Submarine cable + Muji + Piraeus + WHO + Huawei + Censorship + Africa + Ferdinand Rudolph-Bartels

The world is getting smaller and smaller. Thanks to modern Internet connections and advancing digitalization, information and data are sent around the world at breakneck speed. Whether it’s a Zoom meeting with colleagues in Asia, a Skype call with friends in Dubai, or streaming films directly from Bollywood in India – distances are becoming less important. Deep-sea fiber-optic cables are crucial to this. They are laid at the bottom of the oceans and form the backbone of our modern world. But as invisible as they may be, their importance is hard to overestimate because: The respective cable operators decide not only how much but also which data can be sent.

It is precisely the deep-sea fiber-optic cable with the peaceful name Peace that is now becoming a point of contention in Sino-American relations, as Ning Wang reports. She analyses the role that companies such as Google, Facebook, Huawei, and Hengtong play in the dispute over deep-sea cables and how the two superpowers might try to control global data traffic.

Clearly more visible than a deep-sea cable is the port of Piraeus on the Aegean Sea. It was during the financial crisis of 2008 that Europe – and especially Germany’s then Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble – urged the Greeks to sell the ailing port. Beijing immediately pounced – and so many European politicians wondered about the alleged bad investment by the Chinese. Frank Sieren shows how Beijing has, since then, expanded the port into one of Europe’s largest container handling locations. But it’s about more than just profit: The port of Piraeus has become a strategic hub for the Chinese in Europe – much to the displeasure of Europeans and Americans.

European and American politicians should also not like what Marcel Grzanna observes: The front against forced labor in the Xinjiang region is beginning to crumble. Apparently, the calls for a Chinese boycott have led to fears in Western company headquarters that one could make somewhat less profit in the important sales market. Not everyone may go as far as the Japanese fashion chain Muji, which explicitly advertises Xinjiang’s great cotton. But the trend is clear: China’s market power is playing an ever-greater role in a world that is becoming smaller.

Your
Michael Radunski