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China has proven itself the world's expert at using the tools of capitalism in the service of Chinese communism.There are news stories that make the front page, there are news stories that make the business page, and there are news stories that aren’t covered at all.
Then there are the stories that are only news to an interest group so severely limited that they are exclusively covered in narrow trade journals, and never make it to the mainstream press at all, though sometimes, perhaps, they should.
People in the transportation business, for example, might have noticed a big news story out of northwest Africa last week — the New Year’s Eve announcement that a Chinese heavy equipment contractor had been selected to supply the bulk cargo handling equipment for a port expansion at the port of Safi, Morocco.
This contract, awarded by the Moroccan state-owned fertilizer giant OCP Group to the Chinese state-owned Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, is for a total of 2.05 billion in Chinese money, approximately $200 million in U.S. dollars
This doesn’t sound like a big story, even for the construction industry, when you consider that most Americans will never set foot in Morocco, and most businesses ship internationally using intermodal containers, so even our international traders aren’t likely to encounter this bulk handling service at the distant port of Safi.
But let’s change the context and look instead at a different picture.
In recent years, even outside the arena of presidential politics, Americans have begun to worry about the way that Mainland China (yes, the one that some still remember to call Red China) has been expanding its global reach.
We Americans tend to be frustrated or concerned at the number of American businesses who have switched their manufacturing to China over the years. And those who think about military readiness are especially concerned by our dependence on China for the many national security related goods that we really ought to be making ourselves.
But the Chinese government hasn’t only been directing their commercial rivalry toward the United States. At the same time, China has been working to dominate an array of different industries, so that most other countries, both developed and undeveloped, would become just as dependent on China as we are.
Mexico, Canada, and Brazil import an enormous amount of components from China. When you buy a product labeled “made in Mexico” or “manufactured in Brazil,” it’s just as likely to include some critical components, such as batteries, printed circuit boards and motors, that were themselves made in China.
The same goes for Great Britain, the European Union, Africa, and much of the rest of Asia. The fact is, China has come to dominate so many industries in recent decades, one really has to make a concerted effort to avoid buying Chinese goods. They are no longer simply “the cheapest source,” often, the Chinese have made themselves “the only source.” And as decades of slow-to-respond anti-dumping cases can verify, that’s been China’s goal all along.
As today’s story reminds us, however, China’s dominance in world trade isn’t just in the goods that get traded.
China manages a good deal of world commerce, by manufacturing most of the world’s 35 million intermodal containers. Chinese companies make about four million per year of these 20’, 40’, and 45’ reusable steel boxes, and if one wanted to track or spy on anyone in the world, it’s difficult to imagine a more easily accessible way than by making the boxes that go in and out of every port, in fact, in and out of every city, farm, and factory, over every bridge and through every tunnel in the world.
Similarly, Chinese companies sail a lot of the ships that handle international cargo. COSCO and a number of other Chinese government joint ventures own or lease hundreds of containerships, bulk ships, and feeder vessels, with commercial services calling over 600 ports in over 145 countries. Even countries that would never allow a foreign country’s naval vessel to dock in their ports are happy to allow full port privileges to a Chinese government-owned-and-staffed commercial vessel, without giving it a second’s thought. This might be perfectly safe…or perhaps not.
Chinese government-owned companies operate a huge number of seaports all over the world, over 115 of them, with a commanding presence on every continent except Antarctica — either as the contracted port management company or by owning the port outright.
And finally, in addition to these, Chinese manufacturers produce and install such port equipment as the gantry cranes and other loading and unloading equipment like the bulk cargo handling machinery contract at Safi, Morocco that precipitated this discussion. ZPMC boasts that it maintains a 70% global market share supplying quayside cranes to ports all over the world. And that’s just ZPMC; China owns other such operations besides.
As President Trump has reminded us of late, China doesn’t have to conquer a country to effectively control it. For example, China manages ports at both ends of the Panama Canal, a level of control in one of the world’s top five most important shipping lanes that was inconceivable 45 years ago when the late President Jimmy Carter put an unnecessary end to American control of the Canal. When the Canal is unable to process as many crossings per day as the market desires, who decides which ships get to use the Canal and which ones have to take the longer and more expensive route, going around South America to the other side? It’s not America’s choice or Panama’s choice; it’s China’s call.
Who staffs all these Chinese offices, logistics centers, and bay access points, in hundreds of ports all over the world? Employees who report, directly or indirectly, to Beijing.
What country produced the desktop and laptop computers, the cellphones and portable tablets, that control these operations, no matter whose hands operate them? China.
And to make it clear that fears of these matters are anything but unfounded, what country has declared, through such public documents as the Belt and Road Initiative, that it has a very serious, very real desire to spread its wings and control as much of the day-to-day operations of the world as possible by midcentury? Only China.
China has proven itself the world’s expert, not only at maneuvering into control in countless countries and regions, and countless products and industries, but also at using the tools of capitalism in the service of Chinese communism.
China offers not only competitive pricing and quality products, but also government funding options that often make the Chinese bidder irresistible. Only China can offer government subsidies, government loans, and currency fluctuations that can make their product the cheapest at contract time, and then make the relationship unbreakable later on. Thus has China gained the upper hand — and a surprising amount of real estate — all over the world.
National security experts have long warned us that we need to recognize how this multi-layered global footprint will give China the upper hand in case of a world war.
But only now is it beginning to be clear that China may not need such a war at all. They may have already gained so much global control through the aggressive utilization of public-private partnerships and a world of willing patsies, that China may be on the way to global conquest without firing a shot.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his 2024 collection of public policy essays, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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