Chinese companies are buying up ports all over the world
Chinese state-owned COSCO is one of them While it looks like a private
company on the outside, It’s Chinese Communist Party red on the inside.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Surfshark. Whenever you go online, especially to look
into controversial topics, you should be using a VPN like Surfshark to protect your identity.
Last week, I talked about a controversial deal in Germany where a Chinese shipping
company was allowed to buy a stake in the German port of Hamburg.
That company was COSCO. It’s a Chinese state-owned enterprise, which means it’s basically a branch
of the Chinese government, disguised as a business. More on that in a minute.
But even though COSCO wasn’t able to buy enough of a stake to have a vote
in the Port’s terminal, it still divided the German government.
Which isn’t that unusual, since more than any country,
Germany is used to being divided.
I think some German politicians are *finally* starting to realize that it’s not a great idea to
rely on an authoritarian government. Especially ones that like to invade other countries.
You’d think Germany would be the last country that would need to learn that lesson.
Now, not all politicians see the danger in a Chinese company owning a part of Germany’s
port. After all, Chinese companies own ports all around Europe, right? What’s the big deal?
“You have other Western European ports where Chinese companies hold a stake, and here we are
talking a small stake, one of many stakes.” We did a whole episode on China taking
over Europe’s ports. I’ll put a link in the description below.
It feels like half of our episodes are about things China is taking over. I
wouldn’t be surprised if our next episode is about China taking over
directing the next Blade movie for Marvel.
“Man, I liked Blade better when he was hunting vampires instead of political dissidents.”
But here’s why it’s a big deal that COSCO is allowed to have a stake in *anything.*
COSCO isn’t just another shipping company like Denmark’s Maersk or Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd.
It’s literally an appendage of the Chinese Communist Party.
And the Chinese Communist Party has lots of appendages.
Maybe if people saw this picture more often they’d finally start being as alarmed as they should be.
“According to a report...by [state-run] Guangming Daily, COSCO...was one of the
first enterprises to include the requirements of the CCP leadership and guidelines in the
company’s articles of association.” When it was founded in 1961,
COSCO was the Chinese Communist Party’s first international shipping company.
“Newsweek was able to identify 40 COSCO ships with [Chinese Communist] party branches” on
them. But there could be even more than that, because “the data isn't complete.”
It quoted a Party leader as saying “There are
about 10,000 regular party members among crew and 150 special cadres.”
Cadres are basically low-level Communist officials.
Here’s a photo of crew members in a political study session on board a COSCO ship.
The worst part of these classes is probably being forced to buy new textbooks every year,
since the CCP keeps rewriting their own history. And it’s not like COSCO is trying to hide its
Party connections either. On their website, COSCO Shipping shows its leadership team
with their party titles right up there with their company titles.
“Newsweek’s reporting, and an internal COSCO publication, show how the Communist
Party operates inside a company that presents itself as a modern business partner abroad but
proclaims at home it ‘follows the party’s direction and sails for the motherland.’”
That would be like ordering Dominos and finding out you’re financially
supporting a regime that commits crimes against humanity… instead of just crimes against pizza.
For example, COSCO Shipping says on its website that it tries to be
a “better practitioner of national initiatives”.
and that its goal is “globalizing the Chinese economy.”
So when COSCO Shipping Ports says its goal is “building a global terminal network
with controlling stake[s]”, this isn’t just a benign business goal.
The Chinese Communist Party wants its businesses so enmeshed in the global supply chain that it
can’t be sanctioned. They saw what the West tried to do to Russia after it invaded Ukraine. And the
Party wants to make sure that when they invade Taiwan, the West can’t sanction them so easily.
Economically speaking, China wants to be
chewing gum in the world’s hair.
Yeah, you can cut it out. But not without destroying everything it’s attached to.
Already, COSCO says it operates or manages loading areas at 37 ports around the world.
That’s just part of more than 90 ports worldwide that Chinese companies control.
And this could be useful for the Communist Party when they launch their war on Taiwan.
I’ll tell you how, after the break. Welcome back.
COSCO Shipping Ports has acquired ports all over the world. It’s
part of a larger network of ports owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
This is bad news—for a lot of reasons.
