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uk-news-talking-politics · 3 years

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Everything you need to know about day one of Brexit

By Ian Dunt

Oh sweet Christ not Brexit again.

Yes, you will never escape. It will never be over. Decades from now, as your wrinkled fingers grasp the remote for your 3D holo-viewer, the main news item will still be about Brexit.

At least we got a break during the coronavirus emergency.

Yep, say what you like about pandemics, but at least they take trade talks off the front pages. Still, it's back now. We leave at the end of the year. And deal or no-deal, things at the border are going to be very different.

OK lay it out for me.

For decades we have had frictionless trade with Europe in the customs union and single market. The customs union got rid of tariffs, which are taxes on goods entering a territory, and the single market harmonised regulations, which means goods are made to the same standards. Once you're outside of them, you need checks at the border to make sure people are paying the right tax and complying with the regulations.

And that's what's about to happen?

Exactly. And this will apply regardless of whether there is a deal or not. I want to issue a word of warning before we go any further: It's a horror show. The level of tediousness here is off the scale. This is like someone came up with a super-powered serum for the concept of bureaucracy and then injected it directly into your bloodstream. But you didn't turn into Chris Evans in Captain America, you turned into Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. The worst things are the acronyms. Everything has an acronym. But you need to get your head around it in order to understand what's going to happen to us next month.

I don't care. I hate this. I want this conversation to stop.

You can't, it's too late. You are trapped here with me and the acronyms. OK so here's the basic problem, the one from which all others follow. Our customs system currently processes around 55 million declarations a year. In 2021, it will process around 270 million. It needs to massively ramp up capacity.

It's just as well the government has such a good track record of implementing complex IT projects at speed then.

Quite. To be fair, the government has put a lot of effort into this, albeit belatedly. More than 35 government departments and public bodies are involved, including HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office (HO), the Department for Transport (DfT), the Border and Protocol Delivery Group (BPDG) and the Transition Task Force (TTF).

Sweet Jesus the acronyms.

Actually, most of those are abbreviations, but let's not get caught up on details. We've barely scratched the surface. There are three key areas where the government needs to build capacity: IT systems to process the customs declarations, physical infrastructure at or near ports, and staff in government and the private sector to keep the customs system going.

That's a lot to do.

It is. But the government made things easier in one crucial respect: it delayed its own import declarations system until July next year.

What does that mean?

It means that stuff coming into Britain from Europe basically gets waved through. There are still technically customs requirements, but they've been pushed back six months. This allowed them to make sure goods would still enter the country and let them focus on trying to get the exports right.

It's hardly taking back control, is it?

No it isn't, but they're undertaking a systems-level change at an eye-watering timetable, so it was a necessary sacrifice.

Couldn't they have extended transition to prepare for this?

Yes they could, but chose not to. That's cost them. Covid seriously delayed preparations, dominated attention in business and government, paused ministerial decision-making and put communication with traders into deep-freeze over the summer.

So what are the biggest risks now?

The IT systems. There are 10 critical IT systems which are needed at the GB–EU border. Then there are the European systems which UK exporters will need to use to get access to the continent. We're not going to go into all of them here - we're going to massively simplify.

Thank heavens.

Don't worry, it'll still make your brain dribble out of your ears. We're also going to simplify by taking goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland off the table. That's its own separate hellscape. And we're going to focus on the Dover-Calais crossing. There are many others going from England to France, but this is the main route. It serves 'accompanied goods' - when a driver in a lorry takes the goods onto a ferry and then drives it off on the other side of the Channel. This is called RoRo, for roll-on-roll-off.

Acronym. Drink.

If you keep that up you'll be smashed by the end of the article and won't have any idea what I'm talking about.

I already have no idea what you're talking about.

Fair enough, drink away. The trouble with customs IT systems is this: Everyone needs to be filling in the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. If they don't, things break down. That doesn't just apply to the UK and French governments. It applies to exporters and importers, ports, hauliers and others. Customs is all or nothing. If one section is wrong, it's all wrong. Lorries are often full of lots of different consignments of goods from different exporters. Plenty of them travel with 100 individual separate consignments on them. This is called 'groupage'. So if one input of one customs form in one of those consignments is wrong, the whole lorry is delayed. And if that lorry is delayed, all the lorries behind it are delayed. The potential for breakdown is therefore very significant.

This is already making me anxious. It's like Jenga but it reaches all the way into the sky and is composed entirely of knives.

You also need to make sure that third party software used by places like the ports integrates with the government systems. And that assumes that the government IT systems actually work and have staff with the proper experience and training to operate them. And this too is interrelated. If one of the systems breaks down, it has a knock-on effect on the other systems. You keep seeing this same problem crop up. It's not one of error, exactly. It's about the consequence of the error, the knock-on effects of it.

How robust are those IT systems looking right now?

Not great. Some have been delayed indefinitely, some for a set period, some are in trials and some are online. But even when they're finished, you really want to give all the people using them time to understand them, to get used to them, so that when we leave transition there are as few mistakes as possible. All four industry representative bodies, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and the British International Freight Association (Bifa), have raised concerns about the government's level of preparedness, saying that they don't believe the border will be fully functioning by next month.

That's two more acronyms by my count.

I'm glad to see you sticking to the important information here. The trouble is that lack of government preparedness doesn't just affect it - it affects trader preparedness as well. If they're not getting clear communication from the government about what is happening and how it is happening, they don't know what to do. And the government has a bad record here. It has marched traders up the hill on no-deal several times over recent years, only to march them down again. Now many simply ignore it. Government communications have, until recently, centred on the "opportunities" of Brexit, which does nothing to indicate the urgency with which people need to make expensive and time-consuming changes. Even in October, just 45% of high-value traders who trade exclusively with the EU had started to invest in readiness.

Oh dear.

There are some reasons to be more optimistic. The first is that government communication has belatedly started to improve. A new campaign in October was much better, telling traders that "time is running out". There's also one really important thing to remember about all this: it's not a long term problem. Brexit has plenty of those and they are severe, but this is not one of them. This is a short, sharp, embarrassing shock. Eventually, the market will adjust. People will see what happens in January and find ways around it so they can get their goods to market. Some people think that will happen very quickly indeed - no more than a month. Some think it'll take the first quarter of next year or longer. But very few people think it will last the whole year. What we're looking at here is the most dramatic, but also ultimately the most superficial, of Brexit impacts.

Starting to feel a bit tipsy now.

Cool, then it might be a good time to start talking about the IT systems.

No. Stop.

What?

I don't want to hear it. I want to get out.

It's too late. You're trapped here in an imaginary world in which I am talking to myself and explaining customs procedures. And in fact your resistance to this conversation probably points to some kind of deep-seated psychological trauma which I'm working my way through.

Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tyre tread on burst stomach.

Very good, Rorschach. So look, there are really four forms you need to remember. First, the import/export declaration. Second, the safety and security documentation. Third, the sanitary and phytosanitary measures for agricultural goods. And fourth, the system that collects these data sets and connects them to the lorry which is transporting the good.

What's in the import/export declaration?

They basically state what the good is, its value and how much duty you have to pay on it. It's the tax bit. It's all very complex, laborious and crammed full of technical minutiae but that's the executive summary. It needs to be lodged before the good gets to the French border.

How do you lodge it?

You do it through a UK system called the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight, or Chief.

Drink.

This is a really old system and before Brexit was even a twinkle in Boris Johnson's eye, the UK planned to turn it off and migrate all traders to a new system called the Customs Declarations Service, or CDS.

Drink.

CDS was meant to replace Chief from January 2019 and then switch off altogether by March 2021, but there were repeated delays. So instead they're keeping Chief for trade between Britain and the EU and using CDS for trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, because it has the capacity for dual tariff fields. CDS is then going to be scaled up until it can deal with all the declarations.

No acronyms there.

Actually trade between Britain and Europe is called GB-EU and trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is called GB-NI, but let's not worry about that. The government insists that Chief now has an increased capacity that can handle 400 million annual declarations - way higher than the 265 million which are expected. HMRC has paid Fujitsu £85 million to provide technical support. But others aren't convinced. They're not sure it can handle the load and nervous that there isn't enough support if something goes wrong.

Very reassuring.

