3mo ago

Chinese companies bought up European ports — and now Brussels is starting to worry

www.politico.eu

Chinese companies bought up European ports — and now Brussels is starting to worry – POLITICO

13 comments

So where have the politicians been all these years since it‘s happening? Probably at the lunch table with chinese lobbyists. Ultimately it‘s a problem of our own making.
- Doesn't that describe just about everything but natural disasters?
  
  Hey give us some credit, some of the natural disasters are our fault too!
property rights for entire ports is insane
- It truly is madness the things the state will concede to private business, naively ignoring their own soverign interests.
  
  They could always renationalise it. But yes, selling them was stupid in the first place
Neoliberalism working out as well as expected.
Ha, after literally forcing Greece to sell Piraeus to the chinese? Fuck off
Who sold it?
Everyone is acting rationally except Germany. The usual.
- Ah yes, Poland and the Netherlands sold their ports but somehow Germany is at fault because they sold a stake in one single terminal in their port.
  It starts to feel like r/europe here
- COSCO owns 24.99% of the operations of one terminal in Hamburg. Not the brick+mortar, Hamburg would never sell that to anyone, and by far not 24.99% of the operations of the port but of one terminal -- the smallest of four, in fact.
  The motive for Hamburg behind this is to bind COSCO to the port, by giving them enough operational say that they can be sure that their ships will be served with some priority so they can get in and out quickly, don't have to port-hop, etc. Strategically it's vital for Hamburg to keep the port busy to fuel all the secondary industry in and around the city, and its geographical position is not the best, definitely not compared to the Netherlands. To this end the city has (functionally) its own shipping company (Hapag-Lloyd), but it's not like the Chinese are suddenly going to stop doing their own shipping and move everything to Hamburg's control.
  I cannot understate how much of a political fallout there would be if any politician in Hamburg would merely consider, not even float, losing control of the harbour. There is no Hamburg without the harbour, everybody knows that because it's been that way for literally a millennium, and the Chinese aren't the first foreign capitalists the city has dealt with. It's like thinking that China would consider selling the forbidden city, u wot m8?
  Not to mention that COSCO's investment pales in comparison to that of MSC.

13 comments