As we've seen—most recently with Israel's Mossad in Iran and Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb in Russia—tractor-trailers and shipping containers make dandy places to hide your weapons of war. Also handy for transporting same. More after the jump
From Bloomberg, November 27:
With shipping outposts on six continents, Beijing has cemented its trade dominance. That some could be used by its navy has other nations worried.
Over the past two decades, China has invested tens of billions of dollars in building or investing in a global network of commercial ports on every continent save Antarctica. Dominating trade infrastructure through shipping, highways and rail is a central pillar of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, and it’s become a growing strategic advantage amid President Donald Trump’s trade war.
With the US retreating from foreign investment just as China accelerates, these projects have dwarfed similar efforts by any other country. China's state-owned or affiliated entities reportedly have invested more than $60 billion in 129 overseas port projects. Within this expansion is something the US and other nations consider a disturbing trend: As we explain in this Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary, many of those ports have potential military uses that experts contend could be exploited in a crisis.
Since World War II, the US has maintained a constellation of military bases across the globe. But as America steps back from the international stage amid a focus on domestic politics and growing internal instability, China is moving to fill the gap. At least 14 ports with Chinese majority ownership have been identified as having potential military uses, a development that has som countries rethinking earlier agreements. In Australia for example, the government said it plans to reclaim the port of Darwin from its Chinese leaseholder. And the European Union is considering tightening controls on foreign ownership of what it calls “critical transport infrastructure.”
For Trump, the more immediate concern is how China could leverage the ports it controls as part of trade tensions. The Republican president has expressed particular concern about Beijing’s influence over the Panama Canal, which US President Jimmy Carter long ago returned to Panama. Two ports on either side of the canal are owned by Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison. Trump aides have claimed that control of these ports by Chinese companies could allow Beijing to impede canal traffic in a time of conflict, trade or otherwise. This could be a major threat to the US economy, since 40% of the country’s container traffic passes through the canal....
....MORE, including video.
On October 19 Bloomberg Businessweek published "China’s Global Network of Shipping Ports Is Too Big for Trump to Unravel" but our interest goes back much further.
March 2018 - "5 New Silk Road Projects That Will Alter Your View Of How The World Works".
July 2018 - "China’s strategic investments in Europe: The case of maritime ports"
November 7, 2020 - Shipping: "China Makes Waves, Seeking To Control World Shipping"
That seems so complicated.
Couldn't you just make the McKinseyite spawn of Marxist Gramscian Professor Joseph Buttigieg the Secretary of Transportation?
I mean, that's the highest expression of Rudi Dutschke's Long March through the Institutions, and without all the loud booms from the explosions.They scare the dogs.
*****
*Starting with the Bosporus/Dardanelles between the Black and Mediterranean Seas:
"China will buy Turkey on the cheap"
Why Turkey is Important
And the Panama Canal:
China Will Help Panama Secure the Canal Against Terrorists
"Don't Fear China's Arctic Takeover"
And all of a sudden you have China on-site on three of the world's MAJOR shipping chokepoints and what could very well become the fourth at the Bering Straits.
....It's just that, as we've seen over the last year, supply lines are fragile, a weak spot even without unfriendlies doing an interdiction.
Should someone actively attempt to halt transportation it would make the Ever Given snafu look like child's play. As just one example, China has been very active in extending their belt and road initiative in Panama, including a $1.4 billion bridge over the canal and rail and other infrastructure.
And that's just one potential flashpoint. The Chinese influence in Brazil, hitherto based on VALE and iron ore could potentially go exponential as Brazil expands/modernizes its shipping and rail infrastructure. And then there's Australia...and...
I suppose somebody should keep an eye on Morocco to note if the Chinese set up camp on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Which was followed in July 2024 by: "Chinese EV battery makers are building huge factories in Morocco to cash in on U.S. electric vehicle subsidies" (and China is now camped at most of the world's chokepoints) "
I say, isn't Morocco on the Strait of Gibralter?*
A month later, August 2024:
Logistics: "A $2 Trillion Reckoning Looms as Ports Become Pawns in Geopolitics"
May 2025 - "Chinese companies bought up European ports — and now Brussels is starting to worry"Now the Eurocrats are starting to worry? Now?*
*March 1, 2018 - "Sizing up Chinese Investments in Europe"March 2025 - "Plans for a Chinese Port Roil the Politics of a Former Soviet Nation"
July 12, 2018 - Shipping: "Hamburg: China’s European trade hub"
October 25, 2021 - "Hamburg Is at the Heart of Germany's Growing Dilemma Over China"
October 25, 2022 - China's COSCO Near Deal To Buy Into Port Of Hamburg
November 2022 - "Europe is fretting over China owning key EU infrastructure. Here's why"
Have I mentioned the Chinese affinity for water?
March 2025 - Panama Canal—"Pro-Beijing paper: Anti-sanctions law can block Li’s ports deal"
March 2025 - BlackRock - CK Hutchison Panama Canal Ports Deal Will NOT Be Consumated Next Week
July 2025 - "China Threatens to Block Panama Ports Deal Unless Its Shipping Giant Is Part of It"
China built a bridge across the Panama Canal. It cost them $1.2 billion. Should that bridge fall down the quickest route for moving U.S. naval assets from the Atlantic to the Pacific would be shut down for weeks to months, leaving the long trip down to the Strait of Magellan as the only option.
However....
"Why the U.S. and China Suddenly Care About a Port in Southern Chile"
And on the Pacific side, June 2024 - "Peru: Chinese Megaport Is Rattling the U.S."
Back to Asia, April 2024 - "Cambodia getting a China-backed, game-changing canal"
Followed by April 2025's "Will China Bypass Singapore And The Strait of Malacca With A Canal Across Thailand Into The Indian Ocean?":
....You can see how this project ties in with China's naval base across the Gulf of Thailand on Cambodia's west coast at Ream:
From April 2025s "RAND: "The Gulf of Thailand May Be the Next U.S.-China Flashpoint":
In fact the Kra canal project would allow China's navy a much more direct route to their only other overseas base on the route into the Suez Canal.
February 2024 - "Red Sea Rivalries"
The most amazing thing that has been pointed out over the last couple months is that China's base on Djibouti's Gulf of Aden coast, at the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab chokepoint into the Red Sea, gives them the perfect location to monitor Houthi action and American reaction:
—China Officially Sets Up Its First Overseas Base in Djibouti, The Diplomat
From Phenomenal World, February 15....
So Mr. Risk Manager, what's your 2027 plan?