Isn't it. Remember that the importer on the EU side also has to be doing all of this - at the right time, in the right place - on the European customs system.

OK so what about the safety and security thing?

It's a document outlining what the good is, so it can be assessed for potential risks. Again, it's a long complex thing with multiple data fields. Like import/export, it has to be done in advance of the goods reaching Calais. It's submitted to the UK government via a new system called S&S GB.

Drink.

It must also be submitted to the EU member state's Import Control System, which is called ICS.

Drink. OK tell me about the sanitary pad things.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures, or SPS.

Drink.

These are there to protect people, animals and plants from disease or pests. They cover products of an animal origin, like cheese, or meat, or fish, as well as live animal exports, plants and plant products, and even the wooden crates used to transport other types of goods. It's painstaking stuff, but I think, given the pandemic we're all going through, we all understand why it's important.

Yeah, fair enough. You've sold me. I'm totally on board with this stuff.

These kinds of goods have to enter Europe through specific Border Control Posts, or BCPs.

Drink.

And there they undergo some, or all, of a variety of checks. There's a documentary check for the official certification which travels with the good. There are identity checks, which provide a visual confirmation that the consignment corresponds to the documentation. And there's a physical check to verify the goods are compliant with the rules, for instance temperature sampling, or laboratory testing. You know that whole chlorine-washed chicken thing?

Sure.

Well this is where they check whether it has been and stop it getting into Europe if it has. But it's actually the documentary check which is the hardest part in terms of UK preparedness. It includes something called an Export Health Certificate, or EHC.

Drink. Jesus Christ.

These are documents which confirm that the product meets the health requirements of the EU. So they might say that the animal was vaccinated, for instance. Some products, like a cut of lamb, will just have one EHC. But others, like a chicken pizza, will have more than one.

We've talked about this before. People shouldn't put chicken on pizza.

You are wrong, it's a perfectly legitimate pizza topping, and in fact you are so wrong that I have started using chicken pizza as my trade-good shorthand. Chicken pizza is the new widgets.

What even are widgets?

No-one knows, that's why economists love them. A chicken pizza, however, is a composite good for the purposes of SPS. The chicken and the cheese are different animal products, so they would need separate export health certificates. And all these certificates have to be verified by an official veterinarian, or OV.

You're just messing me about now.

No seriously, they use that acronym. This whole area of public life has been radicalised into extreme acronym use. Anyway, the OV goes through the details, queries the documents and signs them off. But there's assistance from a person pulling together all the paperwork. They're called a Certification Support Officer, or…

I can't believe this.

...CSO. These guys are mostly in private practices, usually farming practices. It's not a big part of their workload - maybe 20% of what they do. But if you don't have those vets, you can't send the export. That would be catastrophic for the farming, food and hospitality sectors. And that's where we have an issue. There are restrictions on getting that many OVs up and running. There's a tight labour market for vets and the UK is highly reliant on Europeans coming over to do the job, but the end of free movement makes that much more difficult and expensive, as does the covid pandemic.

So what has the government done?

It pumped £300,000 into providing free training for the role. Many vets took it up. The number of qualified vets has jumped from 600 in February 2019 to 1,200 today. But that still leaves a capacity gap of 200.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

No it doesn't, but when you start to scratch away at the figures, they fall apart. The 200 figure is the number of 'full time equivalent' qualified vets required. And if vets only spend about 20% of their time doing this, it means we'll actually need an extra 1,000 vets training in the additional qualification.

Oh dear.

Yep. Groups representing the sector are seriously worried about this. And as with customs, the smooth functioning of the border will rely on the importer on the EU side doing all the bits they're required to do too, by creating a record in the Trade Control and Expert System, or Traces NT.

Drink. OK, what's the fourth bit of IT?

Transport. This involves wrapping all the other forms together and attaching them to a vehicle. In the UK, we'll be doing this through something called the Goods Vehicle Movement Service, or GVMS.

Drink.

It links export declaration references together into one single Goods Movement Reference, or GMR.

Drink. Bloody hell man these people are out of control.

The GMR should come out like a barcode, a one-stop shop for all the tied-together information we've been discussing. GVMS will be needed for certain movements in January, particularly for trade with Northern Ireland, but it won't be a requirement of all imports until July. It's currently being tested and there are dark murmurs about its functionality from those who have come into contact with it. Mercifully, exporters into Europe on January 1st will be using the French system, SI Brexit. This was operational a year ago and has been fully tested several times.

Those lazy French with their useless romantic dispositions.

It's almost like they're a nation that cares about shopkeepers.

Speaking of which, how're British businesses going to deal with all this additional paperwork?

Many companies will be OK. Very big corporations are well ahead and in many cases have set up a European entity so that they can sell directly from their UK entity to the EU one. Then they'll probably just reflect the customs costs in a subtly increased retail price. Smaller companies who are used to exporting to the rest of the world outside of Europe also have an advantage. They're used to these kinds of things. The people who are most at risk are the small-to-medium-sized enterprises who have traded exclusively with Europe.

Small-to-medium-sized… Oh no.

Yeah, that's right. SMEs. Which, by the way, comprise the vast majority of companies in the UK. If you send just two or three loads of your product a month to Europe, it probably won't be worth the cost in manpower and money preparing for all this stuff. They'll likely just accept a shrinkage in their business. For many of them, the whole thing is a bafflement. Honestly, you read the guidance on all these systems and it's like it's in an alien code - a garbled assault of acronyms and complex systems. Many small firms, already suffering from covid, just throw up their hands in despair.

Bleak. It's always the little guys that get it.

Yes, although paradoxically, that actually presents one of the few reasons for optimism. Well, not optimism exactly, but a hope for least-badism. Now that so many people feel January will be chaotic, they might just decide not to bother trying to send anything. Goods will get stuck at a warehouse instead of on a truck.

Seriously? That's your good news? Aren't you just displacing disruption from the ports to other parts of the supply network?

Yes precisely. But there really are no good outcomes here.

Because if that doesn't happen, the system seizes up?

Yeah exactly. Lorries head to Dover then get held up because they don't have the correct paperwork. Then lorries behind those lorries get caught up, pushing the queue out, dominating Kent, creating a huge singular blockage. The government's own Reasonable Worst Case Scenario, or RWCS…

Drink.

... estimates that between 40% and 70% of lorries may not be ready for border controls, leading to queues of up to 7,000 trucks.

But that would only be going out right? The stuff we bring in to the country would be unaffected because we're not putting in place controls.

Kind of. It's certainly true that most imports should have a clear run into the UK. You can keep those two lanes separate. But most hauliers are from Romania, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. They pay a lease on their trucks, which means they have to keep them going if they're to make money. They can't afford to get stuck in a queue at the border. So there's a good chance they'll look at the log-jam in the UK and think: 'I'm not touching that with a barge pole'. This would mean Britain struggled to get its imports, including potentially fresh food and medicines.

Wow.

Yeah, it could be bad. But there are plans for that eventuality. The government has set up some emergency routes, for instance on the Newhaven-Dieppe crossing. There's additional ferry capacity at eight ports, with the Department for Transport acting as the referee on which vehicles get onto their crossing. But it's not a like-for-like replacement. Many of these crossings take much longer than the short gap between Dover and Calais, and they often operate for unaccompanied goods overnight. If the import is urgent, or fresh, or, like some covid vaccines, needs to be kept at a certain temperature, then you may have a problem.

What is the government doing to make sure this doesn't happen? How will they control the blockage?

There's three parts to that really. The first is controlling access to Kent, which the trucks head into to get to Dover. This project has no acronym, but instead adopted one of the least elegant names in the history of British policy-making: The Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border Service.

Wait but...

Yeah. HGV: Heavy Goods Vehicle.

I fully accept now that it was a mistake to adopt this drinking idea.

Before the lorry gets to Kent, the driver will fill out an online form with a bunch of information - the registration number, the destination, details of the consignments, confirmations that the import/export documents have been filled in, export health certificates, the whole lot basically. Those that are judged to have all the documentation are given a Kent Access Pass, or KAP.

Drink.

And that allows them to go into Kent. Police can hand out £300 fines to lorries found on the Kent roads without the permit.

But this is all done on trust right? It's a self-assessment form.

