CCP Acquires 96 Ports Worldwide, Experts Raise Alarm on Beijing’s Ambitions

Port of Piraeus in Athens. (Shutterstock.com)

With Chinese media firms designated as “foreign missions” in the United States, and with Confucius Institutes being shut down one after another, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideology export has suffered a setback. However, the CCP has acquired nearly 100 strategically important ports around the world, showing obvious political ambitions.

To date, China Ocean Shipping (COSCO) and other Chinese companies have acquired a stake in 96 ports around the world. There are five in the United States, including in Miami, Houston, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

In Germany, China Logistics Group has acquired a 99-year lease to build a logistics center in a new commercial port in Wilhelmshaven. Just three miles away from the port is Heppenser Groden, Germany’s largest naval and logistical base, where German Marine Corps ships are built and repaired, submarines visit, and NATO conducts joint exercises.

The CCP is now eyeing its 97th target, seeking to acquire a 35 percent share in operations in Container Terminal Tollerort in Hamburg, Germany.

“It’s true that the Container Port Tollerort is only a small part of the entire port of Hamburg, yet through this part, China can influence the trade and the political direction of Hamburg port,” said German economics Minister Robert Habeck.

Jan Ninnemann, a logistics professor at the Hamburg School of Business Administration told Newsweek, “There is a high strategic dimension to taking a stake in a terminal,” such as, having a say over which ships come and go, when cargo is loaded and unloaded, and where it goes.

Other analysts expressed concerns that port and logistics operators handle large amounts of corporate, transport, and personal data in increasingly digitized supply chains. China may install China-made internet communications to handle that data, which could potentially enable the CCP to access local government administrations, according to Newsweek.

Strategic Dominance and Military Agenda

A 2021 article by former British International Trade Minister Liam Fox and former U.S. National Security advisor Robert McFarlane said that the CCP has a stake in 96 ports around the world, some of them in key locations for maritime trade, which allows Beijing to gain strategic dominance without having to deploy a single soldier, ship, or weapon.

In 2013, Chinese leader Xi Jinping proposed the strategic idea of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” an attempt to connect ports in different countries, from China’s coast to the Indian Ocean, to the South Pacific, and even Europe.

Since then, Xi has visited a port almost every year, including Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China, in March 2020 and the Greek port of Piraeus in 2019.

The CCP acquired Piraeus, located on the Aegean Sea, and known as “the port of three continents.” It sits at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

In Panama, the southernmost port in Central America, China has a stake in three of the four major ports. The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

COSCO Shipping also acquired a 60 percent stake in the port of Chancay, Peru, and acquired a stake in 61 ports in 30 African countries.

In the Middle East, the CCP now owns ports in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Oman,  and even Israel, a U.S. ally.

One reason for the CCP’s obsession with acquiring ports in various countries is that they could serve military purposes for the regime.

Research by Isaac Carton, a maritime expert in the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island, shows that Chinese naval ships have made port calls or “technical stops” in 32 ports where Chinese companies acquired commercial infrastructure.

Eyal Pinko, a former Israeli intelligence officer, in an interview with Voice of America, said that ports can easily be used to collect naval intelligence.

“You can track the whereabouts of ships and communications. Once you own and operate the port site, these are very easy to do. You can do whatever you want. You are the landlord there,” he said.

Moving ‘Fortresses’

The CCP sees the Chinese ocean shipping fleets as its “moving territory” and “fortresses of warfare.”

Although COSCO Shipping claims to be a modern business partner when cooperating with foreign entities, Xu Lirong, former Chairman and Party Secretary of COSCO Shipping, said that the company is “sailing for the motherland” with “the Party’s flag as our flag and the Party’s direction as our direction.”

According to a report in October last year by Guangming Daily, COSCO was established in 2016 in accordance with “the implementation strategy of the major decisions of the CCP Central Committee” and was one of the first enterprises to include the requirements of the CCP leadership and guidelines in the company’s articles of association. It has 205 Party committees and 144 Party branches, claiming its fleets are the “floating homeland” and that the CCP organization is its soul.

“With a Party organization on board, each ship has become a strong fortress of war,” the company claims.

According to a list obtained by The Epoch Times, at least 40 offices of COSCO have Party branches, including COSCO Houston, COSCO New York, COSCO France, COSCO Holland, and COSCO Piraeus.

Among them, there are 29 Party members in COSCO Houston, 23 in COSCO New York, 42 in COSCO France, 24 in COSCO Holland, and 64 in COSCO Piraeus.

Buying Land Near Military Bases

Along with the acquisition of ports in various countries, the CCP has been buying up land near U.S. military bases.

In 2021, Shandong-based Chinese food processing leader, Fufeng Group acquired 370 acres of farmland north of Grand Forks, North Dakota. The site is less than 20 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force base, known for its top-secret drone technology.

It’s no coincidence that since 2016, GH American Energy, a subsidiary of China-listed GH Energy, has been buying up large tracts of land in Ball Verde County, Texas, to build wind power plants, one of which is less than 20 miles from Laughlin Air Force Base. The owner of GH Energy, Sun Guangxin, is the “richest man in Xinjiang,” and served in the People’s Liberation Army for nearly 10 years.

In 2017, the Chinese regime proposed spending $100 million to build an ornate Chinese garden, including a pagoda, at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC. However, U.S. counterintelligence officials noticed that the pagoda was to be built at one of the highest points in D.C., just two miles from the U.S. Capitol, an ideal place to gather signals intelligence, according to a July 23 report by CNN.

Another large acquisition of land was made by Huawei. The FBI discovered that the cell towers are located near U.S. military bases in the rural Midwest, and determined that Huawei equipment atop the tower could capture and disrupt Defense Department communications, including those from the Strategic Command, which oversees U.S. nuclear weapons.