Matthew Phelan
China’s expanding global port control threatens US security, economic influence, and free trade. Washington must counter Beijing’s reach with development financing, diplomatic pressure, and allied coordination before it’s too late.
Seemingly innocuous shipping containers, filled with death.
That has been the headline twice in a month, as both Ukraine and Israel utilized shipping containers to smuggle into enemy nations drone components and even entire drones capable of delivering devastating precision strikes on strategic military assets. These capabilities are not limited to the small and feisty: China is also developing these capabilities, which is particularly concerning given Beijing’s global reach.
China Is Building an Empire of International Ports
One need only glance at China’s expanding control of international ports, and its recent panic at the possibility of losing some of this control through the now-stalled CK Hutchison port deal, to appreciate the growing risk that China will quietly deliver these payloads across the world.
Ports are critical nodes in the international economic system, facilitating global maritime shipping that had an estimated value of over $2 trillion in 2023 alone. They are also increasingly coming under Chinese control.
China’s presence in international ports, defined as having a controlling stake in a port directly or through a subsidiary, owning or operating a port terminal, or handling construction in a manner that appears to grant effective operational control, has grown substantially over the past 25 years. Before 2000, China was represented in 16 ports. Today, 93 ports have a Chinese presence, a number expected to breach 100 in the coming years.
Because even nominally private Chinese companies operate at the pleasure of the Chinese Communist Party, it is easy for the Party to explicitly, yet covertly, exploit the strategic value and influence that ports can provide.
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