Yep. It'll rely on people filling it out right. It's not linked to EU customs systems. So there's no guarantee that documents they claim to have completed will be accepted by EU customs authorities. But on the plus side, the software was launched recently and most people think it'll work OK. It's better than nothing, basically.

Alright so what's next? Traffic management?

Exactly. It's uncanny how naturally your questions lead me onto the next thing I want to discuss.

That's because I am you.

Don't talk about that, it makes it weird. Alright so first up we have the traffic flow plans. The Department for Transport is taking an existing temporary system to create contraflow on the M20 and putting it on a permanent footing, allowing 2,000 lorries to be held on the motorway while traffic still flows in both directions on the London-bound side.

OK, what's next?

Well then there's the issue of actual sites. HMRC has identified seven locations outside the ports. There's prep work being done at a site in Sevington, Ashford, at a cost of £110 million, to act as a clearing house for another 2,000 lorries. Some 600 lorries can be held on the approach to Manston airport, with more at the airport itself. These two sites, along with the M20 contraflow, are for holding traffic. There are also plans for Ebbsfleet International Station, North Weald Airfield and Warrington to be used for bureaucratic checks away from the border. Other sites, potentially in the Thames Gateway and Birmingham areas, are also being considered. They insist that this should give them capacity for 9,700 lorries, which is above the 7,000 in their worst case scenario.

Assuming that scenario is correct.

Right. Covid and other unrelated events, like a fire breaking out for instance, could mean that even the worst case scenario is an underestimate. We just don't know. Plus that relies on all of this being up in time. The government has passed legislation to streamline planning processes, but the timetable is unbelievably tight. The same thing goes for staff.

These are the customs officials who check all the paperwork, right?

That's certainly part of it. They're split into two departments: HMRC and Border Force. HMRC needs 8,600 full-time equivalent staff in place for January 1st. They still need another 1,500 but seem confident they'll have them. Border Force recruited an additional 900 staff ahead of a possible no-deal last year and is trying to bring in 1,000 more. Ministers are confident they'll have enough people in place by January 1st, but trade experts are less convinced.

Recurring theme.

Indeed. It's easy to get fixated on numbers but it really matters how well you've trained people too. You can have someone helping with customs work after a day or two, but for them to have any real sense of what they're doing, you're going to want a year's training. And then there's the question of personality type. Customs is a very specific kind of work, full of extremely complex documentation which must be got right. For some people, that is unimaginably boring. For others, it's very satisfying. But you need the right ones. And that's not what typically happens when people get desperate on a recruitment drive.

What's the other part of the staffing problem?

The private sector. It's a job called 'customs broker'. They're basically people who come in and help companies with their customs forms. Like I said, this stuff is mind-meltingly complex. You really do need someone to come and help you do it. And that's what the government wants too of course, because the more people getting it right, the fewer delays at the border. But as of last September, just 53% of traders said they planned to use a customs broker, with 30% unsure and 18% saying they were going to do the work themselves. Those aren't good numbers.

Are there enough of them to meet demand?

No. This has been a long-running problem. Almost two-thirds of customs brokers do not have enough staff to handle the increased paperwork from leaving the EU. And actually capacity seems to have reduced over the year due to the covid pandemic. The UK needs thousands more.

What's the government doing about it?

It's invested £84 million since 2018 into training, recruitment and IT system development. But many customs brokers are still hesitant about taking on new salary costs to build a capacity that won't be fully required until next July and they're nervous about taking on unprepared customers. Of the £84 million on offer, just £52 million had been taken up in mid-October.

Is that… is that it? Please say that's it. I'm wasted.

It is.

OK so give me the executive summary.

We're about to experience the sudden implementation of complex customs processes in a nation which forgot they existed. This involves the introduction of numerous interrelated IT systems which have been under-tested. It's not clear that either government or traders are fully prepared for what's about to happen. In order to minimise the disruption the government is introducing various traffic management projects and trying to bulk up staff capacity. But there's just too many variables to know how it'll pan out. Maybe the systems will hold out and many traders will anyway sit out January because of concerns about queues. Or maybe the systems will fail, traders won't fill in forms right and the whole thing will blow up in our face. The most likely outcome right now is somewhere between shambles and catastrophe. We have to hope it's a shambles.

Can you do it in acronym-speak?

Amid RHA and Bifa concerns about the lack of progress, HMRC, Defra, the HO, the Dft, the BPDG and the TTF are building up IT systems for post-Brexit GB-EU trade and particularly for RoRo at Dover-Calais which will involve exporters submitting import/export declarations to Chief and the CDS, S&S information to S&S GB and ICS, and collating their SPS documentation - including an EHC filled out by an CSO under the supervision of an OV sent via a BCP - with the importer logging it on Traces NT, while generating a GMR via GVMS and SI Brexit, and then HGVs getting a KAP, all to avoid the RWCS.

D… Drink?

Yes I think so. That seems very sensible.

#Brexit #customs

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alexsmitposts · 4 years

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China – The Belt and Road Initiative – The Bridge that Spans the World The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, is based on a 2,100-year-old trade route between the Middle East and Eastern Asia, called the Silk Road. It wound its ways across the huge landmass Eurasia to the most eastern parts of China. It favored trading, based on the Taoist philosophy of harmony and peaceful coexistence – trading in the original sense of the term, an exchange with “win-win” outcomes, both partners benefitting equally. Today, in the western world we have lost this concept. The terms of trade are imposed always by the ‘stronger’ partner, the west versus the poorer south – the south where most of the natural resources are lodged. Mother Earth’s assets have been and are coveted by the west – or north – for building and maintaining a lifestyle in luxury, abundance and waste. This trend has lasted for centuries of western colonialism: Exploitation, loot, esclavisation and rape of entire peoples of the Global South by the Global North, to use the current soothing World Bank lingo. The New Silk Road, or BRI, is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s brainchild. It’s based on the same ancient principles, adjusted to the 21st Century, building bridges between peoples, exchanging goods, research, education, knowledge, cultural wisdom, peacefully, harmoniously and ‘win-win’ style. On 7 September 2013, Xi presented BRI at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. He spoke about “People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC to 24 AD). Referring to this epoch of more than two millenniums back, Xi Jinping pointed to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road, saying, “they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.” President Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21st Century. The Belt and Road Initiative is designed and modeled loosely according to the Ancient Silk Road. President Xi launched this ground-breaking project soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. The endeavor’s idea is to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Since 2017, enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy. BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”. BRI is a perfect vehicle for building peacefully a World Community with a Shared Future for Mankind – which was the theme of an international Forum held in Shanghai, from 5-7 November, a tribute to China’s 70th Anniversary of her Revolution and achievements – with a vision into the future. BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government. Already today BRI has investments involving more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multi-trillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure and energy exploration – as well as trade among connected countries. Unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is encouraging nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situations. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base. At present, BRI’s closing date is foreseen for 2049 which coincides with new China’s 100th Anniversary. The size and likely success of the program indicates, however, already today that it will most probably be extended way beyond that date. It is worth noting, though, that only in 2019, six years after its inception, BRI has become a news item in the West. Remarkably, for six years BRI was as much as denied, or ignored by the western media, in the hope it may go away. But away it didn’t go. To the contrary, many European Union members have already subscribed to BRI, including Greece, Italy, France, Portugal – and more will follow, as the temptation to participate in this projected socioeconomic boom is overwhelming. Germany, the supposed economic leader of Europe, is mulling over the benefits and contras of participating in BRI. The German business community, like business throughout Europe, is strongly in favor of lifting US-imposed sanctions and reconnecting with the East, in particular with China and Russia. But official Berlin is still with one foot in the White House – and with the other trying to appease the German – and European – world of business. This balancing act is in the long run not sustainable and certainly not desirable. At present BRI is already actively involved in over 80 countries, including at least half of the EU members. To counteract the pressure to join BRI, the European Union, basically run by NATO and intimately linked to Washington, has initiated their own ‘Silk Road’, attempting to connect Asia with Europe through Japan. In that sense, the EU and Japan have signed a “free trade agreement” which includes a compact to build infrastructure, in sectors such as energy, transport and digital devices. The purpose is to strengthen economic and cultural ties between the two regions, boosting business relations between Asia and Europa. It is an obvious effort to compete with or even sideline China’s BRI. But it is equally obvious that this response will fail. Usually initiatives taken in ill-fate are not successful. And China, non-belligerent China, is unlikely to challenge this EU-Japan competitive approach. In another approach to counter BRI, The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), launched on 4 November the Blue Dot Network (BDN), an initiative supposedly run entirely by private actors, funded by private banking, intended to bring together governments, the private sector, and civil society “to promote high-quality, trusted standards for global infrastructure development in an open and inclusive framework.” It is not clear how the BDN will interact with or counteract BRI. Anything run entirely by the private sector, especially western private banking, is no good omen for the country their “development effort” touches. Such investments’ objectives are primarily shareholder profits, not socioeconomic development benefitting the countries where they plan to invest. No competition for China’s BRI. Again, non-aggressive China is unlikely to react. China’s New Silk Road is creating a multipolar world, where all participants will benefit. The idea is to encourage economic growth, distributed in a balanced way, so as to prioritize development opportunities for those most in need. That means the under-developed areas of western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Central Europe – reaching out to Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, as well as to South East Asia and the Pacific. BRI is already actively building and planning some six to ten land and maritime routes, connecting Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America. The expected multi-trillion-dollar equivalent dynamic budget is expected to be funded by China, largely, but not exclusively, by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), by Russia – and by all the countries that are part of BRI and involved in singular or multi-country projects. The long-term return on these massive investments in people’s wellbeing is an exponential multiple of the original investments and cannot be limited to numerical economics, as social benefits of wellbeing cannot be defined by linear accounting. Implementing BRI, or the New Silk Road, is itself the realization of a vision of nations: Peaceful interconnectivity, joint infrastructure and industrial development, as well as joint management of natural resources. For example, BRI may help with infrastructure and management advice resolving or preventing conflicts on transboundary water resources. There are some 263 transboundary lake and river basins, covering almost half the earth’s surface and involving some 150 countries. In addition, there are about 300 transboundary aquifers serving about 2 billion people who depend on groundwater. The Chinese government calls the Silk Road Initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. Today, John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” is more relevant than ever. And China is a vanguard in promoting peaceful development across the globe. BRI, China’s foreign policy flagship, is clearly an initiative towards world Peace.

