Clever! Germany Rethinks Selling Large Stake in One of World’s Most Important Ports to China

04 November 2022, China, Peking: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (r, SPD) is received with m
Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

German authorities are reportedly rethinking a plan to sell a large stake in its largest port to a company owned by the Chinese government.

A formerly government-approved plant to sell a large stake in the port of Hamburg to Chinese multinational COSCO Shipping is now reportedly in doubt after further investigation into the port has revealed — as if it wasn’t already obvious — the level of its strategic significance. The port of Hamburg is the largest in Germany, the second largest in Europe, and one of the most important in the world.

Left-wing Chancellor Olaf Scholz had previously greenlit the deal for a 24.9 per cent stake in the port to be sold to the company owned by the Chinese state, despite numerous officials within his own government warning that doing so would be a very bad idea.

However, the deal is now once again in doubt after a government investigation found that the port’s current operator, Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA), allegedly failed to register the port as being “critical infrastructure” before being pressured to do so earlier this year.

According to a report by Tagesschau, the port should have been registered with the German government as being of central importance by April 2, 2022 at the latest, with the classification meaning that the Chinese company would not have been allowed to gain more than a 10 per cent stake in the facility.

While the HHLA has described the investigation as being “factually and legally unfounded”, senior politicians within the country’s government are now demanding that the deal be reviewed, while opposition parliamentarians are calling for the deal to be scrapped entirely.

“The involvement of the Chinese state-owned company must now be prohibited,” the foreign policy expert of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Norbert Röttgen, remarked, describing the fact that such a detail was missed by the government until now “incredible amateurism and a serious failure”.

The revelation of the Hamburg port’s critical importance is likely to further embarrass Germany’s floundering government, which has traditionally taken a very soft touch when it comes to dealing with the Chinese government.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz in particular may exit this affair with  egg on his face, with the German leader initially pushing for the country to hand over a 35 per cent stake in the key port to the CCP-owned shipping company.

A figure of 24.9 per cent by contrast was only arrived at due to massive backlash from Scholz’s government partners, with both the left-wing Greens and libertarian Free Democratic Party expressing concern that the sale was likely a very bad idea.

Germany’s exposure to China does not begin or end at the port of Hamburg however, with the Communist country being Germany’s single largest trading partner in 2022 despite ongoing attempts by other Western nations to decrease reliance on the increasingly belligerent nation.

A study by the German ifo Institut last year warned that such a heavy reliance on China could end up being very costly for the country in the long-run, with the European nation’s automotive industry being highlighted as particularly vulnerable should an outright trade war between East and West end up breaking out.

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