Pablo Hiriart
Salamina, Greece – Beneath the waters of the strait separating this island from the port of Piraeus lie the remains of thousands of ships from the powerful Persian fleet that was defeated by the Greeks in 480 BC, in what is perhaps the most important naval battle in history.
Despite being vastly outnumbered, Themistocles’ soldiers saved democracy, philosophy, and theater — pillars of Western culture — for the benefit of humanity and for all time. They recaptured Athens. They rebuilt the Acropolis without slave labor. And they returned to the civic temple of public deliberation: the agora.
Today, at 35 degrees Celsius, the inhabitants of Salamina enjoy the beach and the water, almost as turquoise as that of Bacalar. At the same time, cargo ships from all over the world silently pass before our eyes as they enter the port of Piraeus, which no longer belongs to the Greeks but to China.
Without firing a shot or antagonizing Greece, in 2021 Xi Jinping achieved what Xerxes could not do with the Persian army almost 2,500 years ago: 100% control of the Piraeus cargo terminal and 67% of the port authority where 24,000 ships (8,000 cargo and port service ships) arrive each year, with 5.1 million containers.
They also have total or partial control of the ports of Zeebrugge (16 km from Bruges, Belgium), Valencia, Bilbao, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Marseille, Le Havre, Hamburg…
The ships that pass before our eyes bring cars, auto parts, heavy machinery, clothing, computers, cell phones, fertilizers, oil, metals, chips, semiconductors, and low-cost goods…
And they bring a different model of society than the one defended by the soldiers of Salamis five centuries before Christ.
“China is not coming to impose an ideological model. It is coming to build dependence,” Juan Pablo Cardenal, author of the book La telaraña china (The Chinese Web) and former correspondent in Beijing, tells this reporter: “They don’t need you to imitate them, it’s enough for them that you depend on them.”
China’s expansion in Europe is certainly not neutral.
They have a different idea of values that we consider universal, such as human rights and freedoms.
For China, the rights of governments are above individual rights.
Civil liberties hinder economic progress.
Human rights are as relative as the “idiosyncrasies” of each country. In other words, “customs and traditions” have a higher value than individual human rights.
This is what they are selling in Europe, with success growing in proportion to their investments. Who cares about the Uyghur minorities being crushed in China? The imprisoned journalists? The jailed dissidents?
Nationalism in European countries has adopted elements of Xi’s ideology, which tends to undermine democratic institutions, pluralism, equality before the law, and freedom of expression.
Hungary is a good example of this destruction. Why is this? That country accounts for 45% of Chinese investment in Europe.
The Chinese plant of BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, has been established there, designed to produce 300,000 vehicles annually.
Most of the 500,000 cars that China sells in Europe each year now enter through the port of Piraeus.
A European Parliament report identifies five critical areas of risk associated with China’s growing presence in strategic sectors, which in summary are:
–Economic dependence: Chinese control of key logistics hubs (Piraeus, Valencia, Zeebrugge, etc.) allows Beijing to influence European supply chains directly. This gives China the ability to pressure countries with the threat of paralyzing their trade routes or suspending investments, as already happened in Peru when Cosco threatened to withdraw its capital from the port of Chancay if the 30-year exclusive concession it had received was revised.
–Political coercion: Chinese capital acts as diplomatic leverage. Greece vetoed a European Union statement on human rights in China. It was the first time a member country had broken the consensus on this issue.
–Cyber and data risk: Ports managed by Chinese companies use software and sensor technology manufactured by the state-owned company ZPMC. The EU acknowledges that it cannot audit these systems, which leaves the door open to industrial espionage, remote manipulation, or covert collection of commercial data.
–Potential military use of infrastructure: Although the current use of Chinese-controlled ports is civilian, their technical characteristics make them suitable for logistics missions by the People’s Liberation Army. Cosco is legally obliged to cooperate with the Chinese government’s strategic objectives, including support for naval operations.
–Erosion of labor and environmental standards: China operates without the same accountability framework as European multinationals. It violates workers’ rights and causes ecological damage in countries with weak institutions (Greece and Hungary).
Fifteen minutes by ferry from the historic island where I watch the ships pass by, and through whose strait the Greeks saved their democracy and bequeathed us a culture that still endures, lies the gateway to continental Europe, now under Chinese control: the Port of Piraeus, now operated by the China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco).
Control of the seas is crucial to China’s economic and military expansion, as it accounts for 90% of its trade. It currently has a stake in 100 ports across 60 countries, says Juan Pablo Cardenal.
But the most critical hub in the Mediterranean is here, before our eyes: Piraeus, 100% controlled by Cosco, owned by the Chinese state.
Like all Chinese companies, it has a Communist Party cell within its corporate structure.
From there, China is expanding across Europe with an “invasion” of 2.3 billion items priced below €150 (2023 figures).
In less than four years, China will be the supplier of 45% of global manufacturing, surpassing the United States and its allies combined, when in 2001 it accounted for only 6% of that production (data published by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times).
Next Tuesday, the day this column appears, I invite you to take a tour of the heart of the great Chinese shipping company that pumps its torrent of goods and accumulation of power through the arteries of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Black Sea.
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