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truelsen23petty-blog · 5 years

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Some sort of Guide to Freight Forwarding

The varieties of sea shipping Now there are many diverse forms of ship used intended for international sea freight; often the differences reflecting the various requirements of importers together with exporters, with unique boats used to transport different kinds of shipment. Below is a good summary of the distinct types of vessels made use of: · Roll-on roll-off, or 'ro-ro' vessels are applied to carry both haulage and traveling vehicles · Textbox boats are utilized to transport standard 20' or even 40' containers · Tankers are used to be able to carry majority liquids, many of these as oil and gasoline · General cargo delivers will carry all forms of loose loaded shipment · Bulk companies may be used for the transportation of enormous volume, single commodity lots, such as coal, grain plus ores Industry vessels effectively operate inside two ways: · While liner vessels running upon fixed routes, and commonly with a standard contract price. This sector is decided by roll-on roll-off veins, container and general valuables ships · Or as charter vessels operating in accordance with the demands of the organsiation vehicles them. The approach in which goods will be transported onto ships You will find three main ways in which products are moved on boats: Loaded in pots Pot shipping dominates international shipments. The gains of container shipping will be the ease of intermodal transportation, (ie containers can end up being off-loaded and even transferred immediately to a road as well as rail vehicle); often the potential to offer a entrance in order to door service; typically the speed and even efficiency connected with loading hcg diet plan unloading and even the obvious financial impact of such and even eventually, the security of the merchandise during transit. There are many different forms of container, such as refrigerated together with open topped storage containers, nevertheless the most commonly applied containers are the 20ft & 40ft containers. His or her respective dimensions and ability are as follows: 20ft: 589cm x 235cm back button 239cm (h) - total capacity 33. 2 cubic metre distances 40ft: 1, 203cm by 235cm x 239cm (h) - total capacity 67. six cu metres Break bulk Break up bulk is a good term used to refer to be able to any non bulk items which aren't containerised, for instance goods on pallets, closets full, or in drums or sacks. This form connected with vehicles tends to become used for specialist deals, such as fresh berries and vegetables, or for transport for you to smaller ports which may not have typically the necessary infrastructure to handle box cargo. In majority Used for typically the travel of large levels associated with certain commodities, such like fossil fuel, ore, oil etcetera. Key international shipping tracks The main international shipping avenues indicate the flow involving entire world trade, with sailings currently being most frequent in those routes where the particular trade quantities will be the greatest and therefore demand the particular very best. For sailings into your UK, by far the particular most trafficed routes are these from the China, specifically China. The South Ocean route, which backlinks Western Europe with the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and Canada, is in addition a stressful route. Sailings from the Center East for the transport regarding oil, as well while routes for you to India, Australia, East together with West The african continent and Key and South America are in addition specially busy. Although there will be services from the BRITISH to all the main dealing economies, in case your goods will be destined for a country with little trade while using UK, they may need to to be transshipped in order to another local sailing over the final leg of the particular quest. There will generally be a a few different selections by which your own merchandise can reach their very own very last destination. These can become looked into in detail by way of discussing them with gets forwarders that will have expertise of the most economical and time useful routes. The costs of worldwide shipment There are a new variety of factors which often will impression the cost of moving goods by simply sea. Essentially there will be 2 elements: the true cost of the ocean is the greatest charged by means of the boat operator, and the expenses related to the dealing with and even distance of this goods from the ports of source and desired destination. Various variables will affect how these charges are calculated: · The genuine ocean freight is frequently incurred according to the shipping collections standard tariff, although much larger shippers and selected airlift forwarders may become capable to be able to negotiate special discounts · Rates regarding charter boats will count on the supply and even need conditions prevalent on the time of rent Different factors that might impact the final value contain: · The various rates for unique groups of cargo · Traffic jam charges at the more busy ports · Currency adjusting factor (CAF), which will take into account this exchange rate changes through passage · Bunker adjustment component (BAF), which takes into account fuel price fluctuation · Surcharges levied by the ports or shipping lines for the costs associated together with different corporate regimes An additional factor related to containerised goods is whether or not you are shipping a complete container load (FCL). Most shipping lines have charges based on container rates, which makes it far more affordable to vessel the full container. When your consignment is less than container insert (LCL), it may end up being worth joining together your freight with that regarding various other importers / exporters, within which case you will only pay for the and volume related in order to your personal goods. Establishing typically the most cost effective method to transport your goods may be a complicated task. You can possibly research and cost various different options on your own, or hire the service of a freight forwarder to handle these problems for you.. Paperwork to get moving goods simply by sea Transporting your things by simply ocean shipping, as with most elements of international trade needs the completion of a extensive variety of docs. Below is a overview of the key docs: Firstly you will want a Export Cargo Shipping Instruction which is a document that you supply to the shipping firm which details your items along with your instructions for typically the shipping. In the event you employ the particular services of a gets forwarder they will full that for you. Anyone will also require one of several following: · For dangerous cargo, the Dangerous Things Note (DGN), which particulars the character of the merchandise and the dangers they present · For non hazardous cargo, a good Standard Shipping Be aware (SSN), which supplies the port of loading the information they demand to handle your own goods correctly. In add-on to the preceding, anyone will also require 1 of the right after: · A new Bill of Lading. This is issued by the carrier and shows of which items have also been acquired. It also gives proof associated with a contract regarding buggy and acts as a report of title to the goods · A new Sea Waybill. This is certainly comparable to the bill involving lading, the main distinction being that it doesn't confer title, therefore building that quicker and much easier to use. A Sea Waybill is used where generally there is out there a well founded relationship concerning a client and vendor or any time ownership will not actually alter hands, such as when the goods are being shipped between divisions of typically the same business For a new detailed breakdown connected with field terminology you might want to visit the Baltic Change website. international road freight will not just cover often the underwater shipping; the idea also includes the transport associated with the merchandise by way of street, rail or maybe air. To help ensure that your include is valid, you need to have to prove that you have got an 'insurable interest' around the goods, which means proving that the merchandise belong to you. A good shipping lines liability to the goods they transport is placed by various international conventions and doesn't always figure to the full value involving the goods, which is why that is important to make sure that you have your own personal cover. Contract of sale made & insurance There can be several risks involved inside international trade such as damage, damage and wait (such as detention in customs). How the risks are really shared between the customer and seller should be detailed in the sales using Incoterms. Incoterms really are a standard set of terms describing correctly when responsibility intended for charges and risks steps through the seller to often the client, and can effects your insurance charges as typically the more costs that you are liable for, the greater typically the insurance include you will certainly need. In an ex-works (EXW) business deal, a home owner is regarded as to have supplied the goods after they also have also been collected in the factory or warehouse. Therefore , from that point onward just about all danger passes to the particular buyer, so the client needs to make sure how the goods are insured from there onwards.

