Chinese media reports say that the Chinese Ministry of Communications has issued a statement in Chinese that logistics provider Schenker is being investigated for operating with falsifi ed NVOCC licenses.

It is believed that the authorities have called on Schenker to cease all business in China concerned with ocean freight, and for shipping companies not to deal with Schenker.

Schenker has denied the accusations and stated that it clearly has received an NVOCC certifi cate from the authorities. The management at Schenker in China is reported as insisting that Schenker will continue to operate out of Shanghai and Hong Kong and there will be no interruptions in its service.

It appears that the problems encountered by Schenker are related to the secondary licences issued for its operations out of Shanghai and not for its longer established operations in Hong Kong. At press time it was unclear whether the statement from the Ministry of Communications just refl ected a conflict within the Chinese bureaucracy, or that Schenker’s operations were in danger of being shut down.

In a comment, Transport Logistics said that “logistics operations in China are often vulnerable to machinations within the different levels of the Chinese state, with trucking services for example, effectively dependent on political favours by local politicians. Sea freight has been an exception due to its importance to the Chinese economy. As sea forwarders and other LSPs penetrate deeper into China, the more likely they are to encounter the acute regulatory problems.