I talked earlier about how China wants to be so essential to global trade that
it can’t be sanctioned. That’s because when China does actually invade Taiwan,
it could use its shipping business as blackmail.
We’ve already seen China use a carrot and stick approach to convince German leaders
to give it a stake in the Port of Hamburg, Germany’s largest port.
A director at COSCO Ports told Newsweek that Hamburg would
get a boost in business if the deal with COSCO went through. However if it didn’t,
COSCO reportedly threatened to take its offer to Poland.
They’re going to invade Poland? Man, they really know how to hit Germany where it hurts.
We’ve also seen China use trade as a way to punish countries it
has political spats with. Like when Lithuania allowed
Taiwan to open a representative office that *gasp* had the name Taiwan in it.
China basically cut off all trade with Lithuania. Unofficially of course.
And Chinese state-run media warned that if any other country tried to pull the same stunt,
“Lithuania is living proof” of the “severe consequences”.
Why is China so afraid of people saying “Taiwan?” Do they think if
they do it three times in a mirror it’ll pop up behind them?
China also used trade to punish Australia after Australia’s Prime Minister called for
an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. And it banned shipments of rare earth metals
to Japan over a territorial dispute in the East China Sea.
Of course, China denied it was retaliating through trade.
But come on China, everyone knows this is your MO. This would be like if Dominos denied their crust
tasted like salty cardboard. You know we know you’re lying. Don’t insult our intelligence.
The Chinese Communist Party could also use its businesses in the
shipping industry to choke supply chains. We all saw what happened with the supply
chain during the pandemic. A big part of that was because China closed its factories and shipping
ports during various stages of lockdown. It took months for the pandemic bottleneck to break,
and that was with everyone *trying* to fix it. COSCO is one of the world’s largest shipping
companies. Even if only *COSCO* did a trade embargo, never mind other Chinese companies,
the supply chain could be messed up for a long, long time.
Relying on an authoritarian government was a bad idea? How come Germany didn’t warn any of us?
Oh yeah… because they *still* haven’t learned that lesson.
And there are other ways China could weaponize its shipping business as well.
This article says the CCP sees the Chinese ocean shipping fleets as its
“‘moving territory’ and ‘fortresses of warfare.’”
Floating fortresses controlled by a corrupt warlord? And here I thought that
Waterworld was an unrealistic depiction of the future.
Although the “fortress of warfare” thing is probably a metaphor. COSCO
ships are not actually *naval* weapons. I think.
But they are a mechanism for Party branches carrying out
China’s political and economic agenda.
This Chinese government website talks about how COSCO is building party
branches on their ship to be a “strong fighting fortress” to serve the country.
A Czech think tank that focuses on China says, “Party members are bound by party discipline to
carry out whatever tasks the party might require.” Which means they’re one level deeper in the
Party’s control. So essentially,
COSCO is like a floating fortress full of Manchurian candidates. Is this real life or
TNT’s weekend movie schedule?
Then there’s the issue of intelligence gathering. COSCO uses LOGINK a Chinese government-created
data-sharing platform that, among other things, allows users to track shipments in real time.
The US China Economic and Security Review Commission has been looking at
LOGINK due to national security concerns. In a September report, the commission said
LOGINK could be used to “enable the Chinese government to identify U.S. supply chain
vulnerabilities and to track shipments of U.S. military cargo on commercial freight”.
Creepily spying on us? Sure, why not.
Throw some Enemy of the State into the mix.
Because COSCO operates terminals in Long Beach, Los Angeles,
and Seattle...Beijing could potentially get access to a lot of data on those ports.
“Chinese news sources reported that LOGINK had access to data on live movements of more than
90 percent of the world’s container ships through CargoSmart”, a COSCO subsidiary.
The commission is worried that China could use this data to undercut foreign businesses
and block or disrupt trade. For example, if China were
to invade Taiwan and the US sent troops to aid Taiwan, China might retaliate by
preventing cargo ships from getting to the US. Which is why doing more business with China is
always a bad idea. Especially if it’s delivered by a branch of the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s past time people start being as alarmed by the CCP as they should be.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.