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dop-jon · 6 years

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A Place, But at the End

I think I've always loved Detroit. I remember as a very young boy hearing of Detroit's census numbers in 1980 and how it was the the fourth or fifth-biggest city in the US. Just being so proud of that fact, like I had a hand in it. I'm not sure from whither that love came, but I suspect two sources and they both involve family. My mom's side of the family, the men in the family, worked as stagehands. Back then, stage entertainment was still a decent draw and my step-grandfather or uncles would pick up either myself or my brother, or both, and we'd get to watch the play or musical from the wings, or from the spotlight room, or from the sound room. If that was all it was, it still would've been cool. It was the ride down there, tho, going from our shitty little house in the nearby suburbs, down onto the Lodge Freeway, The Ditch, and as early evening was settling on Detroit, I'd look out from the backseat at the adjacent neighborhoods and marvel at the houses, becoming larger and less familiar as we drew closer to downtown, the lights on the high rises blinking on and off slowly, or remaining on, illuminating the office of some obviously well-connected tycoon. I knew even then that I liked the closeness of a city, that lived-in, pavement and horns feel, that dangerous feeling, like befriending a whore for practical and platonic purposes. And so we'd find a parking spot behind the theater and take the back way in, under the gathered drear of that breaking cityscape and find a place to sit, inconspicuously, in some of the grandest rooms designed by men for the purposes of entertainment while my uncles or step grandfather plied their trade. Needless to say, I was impressed. I never really cared what the entertainment was, although I'd certainly namedrop the event around potentially envious company. It was being down in those aging beauties, or darting over to grab a bite to eat around the corner, keeping your eyes peeled for anything that might happen because of...well...because of the second possible source of my love for Detroit. My dad's cowardice and his youngest brother's advice might be that source, in tandem. My dad, for his part, has always been afraid. I don't see anything wrong with that, as it were. I'm afraid every day as well. My fear keeps my feet moving. My father's fear keeps him in place, and as events come and go that others might find engaging, he rationalizes being disengaged, after the fact, on the ostensible grounds of either his or our personal safety. In a word, Detroit was too dangerous. His brother, 11 years my father's junior, spent all the time he could down there, and never missed a chance to tell me his more appropriately themed doings. They were all tame stories, but that was hardly the point. "Your dad doesn't know what he's talking about," he'd tell me. "He's never been down there. There's just too many people down there for him and it's a shame because he missed out on a lot of fun." My dad's reply to that, after I filtered the sting out Uncle Jimmy's assessment, was a variation of "yeah, but I'm *alive*". Yeah, I see that, dad.

So through my teens I tried to get downtown as much as possible, to get that addictive whiff of a life spent on concrete, of being surrounded by the symmetrical masses that Man raises in his own honor to celebrate his victory over chaos. I always knew my hometown was shabby, a bit. All it would take, in my view, was for people just to get hip to going back down there. To be in a crowd for an event downtown, to have that feeling like there is something happening in the world and you are not only witnessing it, but viewing it somewhere that was made for the sole intent of you seeing it. Imagine for a moment, or recall if experience provides, a downtown sporting event. Cities are male by nature and design, phallic and angular and aggressive, filled with an unthinking kinetic energy. A sporting event, a football game, say, thrives in such an environment. It's just a game played on a big field without it. And after living those moments in the now, when victory was uncertain and collective breaths were held, when the ebbs and flows of so much unfettered emotion plays upon the minds, upon the singular mind that the crowd shares at events such as these, and then victory is secured and 60,000 people feel the relief and release that such moments engender, and at that moment when they leave the fantastic cathedral and pour out into the heart of the city, you can't help but feel that this, this, happened here. A shadow of that feeling was always upon me when I was down there then. Checking out a band, or a famous bar, or taking in what sites I could in the relative safety of downtown.

A brief practical history of Detroit is needed here. Since it's founding in 1701 until WWI, Detroit was fairly unremarkable as cities go. A naturally advantageous location along the river of the same name that joins the upper Great Lakes to the lower, it served as the first (or last, depending on direction) major Midwestern port. Growth was modest but steady. Then Henry Ford hit the scene. There were a handful of like-minded men in Detroit that developed then automobile, but no single man left a larger imprint on the area, and maybe this country, as Ford. He developed and perfected the assembly line and an affordable car besides, and the the world hasn't been the same since. This drove many immigrants and blacks north to find work there, and neighborhoods, city governments, roads, they all felt the guiding hand of Ford. With his employment came certain expectations of behavior, and even the number of bars and neighborhood layouts were done or undone with his blessing. This led to exponential growth thru the first half of the 20th century. Even here tho, the seeds of it's eventual decline and abandonment took root amongst this unprecedented growth. Larger, slightly older American cities grew vigorously during the first two hundred years of this continent's taming, and it was done mostly with immigrants, people in less hopeful war or famine torn urban locales that already had a feel for what to expect in city life, especially in cities that already had it's natural boundaries established and developed. Detroit's expansion grew apace and unchecked predominately from an incoming rural populace that had little notion or interest of what city life was like. They were here to work and provide for their families a significantly better life and future than they were used to. As a result, little thought was given as to how that growth would be maintained. In the early part of the century, I'm sure it seemed a question that answered itself; growth would maintain itself. What was to stop it? By 1950 it was the fourth largest city in America. A war had been one, a Depression had been reversed for over a decade, and there was relative peace and plenty for all. With all this wealth and disposable time, and with a keen eye for further developing commerce, freeways were put in. America's first freeway was built in Detroit, then another, then another. As city planners hadn't foreseen such an event, neighborhoods had to be partially demolished and people relocated to accommodate. Poor people, mostly. Blacks, Poles, Jews. Those that could afford it moved to nicer neighborhoods. The people people already in those neighborhoods, white, middle class types, well, they didn't go for that. So the expansion continued, but not for Detroit. Within two generations the whites fled to the suburbs, desirous of modestly more space and dramatically fewer blacks. Detroit stagnated, industry trickled away, infrastructure decayed, crime rose to unprecedented levels, and we know have the husk, more or less, of how I found the city in 1995.

