The Hamburg port logistics company HHLA wants to enter into a strategic partnership with a Chinese state-owned company. a mistake? Selling out German infrastructure to China? No, emphasizes Hamburg's SPD finance senator in the direction of the FDP and the Greens. The chancellor is also trying to calm things down.
Hamburg's finance senator Andreas Dressel has called for objectivity in the dispute over the Chinese state-owned company Cosco's planned participation in an HHLA container terminal in the port of Hamburg. "It is more than understandable that in the current situation people have questions about such (minority) holdings," wrote the SPD politician on Twitter. It is not true that it is a sale to China, he adds, referring to the hashtag
In his tweet, the finance senator refers to a statement by the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA as justification. In it, he emphasizes that the Chinese group Cosco will not gain access to the Port of Hamburg, HHLA or strategic know-how through the planned 35 percent stake in the Tollerort terminal. In addition, Cosco does not get any exclusive rights to the terminal.
In this respect, the participation would not create any one-sided dependencies, according to the statement. "On the contrary: it strengthens the supply chains, secures jobs and promotes value creation in Germany."
There has been great criticism of the planned partial sale of the port terminal. Among other things, six ministries have gone on a confrontational course with the chancellery, which according to reports wants to push through the deal. After the summit of the heads of state and government of the EU countries in Brussels, Chancellor Olaf Scholz seemed to want to smooth things over. "There are still many questions to be answered," said Hamburg's former mayor in the afternoon. There is no interim report to report. The corresponding application will be carefully examined. Security interests always played a role.
HHLA and Cosco had agreed on the 35 percent stake in 2021. The Hamburg logisticians fear a competitive disadvantage, as the Chinese shipping company already has a stake in a terminal in other European ports such as Antwerp and Rotterdam. However, since the Port of Hamburg is a critical infrastructure, the Federal Ministry of Economics initiated an investment review process. The sale can therefore be prohibited by the Federal Cabinet.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, among others, is pushing for this. He did not want to comment on "internal government actions," he said on the fringes of the prime ministers' conference in Hanover. But one has learned "that dependencies on countries, which may then play their own interests into these dependencies, i.e. then want to blackmail us, are no longer just an abstract phenomenon, but - gas/Russia - are reality in this world". Habeck emphasized: "We shouldn't repeat these mistakes."
The FDP, the third party in the traffic light coalition, is also critical of the sale. "We will not support it - under no circumstances," said the chairwoman of the defense committee in the Bundestag, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, on the Phoenix broadcaster. "The Chinese are traveling around the world in the Balkans, in Africa, in Germany or the ports of Piraeus, Trieste or Genoa - and they are all already in Chinese hands. With all due respect, that's crazy."
Against this background, there is also criticism of a possible trip to China by Scholz. In the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the Foreign Office and the EU, there are fears that the Chancellor could continue the conciliatory China course of his predecessor Angela Merkel during the visit scheduled for the beginning of November, reports the "Handelsblatt". Accordingly, Scholz wanted to bring the Cosco participation in Hamburg "with him on his planned trip to China as a morning gift," explained the Greens European politician Reinhard Bütikofer. However, this will "weaken him compared to the Beijing leadership, not strengthen him".
