# Research and Development of Inland Green and Smart Ship Technologies in China
## 2 The Current State of China's Inland Waterways and Ships  
There are seven major waterway systems in China. From north to south, they are the Songhua River System, the Liao River System, the Haihe River System, the Yellow River System, the Huai River System, the Yangtze River System, and the Pearl River System. At present, the construction of the Han River and the Jiang-Han Canal, the Jining-Hangzhou section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, the Jiang-Huai Canal, the Zhe-Gan Canal, and the  
Figure 1: The autonomous ferry “Falco”.  
Figure 2: “Dazhi” smart bulk carrier.  
Yu-Qian-Gui Canal has mostly been completed. The Beijing-Jining section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, the Xiang-Gui Canal, the Gan-Yue Canal, and the Pinglu Canal are under construction or under planning. These form a layout with four horizontal and four vertical waterways with a two-network transportation system [10], as shown in Figure 3. \"Four horizontal waterways\" refers to the Yangtze River, Xijiang, Huai River and Heilong River waterway. \"Four vertical waterways\" refers to the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, the Jiang-Huai Canal, the Zhejiang-Gan-Yue Canal and the Han-Xiang-Gui Canal. \"Two networks\" refers to the high-grade waterway networks of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.  
The Yangtze River has the longest navigable major routes, with more than 100,000 existing ships, and thus, it is the most representative. Due to the lack of overall planning, the ships navigating the Yangtze River compete with each other, and most of them are old ships. These factors significantly affect the capacity, structure, and functions of the golden waterway [11; 12; 13; 14]. These ships are mainly characterized as follows:  
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projects, our research team has achieved a series of innovative results in wide, flat, and green ship technology for application on the Yangtze River. Now, our team is undertaking research, development, and a pilot application of smart ship technology. In 2018, the 1140 Twenty-feet Equivalent Unit (TEU) river-sea-going container ships Hanhai 1, Hanhai 2, Hanhai 3, Hanhai 5, and Hanhai 7, which we developed, were successively placed into operation. Compared with the best ships on the market at the time (700 TEU), the transportation efficiency of these ships was increased by 50%, fuel consumption was reduced by 30%, and emissions were reduced by 40%. Known by the industry and the media as the \"Renaissance on the Yangtze River\" [17], the operation of these ships is referred to as a disruptive revolution in Yangtze River shipping. We have enabled large ships to reach the sea and solved the problems of sea ships being unable to enter the river or river ships being unable to go out to sea. This revolution initiated the Thousand Container Era of shipping in the midstream of the Yangtze River [18]. Hanhai 1 was selected as the 2018 Global Star Ship, and the development of wide and flat river-sea-going ships won first prize at the Hubei Province Technology Invention Awards in 2019. The 1140 TEU river-sea-going container ship Hanhai 1 with a wide, flat, and large ship shape is 129.8 m long, 23.9 m wide, and 11 m deep, which has a reference load capacity of 13,500 tons. It is the largest ship type navigating both the Yangtze River and the open sea in China.