During the Ming dynasty, a single man defined China’s maritime strategy. His name was Zheng He and his travels along the coast of the Indian Ocean are often compared with those undertaken by Christopher Columbus, with the biggest difference between them being that Zheng’s maritime campaigns were based on a soft power strategy and weren’t an act of conquest. More than six centuries later, Xi Jinping, China’s president, launched a new maritime strategy explicitly drawing on Zheng’s legacy: the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The Maritime Silk Road is one part of a larger project, the One Belt, One Road (OBOR), which aims to connect China with Europe by land and sea.

Launched with much fanfare by president Xi, the OBOR initiative was received reluctantly by some international analysts, due to the scarcity of information surrounding this project, but also due to its lack of feasibility (the OBOR corridor connects war zones interspersed with ethnic and religious conflicts). But for China there is no impossible task. For the maritime leg, Beijing devised a strategy that entails taking control of important ports that encircle the Indian Ocean, in an attempt to rebrand the American-defined strategy of the String of Pearls into a more benign and friendly concept.

The Mediterranean Sea is also a focal point for China, whose main economic partner is the European Union. Since 2008, the port of Piraeus, in Greece, has been a gateway to Europe for Chinese products, and big companies like Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, HP, and Sony already use the port to enter the European market. In 2008, the Chinese state-owned company COSCO (China Ocean Shipping Company) acquired the operating license of Pier II for a period of 30 years (later expanded to 35 years), in concert with the permission to built another pier, Pier III. China’s involvement in the Port of Piraeus has cost $532 million, but COSCO has succeeded in transforming its part of the port into a successful business, contrasting considerably with the Greek–led pier, which is plagued by inefficiency, controlled by labor unions and doesn’t handle much traffic. […]

 

This article has been published by Andreea Brînză, Vice President of RISAP, in The Diplomat. Read the full article on The Diplomat website.