The hypothesis that the lebanese politics could opt for China to reconstruct Beirut ‘s larboard has raised alarm clock in Washington and european capitals given China ‘s already outsized commercial port presence in Egypt, Israel, and Greece. Increased chinese participation in Lebanon ‘s port operations could consolidate Beijing ‘s hold over the commercial connectivity architecture of the Levant. Re-orienting global commercial flows between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia according to Beijing ‘s priorities would make China ‘s Belt and Road Initiative a dominant organizing principle in the international relations of the Middle East. The most effective room to offset China ‘s ambition may be to facilitate Mediterranean rivals France and Turkey to jointly rebuild Beirut ‘s port .
On Aug. 4, 2021, France, in concurrence with the United Nations, convened “ The league in Support of the Population of Lebanon, ” a video donors ’ conference of 33 nations to raise hand brake funds for an economically embattled Lebanon on the brink of fiscal collapse. The conference was held on the annual anniversary of the massive explosion that devastated the port of Beirut, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and affecting 300,000 Beirut residents. The conference succeeded in raising $ 370 million ; France, with a pledge of €100 million ( $ 118 million ), and Germany, with €40 million ( $ 47 million ), were the contribute contributions, along with the United States, with $ 100 million. While reflecting Lebanon ‘s overall strategic importance for Paris, Berlin, and Washington, the pledges besides advance France and Germany ‘s respective bids to rebuild Beirut ‘s port and by extension the United States ‘ desire to ensure that China does not rebuild it.
Lebanon is in discussion with four countries about the Beirut port ‘s reconstruction — China, France, Germany, and Turkey — although other contenders like the UAE ‘s DP World have besides expressed an interest in the project. Reflecting the urgency to return Beirut ‘s port to full capacity, France ‘s ship giant CMA CGM made a $ 400- $ 600 million proposal spinal column in September 2020 for reconstructing the damaged port infrastructure within a three-year timeframe, including some capacity expansion and a digitalization upgrade .
No matter which proposal is selected, CMA CGM will play a cardinal role. One of the lead 10 global port operators, the tauten is owned by the French-Lebanese Saadé family, whose laminitis Jacques Saadé was born in Beirut and emigrated to France in 1978. The party is the Beirut port ‘s run operator, handling 60 % of its bulk, and is the most amenable to public-private partnerships with the lebanese politics .
In contrast to CMA CGM ‘s set about, a consortium led by Hamburg Port Consulting ( HPC ) proposed an ambitious $ 7.2 billion urban reclamation plan in April 2021 that would relocate the port and conduct major urban renovation projects, including the construction of residential areas, an outdoor park, and the creation of a new beach at the web site of the destroyed port. Although the german plan requires a sum timeframe three to five times longer than CMA CGM ‘s plan, the HPC-led proposal envisions creating 50,000 permanent jobs. CMA CGM has expressed its willingness to reconstruct the port itself as part of the german real estate development proposal, if invited to do sol .
China’s growing strategic dominance over the Levant’s maritime architecture
taiwanese construction and process of the Port of Beirut would augment its growing dominance of the commercial maritime routes across the easterly Mediterranean. China already presides over the trans-Mediterranean, commercial maritime artery that connects Egypt ‘s ports to the european mainland at the massive Chinese-run trans-shipment port in Piraeus, Greece. Piraeus ‘s port operator China Ocean Shipping Company ( COSCO ) provides freight rail service that ultimately reaches Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland .
China is assisting Egypt to increase the sum container capacity of its Mediterranean ports to collaborator with Piraeus as the dominant trans-shipment hub in the Mediterranean river basin. In a about mirror effigy to Piraeus, China occupies a leading position in both the operation of Egypt ‘s Mediterranean ports and their capacitance expansion. The majority of Egypt ‘s foreign barter is handled by the Alexandria port and its accessory El Dekheila port with a combine container capability of 1.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units ( TEU ). The larboard is run by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings, as a joint venture between Hutchison, the Alexandria Port Authority, and Saudi Al Blagha Holding. Hutchison is besides developing a 2-million-TEU egyptian port at the nearby Abu Qir Peninsula that will start operations in 2022 .
The 5.4-million-TEU Suez Canal Container Terminal ( SCCT ) at East Port Said is owned by Dutch-based APM ( 55 % ) and COSCO ( 20 % ) with the remaining 25 % bet on rip among egyptian entities and private sector participants. The SCCT services the entire Suez Canal Economic Zone mega-project, in which China is the largest investor. Although Egypt has successfully leveraged its relationship with China to attract considerable investments in exile infrastructure, Cairo remains keen to diversify its partners to avoid an excessive colony on Beijing. In January 2021, Egypt announced its purpose to partner with CMA CGM to develop an extra 1.5-million-TEU container facility at the Alexandria interface, reflecting the across-the-board strategic partnership between Egypt and France in Africa.
