With the aim to dominate maritime industry China has been acquiring overseas ports with huge investments which crossed USD 20 bln last year, Financial Times reported.
Beijing has spent billions expanding its ports network to secure sea lanes and establish itself as a maritime power, says the report.
China is aggressively pushing its “One Belt One Road”, a grand scheme to win diplomatic allies and open markets in around 65 countries between Asia and Europe. It is pushing ahead with plans to open new shipping routes through the Arctic circle, the report said.
The report quoted a study by Grisons Peak, a London-based investment bank, found that Chinese companies have announced plans to buy or invest in nine overseas ports in the year to June in projects valued at a total of $20.1bn.
Apart from this, many discussions are under way for investments in several other ports, for which no value has been divulged.
This level of activity represents a sharp acceleration from the $9.97bn in Chinese overseas port projects in the year-ago period, according to Financial Times estimates.
The China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (Cosco) took over 51 percent of the Greek state-owned Piraeus Port Authority (PPA) on August 10, 2016 making it the controlling shareholder.
A consortium of global and domestic funds, backed by investors including China Investment Corp, agreed to buy Australia's busiest port for a higher-than-expected A$9.7 billion ($7.3 billion), a sign that tough equity markets are helping fuel appetite for infrastructure.
China state-controlled company China Merchants signed a deal with the government of Sri Lanka to buy an 80 percent stake in the South Asian country’s Hambantota deep-sea port.
Owned, financed and built by China, Gwadar post of Pakistan occupies a strategic location.
According to the Diplomat, China is expanding as a maritime power in terms of port and shipping assets, naval power, and independence, not unlike the U.K. 200 years ago in its exporting to other areas of Empire.
China has in a tentacular fashion invested billions of dollars in expanding its international port network in addition to Chinese naval hardware, including surface vessels, such as warships and aircraft carriers, and nuclear submarines.