In the November of that year, I went to work for John P., a master plumber by trade and a proud Detroiter, father of my girlfriend and child of a white flight family. He grew up in the Northwest side, Fenkel and Wyoming, hard by the Lodge freeway that had recently been built. I was without a significant college education and no practical trade. I was 22 and past time to start doing something with my life, begrudging as I might have been. John was a father figure to me, one that I needed. I had a dad, but his advice was basically limited to "keep it in your pants" and "keep your words soft and sweet". He worked hard, but it was mindless work and unprosperous. John worked hard, had a keen if practical mind, and prospered, after a fashion. Holding a job of one sort or another since the age of 5, when he would take a crosstown bus with his shine box and shine shoes at every bar between his bus stop and his house along Fenkell, he developed a work ethic that drove him to do whatever it was that he had to do. In a practical vein, he memorized every cross street along his route and eventually came to know, thru his extensive work around the city as a plumber, almost the entire West Side and much of the East. I found his capacity for that sort of thing compelling. Personally, I found the man to be a shortsighted boor. But whatever his reservations, he put me to work on a project he had going on, the renovation of an old apartment building in Detroit's first neighborhood, Corktown. Eighth Street and Porter, right down the street, on the other side of Michigan Avenue, from old Tiger Stadium. Corktown is the closest neighborhood still occupied and standing to downtown, and on my first day I went up on the roof of this four story building and looked around. West I could see the 30-odd story train depot, a beautiful building on the outside but long since closed and stripped of any value inside. The great white monolith of Tiger Stadium was to my north, northeast of there, roughly midtown, was The Masonic Temple, massive, a testament to the power of the Freemasons. Past that, The Fisher Building and The GM Headquarters sat across from either on Grand Boulevard, and then a large swath of old commercial buildings and random homes, many abandoned or failing, until, turning clockwise, the knot of downtown could be descried to the east, with the incongruous Renaissance Center hugging the Detroit River. It was my first glimpse of the heart of the city from such a vantage point, and as weather allowed I would take my lunches up there and just look around and wonder at what a marvel this city must have been when it mattered. Inside the building, which had been gutted by fire a number of years prior, held the social dynamic of the city within it's brick walls. Initially, it was staffed with day labor from the local shelters and local residents, a way to make $8hr for backbreaking work. Black manual labor and white skilled labor, and most of them union members. Being unskilled white labor, I hung with the black guys. Their stories were fascinating. All function and no theory, their lives were revealed to me with unaware candor. Mack, who bummed smokes from me all day with the implied agreement that he'd keep talking, comes to mind immediately. A wheel man for a bank robbing crew, Mack told countless stories of his misdeeds, without any regret. He was shot in the riots of '67, tv in hand, on Gratiot Avenue. He spoke of picking up snitches or other lowlifes, taking them to some hideout and torturing

them with tubs filled with piranhas, or simply beating them to death or very nearly so. Then he'd talk about seeing Hendrix at the Masonic, and how he sounded like he was just pulling music from the universe, and Mack would strum an air guitar while he talked, rheumy eyes partly closed, remembering how he felt when he got to hear Jimi's astral projections. All the brothers were cool with me, and I absorbed it all. A couple of them didn't think that there were any poor white kids, so it was a treat to share my stories of misery with them. The union tradesmen weren't as kind. Most were snarly and rude, white trash that had figured out a decent way to make good money but begrudged my presence as the sole nonunion trade on the job. One had taken the time to nail a dead rat to a board and write "Non Union Tradesman" on it. Tim, an journeyman plumber that kept me busy cutting pipe and running around drilling holes, took the time to put the numbers 1-12 around the body of the rat like a clock, then spin the rat in order to guess the time according to where it's tail and nose would come to rest. If I had any sense, I would've been scared. So for a year we worked like that, and on a handful of other jobs besides, all in Detroit. Although not as colorful, with the possible exception of working at Cass and Alexandrine, I slowly gleaned what I could from John and those that I came into contact with. I tried to absorb the facts but set aside the opinions given with them. There has never been a shortage of opinions on the city and it's woes, certainly by those with little knowledge of the city itself, so I took all I could with an open mind. Eventually John's little company folded and we went to work for an HVAC company in the suburb my dad grew up in, Redford Twp., which borders Detroit on the far northwest. There my exposure and education increased dramatically. Until this time, I met only other workers, tradesmen. Now I was in people's homes, installing boilers, furnaces, plumbing. I learned this fact quickly; if you really want to see someone's true self, observe how they behave in the comfort of their own homes. At some point, during each installation, I would fish for information from the occupant. Most of them were poor and basic, living squalid little lives. Some of the homes were well maintained, in vibrant neighborhoods. Others lived in older, grandiose castles from a bygone era, losing the battle to keep up with maintaining a 100 year old house. Still others lived in little shitbox Cracker Jack hovels, not built to endure yet still occupied. And everyone of those people had a story to tell, and being relaxed in their dwelling, I feel like I was getting The Truth, or at least their version of it. I recall giving an old black lady an estimate on some repairs to her boiler. She looked about 70. Six Mile and Nevada area, old neighborhood, not far from Woodward which divides the city in two. After I wrote up the estimate, she asked me if I knew why I was there. I said, naively, to write her an estimate. I had barely finished my answer when she came with the correct one. "I'd rather have flies in my house than niggers. You can get a fly out of your house." Then she paused, squinted at me to make sure I was paying attention to her, then said "you DO know what I'm talkin' about, right?" "Yes ma'am, I believe I do." And then she wished me a good day as another white contractor was coming up the walk to write an estimate for her as well. I remember a Mr. Langston, a black guy, that owned a huge home on the Lower East Side. He was 80 at the time. First black guy to move into the neighborhood. Worked at Ford his whole life, out three kids thru college. Had lived in that home since 1940. When we drove up to his house, he was outside, in a driving snow, snow blowing the walk. No evidence existed that any of his neighbors had been out of their houses in days. His marbled carpet, otherwise immaculate, had tracks worn in it from the path he had made from his bedroom, thru the living room, the dining room, and into the kitchen.

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velmaemyers88 · 5 years

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Boxed In at the Docks: How a Lifeline From China Changed Greece

When Chinese shipping giant Cosco snapped up the historic port of Piraeus, it threw Greece an economic lifeline. Now the port’s success is reshaping the Greek political landscape—and generating choppy waters for China in Europe.

On a steamy night earlier this summer, about a thousand people poured into a public square in Athens to cheer on Greece’s leading left-wing politician, Alexis Tsipras. Tsipras was in the waning weeks of his term as Prime Minister—and trailing in a race against a pro-business opponent.

Leaping onto a makeshift stage in front of a banner reading “We have the power,” Tsipras shouted over the crowd. “This is a battle between two worlds, the elites against the many!” Then he took aim at foreign companies eyeing investment prospects in Greece, one of the countries hardest hit by Europe’s long financial crisis. “We have managed to get back to growth after eight straight years of recession,” Tsipras said. “Electricity, health, education, water, energy—they are not for sale!”

The promise to keep the country’s state-owned assets in Greek hands elicited a deafening roar. And yet Tsipras didn’t mention the most prized Greek asset of all: the port of Piraeus. Situated at the edge of Athens—a short sail from the Middle East and Africa—the port has been a strategic jewel for nearly 2,500 years, ever since the Athenians and Spartans defeated the Persian emperor in a nearby sea battle for Mediterranean supremacy. But as the crowd in the square knew, Tsipras’s own government had sold off Piraeus, years earlier, to a modern-day empire intent on expanding its own power: China.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled the ambitious vision he called the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, in 2013, he had commerce, not conquest, in mind. Xi announced that China would build a network of highways and rail lines (the “belt”) and sea routes (the “road”) across thousands of miles, linking Asia to Europe and Africa. The idea was to re-create the old Silk Road—the trade routes between East and West that were the foundations of the world’s first truly global commerce. The ultimate strategic goal: to expand and solidify a web of trading relationships that would cement China’s position as a dominant economic and political power for decades to come.

Piraeus has become a showcase display of the BRI in action—a project capable of transforming not just one port but perhaps an entire economy. It’s also an object lesson in the ways China’s biggest companies both execute and benefit from the BRI. The port has been majority-owned since 2016 (and operated since 2009) by China Cosco Shipping—a state-owned giant established nearly 60 years ago by Communist founding father Mao Zedong.

When Cosco stepped in, Piraeus “was a pretty backward container terminal that nobody took seriously,” says Olaf Merk, the ports and shipping expert at the International Transport Forum at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “China saw an opportunity that was underdeveloped.” New management has brought dizzying change: This year, the port will handle five times as much cargo volume as it did in 2010, according to the Piraeus Port Authority. And it’s on track to become the biggest container port in the Mediterranean, perhaps as soon as this year, overtaking Valencia in Spain.

Cosco, meanwhile, has undergone its own rapid growth, thanks in large part to the BRI and to substantial Chinese government support. After several mergers with other transport companies, Cosco is now the third-biggest shipping company in the world by volume, with $43 billion in revenue—and significant stakes in other ports that ring Europe.

In recent years, China has trumpeted Piraeus as a model for what the BRI can achieve. And its impact is visible throughout Athens: in more jobs at the port, in Chinese-language advertisements for local real estate, and in plans to remake Piraeus as a tourist destination for the burgeoning Chinese upper classes.

