AI-Driven Smart Ports and the Competitiveness of Hong Kong as a Greater Bay Area Logistics Hub: A Public-Data, Multi-Case Operational Comparison

Smart-port technologies, such as terminal automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital data-sharing, have been promoted in an effort to enhance the international competitiveness of container ports, but their application in practice to improve actual performance in the rapidly changing regional cluster has yet to be fully demonstrated. Hong Kong is a typical case: by 2024, its container throughput had fallen to a 28-year low of about 13.7 million TEU, and it had slipped out of the top ten world ports amid the rapid automation of the Greater Bay Area (GBA). Competitiveness is divided into three publicly observable attributes: operating efficiency, network connectivity and smart-port maturity. Hong Kong is then benchmarked against GBA counterparts (Shenzhen, Guangzhou) and world-class automated terminal operators (Singapore, Shanghai, Rotterdam, Qingdao) using public indices and operator and government data. Automation maturity does not correlate with operating efficiency; for example, only the semi-automated port of Hong Kong achieved the top rank in 2025 for efficiency, and many fully automated ports ranked considerably lower. AI and automation are best viewed as enabling conditions rather than the direct drivers of competitiveness, and Hong Kong's relative decline is mainly due to structural and connectivity factors.