It's hard to imagine anything more
central to our globalised world than container shipping.
Just one of these steel boxes carries enough goods
to fill your average house.
The enormous ships that transport them around the world
often carry tens of thousands at a time.
But as with almost everything else about the way
the world used to work, the coronavirus
has thrown a spanner into the works.
From the banks of Hong Kong Island
you can see plenty of idle ships.
And behind the scenes the containers
they might once have carried are also sitting unused.
Here, in one of the world's most iconic ports
that has long symbolised the relationship between east
and west, this is no coincidence.
In fact, the short-term impact of the coronavirus
on trade in Hong Kong today might actually
tell us something much deeper about the long-term future
of the world's shipping industry.
At the start of 2020 the coronavirus
hit Chinese shipping hard.
Fast forward a few months and the flow of ships from Asia
to the west has come under intense pressure.
That pressure is falling in particular
on the ships that carry goods to consumers in Europe and the US.
And this is because the ships setting off in the east
depend on shops in the west.
Europe, Italy, and Spain, some of these places
that have literally shut down completely
- there's no opportunity for purchase at a store.
In the US a lot of the department stores also
have been curtailing their hours.
So this has been one of the biggest driving factors.
The other side is also, of course,
the production has stopped.
After opening up in the 1970s China
has transformed itself into the world's engine
of manufacturing.
But it's still in the west that much of its production
is consumed.
This arrangement consolidated the east-west shipping route
as the most important artery of world trade
and one of the best indicators of the health of the world
economy.
As the prospects of a deep recession in the west
looms over the industry, the indications are now clear.
Maersk, the world's biggest container shipping company,
says its east-west trade has been the worst
affected part of its business.
However, the fall is not as precipitous
as you might expect.
The importance of the container shipping industry
to the smooth function of the globalised economy
means that, for the most part, cranes are still operating
and ships are still sailing.
In May, around 40 sailings from East Asia to the West Coast
of America were cancelled unexpectedly.
But they could easily come back if the economy recovers.
The action of pulling ships is not unprecedented.
It happens year round.
And it happens spontaneously.
Whenever a shipping lane finds that they are underutilised
they will not hesitate to pull one string
or a service or a vessel.
I think this is probably the first time
that we've seen such a big drop, 12 per cent.
It's not huge, maybe, in our eyes
if you think about how much volumes are still moving.
But 12 per cent is something that we have not
experienced before.
Cancellations, empty containers, and idle ships
are, for now, short-term effects of the pandemic.
It's the long-distance routes to have suffered worst.
While the coronavirus has put pressure on consumption
in the west, there are other longer term threats
to long-distance shipping.
Most obviously, trade tensions between the US and China,
which have escalated over recent weeks,
look set to outlive the coronavirus pandemic.
Beyond that, changes to the structure of manufacturing,
including the rise of automation and the competitiveness
of Chinese labour markets, could also disrupt the flow of ships
globally.
So for ships the size of football fields
that travel halfway around the world
to bring you the phone in your hand,
the pandemic might just prove to be
the catalyst for far more significant and long-lasting
changes.