By Joe Cash and John Geddie
BEIJING/TOKYO, Nov 10 (Reuters) – When world leaders fly into the Chinese city of Shenzhen next week, they may catch a glimpse of China’s vision for the future of global trade: a high-tech port humming with next-generation hardware and software.
The Mawan Terminal — complete with its driverless trucks, remote-controlled cranes and AI-powered systems — is among dozens of automated port operations across China that Beijing hopes will give it an edge in an industry that moves more than 80% of goods traded worldwide by volume.
Western officials and analysts, however, already wary of Beijing’s sizable stakes in ports around the world, fear its push to export its shipping technology could give it new leverage.
“It’s a very uncomfortable dependence, and it’s one that could have major strategic downsides,” said Isaac Kardon, an expert on China’s maritime strategy with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a US government-funded think tank.
Those downsides range from Beijing gaining monopolistic positions in emerging technologies that could be used for economic coercion to exploiting back doors to spy on rivals or cripple trade networks in a crisis, Kardon said.
China’s advance has not been smooth sailing. Reuters last month revealed the quiet collapse of LOGINK, a China-backed shipping data platform that some in Washington feared could become a trade superweapon.
But ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19, Beijing is signalling that its ambitions to modernise maritime trade remain undimmed.
During preparatory meetings, China has proposed leading working groups on electronic bills of lading, digital versions of documents traditionally used as receipts for seaborne cargo, and on customs databases powered by AI and big data.
“Whoever completes the digital transformation first will gain the upper hand in the next round of global port and shipping competition,” China’s transport ministry said in a May editorial published on its website.
Beijing has cast its smart-port push as a way for countries to boost trade. China’s transport ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
LEADING EDGE
When it comes to automating ports, China says it’s already ahead.
It is home to 60 automated terminals, more than any other country, according to its transport ministry.
The jewel in the crown is the New Qianwan Container Terminal in the eastern city of Qingdao, which the ministry describes as the world’s first fully automated terminal. China aims to have 90 automated terminals by 2030.
The technology is already accelerating the flow of Chinese goods to global markets. Qianwan says each crane can handle 61 containers an hour, more than double the rate at conventional docks.
The United States, by comparison, has been slow to automate in ports, partly due to opposition from labour unions worried about job losses. A 2024 Government Accountability Office report to Congress found that the 10 biggest US ports were less automated than their foreign peers.
“One key variable for China’s speed of automation is the lack of pushback from independent unions who can slow or stop certain kinds of automation in other countries, like the US,” said Kyle Chan, a fellow in Chinese technology at the Brookings Institution think tank.
China’s network of high-tech ports also provides a vast testing ground for technologies its companies can sell abroad.
Chinese firms such as self-driving truck maker Westwell and telecoms equipment giant Huawei are packaging smart-port technology for overseas markets. Westwell’s driverless trucks now run at Felixstowe, Britain’s busiest container port.
Beijing is also drawing on the Belt and Road model that helped it acquire stakes in ports around the world, courting developing countries with technology it says can boost efficiency and trade with the world’s second-largest economy.
From robotic sniffer dogs to automated scanners, China has provided some $4.8 billion in financing for port equipment since 2000 at 69 ports in 47 countries, according to a March report by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary university in the US. That’s on top of the $15.5 billion Beijing has spent on building or acquiring stakes in foreign ports.
‘SUPPLY CHAIN CONTROL’
While China’s port hardware has proliferated, persuading countries to adopt its software has proved harder, as the LOGINK saga showed.
Fearing the obscure logistics data platform could help Beijing track sensitive cargo such as arms and give Chinese firms an edge over Western rivals, Washington pressured allies and organisations to cut ties with it.
China has also struggled to make inroads in terminal operating systems (TOS), a market long dominated by US firms, according to industry studies. The software plans and tracks activity across a container terminal, from unloading cargo and moving vehicles to processing customs information.
China’s transport ministry said in May that breaking foreign firms’ “monopoly” on such software would relieve “the greatest pain point for China’s port industry” and save terminals tens of millions of dollars.
There are signs China is making progress.
A 2025 filing by state-backed port operator China Merchants Port highlighted a “key transport ministry project” to “replace foreign systems” at international ports, which it said it had completed by installing its homegrown TOS at Brazil’s Paranagua port. China Merchants Port has also rolled out its system at terminals in Sri Lanka, Greece, Italy and Turkey. The firm did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Crucially, China is willing to play a long game, said Wolfgang Lehmacher, a consultant and former head of supply chain and transport industries at the World Economic Forum.
“They make an investment there, they run a pilot project here, but they have such firepower that these dots become a mesh, and the mesh becomes the network, and the network becomes the Chinese orbit of control — and I speak of supply chain control,” said Lehmacher.
(Reporting by Joe Cash in Beijing and John Geddie in Tokyo; Editing by Sonali Paul)
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