The city of Dalian has been building itself into an international shipping center, international logistics center, and a regional finance center as part of the nation's strategy Liaoning Coastal Economic Belt strategy and opening-up policy.

The city's industries have been transforming themselves and building three centers and its service industries in shipping logistics, finance, insurance, culture, and software research and development have brought new growth to the city.

In its role as an international shipping center, Dalian has handled 94 percent of the foreign container freight business in Northeast China and container freight is often seen as an index of a city's shipping power. Dalian has seen its container throughput grow to 1.1 times the amount of five years ago. In 2012, container throughput is expected to reach 8-million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), a year-on-year increase of 12.5 percent.

This puts Dalian in 7th place among China's port cities and top 20th in the world. In the five years from 2008 to now, its port cargo-handling capacity has risen to 300 billion tons from 200 billion. In 2012, the cargo handling capacity is expected to reach 374 billion tons, up 11 percent, making it 6th in China and among the top 10 in the world.

Dalian has relations with ports in 11 different countries, including the United States, Belgium, and Malaysia and has navigation routes to more than ports in 160 countries and regions. It spent as much as 47.2 billion yuan ($7.57 billion) on port construction and shipping during that five-year-period and has a world-class specialized container wharf, a 300,000-ton ore terminal, and an oil terminal. Its Changxi Island harbor district has 10 berths and the Taiping harbor district is now in the construction phase.