Burden on world trade Freighters back up off southern China

As of: 21.06.2021 8:59 a.m.

The container ships are stowed in the fourth largest port in the world. The reason is a corona outbreak in Shenzhen-Yantian. The international movement of goods is impaired – possibly until the end of the year.

From Steffen Wurzel, ARD studio Shanghai

The congestion of the container ships off southern China is worse than that Blockade of the Suez Canal in March This is how Vincent Clerc, manager of the Danish shipping company Maersk, summed it up in a conversation with journalists in mid-June. At times, around 130 container ships from all over the world were anchored off the port of Shenzhen-Yantian, as reported by the Bloomberg news agency.

Weeks-long consequences for world trade

The reason for the traffic jam is a new – albeit small – corona outbreak in the southern Chinese part of Guangdong, where Shenzhen is located. Because the local authorities ordered the port of Shenzhen to be partially closed due to the corona, ships could not dock and cast off. Supply chains worldwide are out of step. German companies in the Guangdong region are also reporting that department stores are sometimes overcrowded. In the meantime, the situation in Guangdong has normalized, but weeks will pass before the backlog has completely cleared, estimates Nick Marro, an analyst for world trade at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in Hong Kong. The backlog will therefore continue for weeks through the global supply chains.

Traffic jam in the fourth largest port in the world

Shenzhen-Yantian is the fourth largest container port in the world; Last year more than 27 million standard containers (TEU) were handled there. For comparison: In Hamburg there were fewer than nine million containers in 2020, i.e. around a third of them.

The logistics delays are a problem especially for the tech and electronics industry: around 90 percent of all electronics exports from China go through the port of Shenzhen-Yantian. Analyst Nick Marro expects the situation to remain tense, given the global openings after the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Relaxation probably only towards the end of the year

“There is no sign of an end to global consumer demand for goods and products. In many western countries, stocks are usually replenished in the third quarter of the year, which continues to ensure high trading activity,” says Marro. “This suggests that the tensions in global logistics and at the ports will not ease until the fourth quarter of the year.” In China, almost no reports are made of the container ship congestion in front of the port of Shenzhen-Yantian

Shen Yiren said that mobile phone companies are aggressively increasing inventories because they worry about component shortages and increase inventories aggressively. Since the fourth quarter of last year, the global chip supply caused by automobile chips has been tight and has spread to the mobile phone chip industry. By the first quarter of this year, even the mobile phone chip giant Qualcomm said that it was facing a tight production capacity, and many domestic mobile phone companies have stocked up.

Another reason for domestic mobile phone companies to increase inventory is the decline of Huawei mobile phones. Since the fourth quarter of last year, Huawei mobile phones have mainly relied on stock chips to operate. Its shipments have gradually declined, and shipments in the domestic market have increased in the first quarter of this year. Compared with the same period last year, while the shipments of Xiaomi OV have increased significantly, mobile phone companies may think that they can occupy the market if they have production capacity.

Once again, mobile phone companies expect to enter the year of 5G popularization this year. 5G mobile phones will become the absolute mainstream of the smartphone market. Technology upgrades will help promote mobile phone sales. 4G has changed the pattern of the domestic mobile phone market. The opportunity to live in 4G has laid the current pattern, and for this reason they hope to seize the opportunity of 5G to consolidate their market position.

Just as the mobile phone companies are overly optimistic about the domestic mobile phone market, the market has hit them with a sap. According to data released by the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, the Chinese market shipped 22.968 million mobile phones in May, down 32% year-on-year. The Chinese mobile phone market is in a downturn and consumers lack the desire to buy mobile phones.

Among them, the performance of 5G mobile phones that mobile phone companies have high expectations is also unsatisfactory. 5G mobile phone shipments in May were 16.739 million units, an increase of 7% year-on-year, but compared to the peak of 27.498 million 5G mobile phone shipments in March this year, it fell by more than 10 million. Department or 39.1%. Another data shows that iPhone shipments in May soared more than 40% month-on-month to 3.8 million units, which means that the market share of domestic Android phones has been further squeezed.

The sluggish domestic mobile phone market is also related to the continuous price increase of domestic mobile phone brands. Today, domestic mobile phone brands are priced at nearly 1,000 yuan for low-end 5G phones, which is twice as expensive as 4G phones, as low as 500 yuan; high-end phones have broken through 3,000 yuan and 4,000 yuan. , Even more than 6,000 yuan, but as mentioned above, consumers prefer the iPhone when buying high-end mobile phones, driving the surge in iPhone sales while the overall sales of domestic mobile phones have fallen, and the price increase of domestic mobile phones has made the iPhone.

The domestic mobile phone market is in a downturn, especially the sales of 5G mobile phones have not continued to rise. This is undoubtedly a major blow to domestic mobile phone brands that are actively stocking. They all hope to clear their inventory during the 618 promotion period. However, domestic consumers are tired of promotional routines. Looking at 618 coldly, the dream of mobile phone companies hoping to rely on 618 to clear inventory is not satisfactory. Perhaps this is why Shen Yiren believes that the inventory of domestic mobile phone brands may have to be cleared until this year’s Double Eleven.

