. The top spot today, occupied by Singapore, processes some 25.8 TEUs (in 1989, when it was in second place, it saw a volume of 4.4 TEUs, more than a five fold increase).

In 1989, nine out of the top twenty ports were in the Far East (assuming the Philippines is in the Far East); now that total stands at 14, with East Asian ports occupying 8 of the top 10 places...and of the 4 countries that were newcomers to the list, namely China, Malaysia, Thailand and the UAE, 3 of them are Far Eastern countries (Hong Kong topped the list in 1989 but it was still a British colony then of course).

China itself boasts no less than 6 new ports today that were nowhere to be seen 20 years ago; the US has only 2 ports on the list today as opposed to 4 in 1989,  and poor old Felixstowe (always loved that name) in the UK  is presumably gone for good..

..hope you got all that..have no data for the Baltic ports..