Ports fall victim to geostrategic jostling

Access to ports has always been a geo-economic imperative for free trade. Historically, the role of ports as the critical interface of intermodal logistics has made them melting pots of commerce and trade, irrespective of the country of origin of merchandise.

However, the current pivot to geopolitics has added a degree of vengeance to port access and control, whereby access to and management of ports by Chinese overseas port operators is being considered by some Western countries to be a national security risk. Cases in point are the Port of Darwin in Australia and two ports at the extremities of the Panama Canal that are run by Chinese operators who are being squeezed out on various pretexts.

It was recently reported that the Australian government has expressed its intent to renegotiate an existing lease agreement for the Port of Darwin with Chinese port operator Landbridge, with the objective of taking back control, citing national security concerns. The port was leased in 2015 as part of open competitive bidding, and now that the port has become profitable, the talk about cancellation of the lease signals that prospects for future business are not good.

While reasons cited by the media for the possible Port of Darwin buyback are sovereignty and national security, geopolitics appears to be at the heart of this U-turn, given Australia's involvement in the Quad alliance of Australia, India, Japan and the United States, and AUKUS, a trilateral partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.

Meanwhile, Panama's Supreme Court has ruled that the concession agreement with Chinese port operator CK Hutchison to operate two ports at either end of the Panama Canal is "unconstitutional". It may be recalled that US President Donald Trump recently voiced concerns about so-called Chinese control over the Panama Canal and expressed the desire to take back the canal, which is legally under Panamanian authority.

The Panama Canal is a strategic maritime artery facilitating 5 percent of global maritime trade, with about 20 percent of this trade destined to or from China.

These geographic episodes cannot be seen as mere acts of coincidence, but instead are a deliberate pushback over growing concerns of so-called Chinese control over ports and strategic waterways. The fact that the ports were acquired by Chinese companies through open international bidding seems mired in the web of nuances that has been spun by some observers to stall these strategic investments. Chinese stakeholders have vehemently resisted these developments, but the next few months will tell how far such efforts have been successful.

However, the commercial port lease agreements by China continue to be tagged by Western and Indian experts as part of a Chinese strategy to influence and shape the maritime domain for strategic competition. The US think tank Council on Foreign Relations released a report in August 2024 titled "Tracking China's Control of Overseas Ports". The report indicates that the real Western fear isn't about Chinese investment in overseas ports, but rather their potential for dual use as naval bases in times of need. However, people familiar in even a cursory way with the law of neutrality in armed conflict would vouch that a country leasing its port for commercial use retains full sovereignty and can deny use by naval ships of parties engaged in armed conflict. Denying naval vessels' visits during peace, if berth space occupancy permits, would be a simple loss of business, which no sane operator would want to risk.

Highlighting national security concerns regarding a leased commercial port is classic muddling of geo-economics with geopolitics that isn't sustainable in the maritime domain, which thrives on inclusion and openness for all.

Competitors of China continue to use cliches like the so-called string-of-pearls strategy while simultaneously coming up with their own, like Quad's Free and Open "Indo-Pacific" and India's MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions) initiative. While supposedly putting up strategies to counter China, the architects of such initiatives fail to realize the catch-22 that maritime security has inclusivity built in from scratch.

Since transnational maritime threats such as tsunamis, drug smugglers and pirates respect no boundaries, the response by maritime stakeholders has to be inclusive in order to be effective.

The author is president of the National Institute of Maritime Affairs, a maritime think tank in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.