In the dispute over China’s entry into a container terminal in the port of Hamburg, which was agreed more than a year ago, Beijing is pushing for German-Chinese cooperation. Since diplomatic relations were established 50 years ago, pragmatic cooperation and mutual benefit have always been the guiding principles, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement over the weekend.
Both countries would have participated intensively in the development of the other and benefited from it. China welcomes mutually beneficial projects, the broad statement said. Both China and Germany should adhere to openness and cooperation, to jointly promote the healthy and stable development of economic and trade cooperation. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) will travel to China with a business delegation at the beginning of November.
In September 2021, the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA and the Chinese terminal operator Cosco Shipping Ports Limited agreed on a 35 percent Chinese stake in the HHLA terminal in Tollerort (CTT) in the Hanseatic city. The Cosco Group also operates the world’s fourth-largest shipping company, whose container ships have been handled by HHLA at the CTT for 40 years.
In return for the stake, Cosco wants to make the CTT a preferred transhipment point in Europe. HHLA, which is majority owned by the Hanseatic city, hopes that this will strengthen Germany’s largest seaport, which in the past had lost ground to its larger competitors Rotterdam and Antwerp.
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), the Chinese offer is putting the Port of Hamburg in a difficult position. “When Cosco says, ‘You will become a preferred port if you accept the participation’, one naturally has to ask the question: What if this participation is not approved?” Rolf Langhammer from IfW Kiel told NDR.
However, under the impression of recent experiences with Russia and the dependence on its gas supplies, a political dispute has broken out over the question of whether Chinese participation should be allowed. Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) warned of new dependencies, as did FDP politicians. The Chancellor, who was head of government in Hamburg until 2018, recently emphasized that nothing had been decided and that many questions still had to be clarified. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, there is currently a review period up to October 31, within which the deal should be prohibited. However, the deadline can be extended.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil sees a “sometimes very abbreviated” debate when talking about the “sellout of the Port of Hamburg”. “If you take a closer look, you really see that it is an operating company. It’s about a minority stake in a terminal. I don’t want to downplay that at all, but (…) it’s not about letting the Chinese into the critical infrastructure,” said Klingbeil on Deutschlandfunk. This must now be “clarified exactly”, there are “a few more days” left. “The infrastructure belongs to the city of Hamburg and it will stay that way,” said the SPD politician.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz, on the other hand, warned in a circular email that Chinese participation in the terminal company “deeply affects the security interests of our country”. A Chinese state-owned company would thus have “access to key data on freight traffic in the Port of Hamburg. And that at exactly the time when the Communist Party in China is again intensifying its aggressive tone in foreign policy and is threatening a war against Taiwan.” He accused Scholz of playing for time until the deadline for prohibiting participation expires.
CSU regional group chief Alexander Dobrindt called on the Chancellor to prevent Chinese entry. “The sale of gas storage facilities to Russia should serve as a cautionary tale. One-sided dependencies on a single region in the world create one’s own susceptibility to blackmail and a feeling of superiority on the other side,” Dobrindt told WELT AM SONNTAG. However, HHLA has expressly assured that Cosco will not have “any access to strategic know-how” with the entry and that IT and sales data remain “solely the responsibility of HHLA”. From the company’s point of view, “no objective reasons have been given in the process, which has been going on for more than a year, which would speak against approving the investment”.
The Foreign Trade Ordinance allows the Ministry of Economic Affairs, under certain circumstances and after an examination, to prohibit an investor from a non-EU country from investing in a German company that operates critical infrastructure, for example.
In Europe, Chinese companies have stakes in around a dozen ports, including Le Havre and Dunkirk in France, Antwerp and Bruges in Belgium, and in Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece. For China, the world’s largest trading nation, such investments are an important part of the “New Silk Road” infrastructure initiative, which aims to create global trade corridors over land and at sea.
Most recently, Hamburg Mayor Tschentscher paid a visit to Shanghai with a delegation that also included HHLA management in late summer 2019. There was also a meeting with the Cosco management. At that time, Hamburg insisted on being considered for the New Silk Road, and even then there was talk of Cosco’s participation in a port terminal.