But Piraeus’s revival also coincides with growing doubts in Europe about the strings attached to Chinese investment—as leaders question whether its sheer scale is a threat to Europe’s sovereignty, and perhaps even its security. Already, the political landscape in Greece has shifted in ways critics see as too friendly to China. Chinese naval vessels have docked at Piraeus—raising hackles at NATO, of which Greece is a member. This spring, as Xi toured the continent to stump for the BRI, European Union leaders issued a tough statement that for the first time called China a “systemic rival” whose political values—a centralized government with no tolerance for dissent, run by a leader with a lifelong grip on power—clash with Europe’s own.

The EU also called out Chinese state-owned enterprises like Cosco for having unfair advantages over the continent’s own private-sector companies. “The balance of challenges and opportunities presented by China has shifted,” the EU statement warned. Whether that balance should still tip toward cooperation is a debate now playing out on Piraeus’s docks.

When Westerners think about competition with China, the conversation often involves advanced technology—think artificial intelligence or 5G Internet. But the BRI underscores the importance of the infrastructure of trade itself: railways, roads, harbors. Ports may be the most vital link in that network. Roughly 90% of goods traded internationally makes its way around the world by sea. Control the shipping lanes and ports, and you wield great power over the global economy. “Xi thought, ‘What will my legacy be?’ ” says Nicolas Vernicos, a fourth-generation Greek shipowner and vice chairman of the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce, a trade organization headquartered in China. “He decided to be the Marco Polo of the 21st century.”

If completed, the BRI will be one of history’s biggest infrastructure projects. Already Chinese companies are laying highways, operating ports, and creating railway networks in as many as 60 countries as varied as Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan. Chinese government spending and subsidies keep the shovels moving. The Council on Foreign Relations estimates that China has spent about $200 billion on BRI projects so far; that investment could reach $1.2 trillion by 2027, according to Morgan Stanley. The result, Xi said in 2015, will bring “a real chorus comprising all countries along the route, not a solo for China.”

European voices make up only a small share of the chorus so far: The biggest BRI projects are underway in Asia and Africa. But outside of the BRI, Europe has seen Chinese investment rise quickly. With most EU economies still sluggish in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and heavy debt loads restraining government spending, Chinese companies have filled a void.

Indeed, as trade tensions impair China’s ability to invest in the U.S., Europe now accounts for almost a quarter of China’s direct foreign investment—about $22 billion in the first half of 2018, according to law firm Baker McKenzie. State-owned ChemChina bought Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta in 2017, for $43.1 billion. In 2016, China’s Midea spent $5.3 billion to buy German robotics manufacturer Kuka—which, among other things, keeps Volkswagen’s factories ticking. Technology player Huawei, which the Trump administration has branded as a national-security threat, maintains its largest logistics center outside China in Hungary, where it employs 2,000 people.

WHERE EMPIRES OVERLAP Athens is home to a community of some 10,000 Chinese expats. Photograph by Alfredo D’Amato—Panos Pictures for Fortune

A Chinese crossing the street with a trolley carrying article of clothing. Photograph by Alfredo D’Amato—Panos Pictures for Fortune

Cosco hopes to expand Piraeus as a tourism destination to compete with sites like the Acropolis for affluent Chinese visitors. Photograph by Alfredo D’Amato—Panos Pictures for Fortune

A Chinese man buying fruits at the local market. Photograph by Alfredo D’Amato—Panos Pictures for Fortune

“Money does not like a vacuum,” says Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s left-wing former finance minister, who helped negotiate the country’s bailout with the International Monetary Fund and the EU in 2015. Varoufakis blames EU leaders for leaving companies vulnerable to takeovers. “European decision-makers [are] keeping investment at the slowest level in history and leaving the Chinese to come in as the only investors,” he says.

Cosco has quietly become one of the busiest of those investors. Even before the BRI was unveiled, it began acquiring stakes in numerous key ports, piecing together a network of terminals around Europe. (The company signs long-term concessions with local governments; Piraeus is the only European port where it owns outright a controlling stake.) Its holdings include 47.5% of the huge Euromax terminal in the Dutch city of Rotterdam; 100% of the container port in Zeebrugge, Belgium; and stakes in terminals in Valencia and Bilbao, Spain. In Israel, on Europe’s edge, it’s building ports in Haifa and Ashdod.

Cosco’s rise also shows how state-owned companies benefit when they subsume their strategy to the government’s grand plans. Growth and profitability are virtually assured—an advantage no U.S. or European company can match. “Operational losses of Cosco are compensated by state subsidies, and capital investments are made possible by generous credit lines,” explains Merk, the OECD analyst.

China’s government has given an astonishing $1.3 billion worth of tax subsidies to Cosco since 2010, according to shipping-research organization Alphaliner. Alphaliner estimates that Cosco’s 2018 profit of $251 million from shipping activities was attributable almost entirely to subsidies, which Cosco reported at $230 million. State-owned banks offer other largesse, often in the form of low-interest loans. In 2016, China’s Export-Import Bank provided Cosco with $18 billion in financing to buy ships and acquire companies. In 2017, Cosco got $26 billion in financing from the China Development Bank for BRI projects—work that Cosco now leverages to expand globally.

Cosco’s Chinese executive in Piraeus, Capt. Fu Cheng Qiu, declined multiple requests for interviews; Cosco officials elsewhere in Europe and China did not respond to interview requests. But publicly, the company’s officials aren’t shy about their plans for global growth. “Scale-up will still be the long-term trend for our industry,” Zhang Wei, executive director of Cosco’s port arm, said in April.

When you drive into Piraeus, five miles from downtown Athens, past auto-body repair shops and small cafés, there is no sense that you’re entering a flash point of controversy. Though some 450,000 people live in the town and its surrounding neighborhoods, Piraeus has the feel of a suburb that has seen better days. At lunchtime, the plastic tables at the café on the pier fill with dockworkers, smoking cigarettes and discussing their lives over $5 plates of sardines—offering a window into the tumultuous decade they have endured.

Giorgos Alevizopoulos, a burly man of 64 with a mustache and beard, says he began working in the port at 17, in 1972—when shipbuilding was Greece’s powerhouse industry. He ultimately became a welder, working on vessels under repair or maintenance on dry and floating docks where dozens of small companies operate on piecemeal jobs.

But by early this century, work in Piraeus had slowed to a crawl, as companies sought cheaper repairs in other nations or patronized more modern shipyards. Years of labor strife also reduced the port’s appeal. Alevizopoulos says he worked only about 50 days a year between 2005 and 2014. “My entire life changed, and my outlook on life changed. I even contemplated suicide,” he says. “Some days we just ate bread. If there was a question about what we eat that day, the answer was always whatever is cheapest.”

For years, the Greek government seemed content to run Piraeus largely as a commuter port for the ferryboats that take millions of locals and tourists to islands in the Aegean Sea. The shipyards and cargo port, meanwhile, deteriorated year by year. Laden with debt and bogged down by political schisms and bureaucracy, the government neglected the upgrades that could have retrofitted Piraeus to serve the rapidly growing large-container shipping industry. By 2010, yearly cargo traffic had fallen to 880,000 TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units, the standard measurement for container throughput—a paltry fraction of the capacity of Europe’s biggest ports.

In 2008, China made its move. Cosco, then known as the China Ocean Shipping Group, signed a concession with the Greek government to operate Piraeus’s container terminal for 35 years, in a deal worth about 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in rent and facility upgrades and another 2.7 billion euros in revenue sharing. The powerful dockworker unions, anxious at the prospect of foreign ownership, went on strike for six weeks. They hung a banner on Piraeus’s waterfront on the day the Chinese company took over that read “Cosco go home!” But with the global recession at its nadir, and few other options, the strikers soon returned to work.

Cosco quickly overhauled one of Piraeus’s piers and implemented a major upgrade of its loading cranes. That vastly expanded Piraeus’s capacity, turning the port almost overnight into an attractive destination for container vessels. Cosco also ran the port more efficiently. “Before, the employees were public servants,” says Vernicos, the shipowner. “They were working less than eight hours a day and fishing most of the time.”