Map courtesy of the author
On the Levantine seaside, chinese state-owned Shanghai International Port Group ( SIPG ), working with Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Company, the worldly concern ‘s leading supplier of heavy load and logistics equipment, constructed a fresh, state-of-the-art private port in Israel ‘s Haifa Bay with a container capacity upwards of 1.86 million TEU. Known as Bay Port, SIPG is slated to operate Israel ‘s largest container terminal for the future 25 years. With freight rail service to Beit She’an, near the bound crossing with Jordan, China could extend the railroad track into Jordan, thereby creating multi-modal connectivity with Arab Gulf States. China has besides built a modern port in Ashdod with extra facilities to create a logistics and high-tech development hub on the eastern Mediterranean. additionally, Israel is privatizing its state-owned port of Haifa in October and bids from DP World, India ‘s Adani Ports, and the UK ‘s DAO Shipping, along with their respective Israeli consortium partners, have been submitted.
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Concerned with having an option, Levantine trans-shipment hub to preserve its commercial connectivity with countries like Syria and Iraq that would not accept goods shipped via Israel, Beijing set its sights on Lebanon ‘s northerly larboard of Tripoli. China Harbor Engineering Company ( CHEC ), which built Israel ‘s fresh port in Ashdod, upgraded and expanded Tripoli ’ s port with progress chinese cranes, enabling it to handle 480,000 containers per year. Located about 19 miles ( 30 kilometer ) from the syrian surround, Beijing uses the Tripoli port to service its syrian reconstruction campaign, which prior to the 2019 U.S. secession, was slated to be a $ 200 million investment that would enable upwards of 150 chinese companies to operate in Syria under lucrative contracts .
The interface of Tripoli has about a third base of the capacitance the Beirut port, but its capacitance could be raised to at least half of Beirut ‘s with the initiation of extra cranes by China. In March 2021, CMA CGM announced that it had acquired all the shares of Gulftainer Lebanon, the operator of the Port of Tripoli container terminal. CMA CGM ‘s Bosphorus Express ( BEX ) channel operates a direct radio link from Lebanon ‘s Tripoli port to Shanghai, Ningbo, and early major taiwanese ports. Two weeks anterior to CMA CGM ‘s acquisition of the Tripoli container terminal, the ship’s company concluded an agreement with taiwanese e-commerce giant Alibaba that would see Alibaba ‘s OneTouch digital platform used for cargo booking and logistics services on the BEX argumentation .
Franco-Turkish maritime cooperation to counter-balance China in the Levant
Map courtesy of the author
While a Franco-German partnership in rebuilding Beirut ‘s port remains a possibility, CMA CGM besides has effective occupation reasons of its own to collaborator with Turkey. Given Turkey ‘s expanding role in Mediterranean-MENA nautical connectivity, Franco-Turkish cooperation may besides be the most strategic way to counter-balance China in the easterly Mediterranean .
Turkey ‘s Yilport Holding, a rising concluding hustler with ball-shaped ambitions, established a Turkey-Italy-Tunisia transportation network in 2020 that slices across the center of the Mediterranean, creating an arc of commercial connectivity from the Maghreb to the wide Black Sea. The Turkey-Italy-Tunisia network ‘s cardinal hub is Italy ‘s deep-sea port of Taranto, located on the area ’ s southerly tip at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. The network forms the elementary link in an embryonic cardinal Maghreb-based Europe-Africa corridor that utilizes the net ‘s central node at Taranto, from where it extends southerly to Malta ‘s Freeport Terminal at Marsaxlokk — besides owned and operated by Yilport — and then to Tunisia ‘s port of Bizerte .
Connecting the pieces of Yilport ‘s Turkey-Italy-Tunisia network is CMA CGM, in which Yilport Chairman Robert Yüksel Yıldırım is a 24 % stakeholder. CMA CGM began servicing to the Taranto port on July 10, 2020, marking the resumption of container dealings at Taranto after a five-year suspension. With a 23.5 % increase in the volume of cargo handled by the port in Q2 2021, Taranto is becoming the geographic peak jewel in CMA CGM ‘s TURMED serve that already links Turkey and Tunisia via Malta. Eight years before Yilport ‘s Taranto skill, the turkish port operator acquired a 50 % interest in Malta ‘s Freeport Terminal at the Marsaxlokk port on the southerly seashore of the island around the lapp time that Yıldırım acquired his contribution in CMA CGM .
Franco-Turkish cooperation involving Yilport and CMA CGM in rebuilding Beirut ‘s Port would integrate the nautical architecture of the cardinal and eastern regions of the Mediterranean river basin and help offset China ‘s growing dominance of the commercial sea lanes that connect the MENA region to Europe and Asia. A trilateral partnership between France, Germany, and Turkey within the context of the german proposal for the interface ‘s reconstruction along with major urban renovation of the adjacent neighborhoods of Beirut could besides provide a newfangled framework for cooperation in which to reset Europe-Turkey relations.
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Professor Michaël Tanchum is a non-resident colleague with the Middle East Institute ‘s Economics and Energy Program. He teaches at Universidad de Navarra and is a senior fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy ( AIES ) and visiting boyfriend in the Africa plan at the European Council on Foreign Relations ( ECFR ). The views expressed in this musical composition are his own .
photograph by Xinhua/Wu Lu via Getty Images