In the face of huge inventory pressure, domestic mobile phone brands have been promoting in other ways, such as student prices and other ways to greatly reduce prices. If inventory pressure cannot be released, they are likely to continue to reduce prices significantly in the future, so consumers who Shen Yiren said can wait. It makes sense to wait. The iPhone 13 will come in a few months. The domestic high-end mobile phones cannot compete with the iPhone 12. When the price of the iPhone 12 is further reduced, the domestic Android flagship will not be able to clear the inventory without jumping off the property.

Increasing influence How China is entering Europe’s ports

Status: 10.06.2021 12:33 p.m.

Piraeus, Rotterdam, Antwerp and soon possibly also Hamburg – China has its own terminals in 14 European ports or holds shares in port operators. Critics warn of the consequences of the urge to expand. From Lothar Gries, tagesschau.de The listed Hamburg port operator HHLA is currently negotiating with the Chinese state shipping company Cosco about a possible participation in one of its container terminals – with the telling name of Tollerort. HHLA recently announced that a legally binding agreement has not yet been reached. However, the publication of such a release indicates that the talks are on the home stretch. Trade with China is by far the most important business for the third largest European seaport. Ships of the Chinese shipping company Cosco have been calling at Hamburg for almost 40 years. Two years ago, China’s Vice President Wang Qishan also visited the Tollerort terminal. With its four berths on a quay wall a good kilometer long, 14 container cranes and a five-track rail connection, Tollerort is one of a total of four container terminals in the Port of Hamburg and the second largest at HHLA.

Important loophole

According to experts, by entering Hamburg, China would close the largest gap in its maritime Silk Road. Even more: through a partnership with HHLA, Cosco could also get privileged access to the Italian Adriatic port of Trieste. The Hamburg port operator had taken over the majority in a new terminal there last year – with the express approval of the government in Rome, which wanted to block the way for the Chinese who were also interested. Because a majority stake by Cosco in the largest container terminal in Trieste would have been tantamount to a sell-out from the perspective of the Italians. Now the Chinese could still gain access to Trieste via Hamburg. That would be a decisive move in Beijing’s expansion strategy, since Trieste is the northernmost port in the Mediterranean and therefore particularly important for Central and Eastern Europe. HHLA is also involved in terminals in the Ukraine and Estonia.

“Loss of Sovereignty”

Cosco and its sister company China Merchant already have their own terminals in a total of 14 European ports – or at least shares in the port operators. All the major seaports on the continent are included, from Rotterdam and Antwerp to Le Havre, Bilbao, Genoa, Valencia and Marseille. According to calculations by US experts, more than two thirds of the 50 largest container terminals in the world are already controlled by the Chinese or at least supported by holdings. “Europe has thus lost some of its sovereignty,” complained the former French Prime Minister and China expert, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The sell-off began in 2016 when Greece, which was practically bankrupt at the time, was forced by the troika made up of the monetary fund, the EU and the ECB to privatize the port of Piraeus. The Chinese were happy to take it and were given complete control of the strategically located port for a bargain price of 280 million euros. Today Piraeus is number four in Europe, behind Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. The port is the end point of the maritime Silk Road, from China across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. Beijing also controls its entrance for onward travel through the Suez Canal, with a naval base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.

Silk Road project – anything but a marketing gimmick

The example of Greece shows the political effects of China’s increasing influence in some countries, says Günther Oettinger, the former EU Commissioner and Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg. “Before the European Union imposed symbolic sanctions on China in March, Greece liked the role of delaying and watering down resolutions against China. A rogue who thinks evil”, said the CDU politician in a guest article for the “Tagesspiegel” “. China’s expansion can no longer be stopped. “We cannot blame the Chinese for being smart. We can only blame ourselves for being so stupid,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, referring to China’s strategy, which is an increasingly large one in Europe’s economy Role to play. In fact, the EU countries watched China’s shopping spree for a long time with takeovers of technology companies such as the German robot manufacturer Kuka. “When China’s leadership launched the ‘New Silk Road’ project in 2013, many in Europe believed it was a marketing gag,” said Günther Oettinger. President Xi Jinping was very serious, as can be seen from the trade network that has now been established. In Europe, China prefers to help those states, such as Greece or Hungary, that are poorer than Western Europeans. These countries are to be tied closely to themselves by investing billions in infrastructure in order to create a “China-friendly Europe”, as a high-ranking EU diplomat of the “world” said.

No concerns from Berlin

The most recent decision by the EU Parliament, which Suspend discussions on the investment agreement reached with China at the end of last year . Among other things, it was supposed to regulate the access of European companies to the Chinese market, but met with growing opposition in the European Union. Critics complained that the agreement did not set any limits to China’s expansionist urge. This is unlikely to prevent the Chinese from entering the Tollerort container port in Hamburg. The negotiations are after NDR- Information well advanced and coordinated with the federal government. There are no concerns from the Chancellery, the Ministry of Economics and Transport, or the Foreign Office.