Most important, Cosco now directs more of its own huge container-vessel traffic to Piraeus. As the ancient Greeks understood, Piraeus’s location makes it potentially invaluable. It is the closest major container terminal on the European mainland for ships emerging from the Suez Canal—and a gateway to a huge swath of southeastern Europe. “Before Cosco arrived, Chinese products had to go to Hamburg or Britain, and then they would go perhaps to the Balkans,” says Wu Hailong, owner of the Greece China Times, a newspaper catering to the 10,000 or so Chinese residents of Athens. “Now it saves about 10 days on the route.”

WELDING A BOND Cosco has achieved labor peace, for now, with Piraeus’s historically fractious dockworkers and shipbuilders. Photograph by Alfredo D’Amato—Panos Pictures for Fortune

Even as Piraeus got healthier, Greece labored under heavy austerity conditions imposed by its creditors. Its lenders demanded that the government make deep cuts to public spending—prompting hundreds of thousands of already-suffering Greeks to flood the streets in protest. Alexis Tsipras and Syriza won elections in 2015, campaigning on promises never to sell certain public assets. In the end, however, Greece had to do just that as a condition of a bailout by the EU and the IMF. Consider this: It sold its rail lines to Italy’s state-owned railway company for a tiny 43 million euros, less than some pro athletes earn in a year. Its natural-gas holdings were sold off to a private group; China State Grid, another state-owned company, bought a stake in Greece’s national utility. “Greece had choices, and it did not choose bankruptcy,” says Panagiotis Liargovas, an economist who headed the Greek Parliament’s budget office at the time.

In 2016, Greece agreed to sell 51% of Piraeus to Cosco, including 100% of its container terminal, for a bargain price of 368.5 million euros, plus 760 million euros in upgrades and revenue sharing. Piraeus became Chinese-owned, effectively in perpetuity. And in 2018, it processed 4.9 million TEUs, making it Europe’s sixth-largest cargo port.

Alevizopoulos, the welder, says his life has drastically changed for the better since then. He says he made nearly 20,000 euros last year—about four times as much as his earnings before the government sold the port. Even so, Greece’s economic ordeal has left its mark. “Psychologically, we have not recovered,” he says. “Like the rest of the people, we are still afraid.”

In August 2018, Greece finally exited the eight-year austerity program imposed by its creditors. Although the economy returned to growth in 2017, Greece’s GDP had shrunk an astonishing 45% between 2008 and 2016—the largest depression ever to strike a country in peacetime. It will take years more for outside lenders to feel secure about financing projects in Greece, says Yannis Stournaras, governor of the Bank of Greece, “so we hope for equity investment.” Such an influx is needed not just to boost the economy but also to literally rejuvenate Greece, the governor explains. Thousands of educated young people fled during the crash, and those who stayed have been reluctant to start families. “Only by producing good jobs will young couples produce more children,” Stournaras says.

Cosco says it is generating such jobs. While many Greeks worried that Chinese control would mean that imported workers would displace Athenians, only a handful of the port’s staff is Chinese, and those are managers, rarely seen amid the ships and stacks of containers. Cosco’s chairman, Xu Lirong, recently told Chinese media that the company has created 3,100 jobs for Greeks and added about $337 million a year to the Greek economy—a meaningful sum in a country with GDP of about $200 billion. The port’s revenues were about $151 million last year, up 19.2% from 2017, and Cosco says it is aiming to more than double the container volume Piraeus handles.

Boosters see Chinese money also bolstering other sectors that suffered during the dark years. Vaggelis Kteniadis, president of V2, one of Greece’s biggest real estate development companies, says he has had only five Greek buyers for his properties in Athens’s upscale seaside suburbs during the past 10 years. Kteniadis helped persuade Greece’s government to launch a “golden visa” program in 2013, offering foreigners resident status in exchange for investing 250,000 euros in Greek property.

Kteniadis estimates that Chinese buyers since then have snapped up more than 4,000 houses and apartments in Athens, about 450 from him alone, bought as second homes or short-term rental properties. Today, V2’s advertisements, in Chinese, are plastered across the baggage-claim area in Athens’s airport, offering home ownership as a rapid path to EU residency—an invaluable advantage for businesspeople. “The Chinese have saved Greek real estate,” says Kteniadis, who now has offices in four Chinese cities.

Chinese money could reshape the real estate of Piraeus itself. Guiding a reporter around the port one afternoon, Nektarios Demenopoulos, spokesman for the Piraeus Port Authority, points out a large abandoned wheat silo, which Cosco wants to convert into one of five high-end hotels; the company also envisions building a luxury shopping mall. The idea is to invest some 600 million euros to transform the sleepy town into a tourist hub, catering to cruise ships (some Chinese-owned) for which Piraeus is a stop. There is little to do in town currently, and passengers, if they disembark at all, make a beeline for the Acropolis 6.5 miles away. “The Chinese already have respect for ancient Greek culture,” Demenopoulos says. “But we still have a very small number of Chinese tourists compared to the thousands of Chinese millionaires.”

In 2017, not long after Cosco bought Piraeus, the European Union drew up a resolution to present to the United Nations condemning China’s crackdown on human-rights activists. The EU had presented such statements on multiple previous occasions. But this time, Greece blocked the resolution, and a Greek foreign ministry spokesman called it “unconstructive criticism of China.” That incident exposed a deepening divide among EU countries over how to deal with China—and stoked the fears of China hawks that countries would be willing to sacrifice principles for monetary gain.

This year, the stakes rose dramatically. In March, when President Xi landed in Rome for a state visit, Italy’s presidential guards lined up on horseback to greet him, as they do for the Pope. Later, tenor Andrea Bocelli serenaded Xi at a formal dinner. Italian companies signed deals with China worth $2.8 billion, and Italy agreed, in principle, to join the BRI, becoming the first member of the G7 group of major Western economies to sign on. Here, as in Piraeus, China’s maritime ambitions play a role: Italy is courting Chinese investment in four of its ports, including Trieste, a city whose direct-rail connections to Belgium and Germany represent some of Europe’s most valuable trade routes.

It was Xi’s splashy Italy visit that jolted EU officials into issuing their warning about China as a “systemic rival.” The EU plans to more rigorously monitor investments by state-owned companies like Cosco. It has begun rolling out guidelines to prevent countries from ceding control of strategic infrastructure or sensitive technology—an attempt to mirror the U.S. Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS, which examines deals involving American companies. Closer examination of security threats and unfair competition “could severely affect China’s investment footprint in Europe,” concludes a recent report by the Rhodium Group and the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Indeed, data on Chinese investment in Europe shows that its pace is already slowing.

Within Greece itself, divisions over foreign investment—including in Piraeus—run deep. Some critics have long griped that the government sold too low, even though Cosco was the highest bidder in an open process. Local officials have, for now, blocked Cosco’s hotel and mall plans, on the grounds that they would disturb archaeological sites.

Some business leaders want the state to prevent Cosco from replacing Greek know-how with Chinese infrastructure. Piraeus’s cranes, for example, are supplied by ZPMC, a subsidiary of yet another Chinese state-owned entity. “Even the screws come from China,” says Thodoris Dritsas, a former Greek shipping minister. “There are Greek companies that could do this.” The dockworkers suspect Cosco has designs to replace their union members with freelance labor acquired through recruitment agencies.

At the national level, events are moving in Cosco’s favor. After campaigning against foreign takeovers, Tsipras’s Syriza Party was trounced in elections in early July. Voters wrung out from years of tax increases and belt-tightening voted in the New Democracy Party. Its leader, new Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is a 51-year-old, Harvard-educated former venture capitalist who promises to lure big investors. In a conference about the BRI in Athens weeks before the election, the vice president of New Democracy, Adonis Georgiadis, said the party “welcomes Chinese companies to invest and grow in Greece.”

On a walk through Piraeus, worries about China’s influence seem dwarfed by the towers of containers on the dockside—bulky symbols of the port’s prosperity. Giorgos Gogos, general secretary of the local Dockworkers Union, says the era of strikes and protests is over—for now. That harmony could end if Cosco threatens union workers’ incomes. Still, after a decade of recession and pain, Piraeus’s dockworkers sense the chance for growth—or, at least, stability. “We are tired of struggling all the time,” Gogos says. “We need a period of peace.” For now, that desire for peace seems to outweigh national pride.

Additional reporting by Pavlos Kapantais

A version of this article appears in the August 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Boxed in at the Docks.”