The Belt and Road Initiative impact on Mediterranean and Italian ports. The case of Genoa.

Abstract

This final thesis analyses the various direct and indirect effects of the great Chinese project “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) on the most important Mediterranean and Italian ports. Subsequently, it will focus on the harbor city of Genoa, which has gained considerable importance in the colossal Chinese project. We are in a historic moment of great changes, both nationally and globally, characterized by a strong competition between the two major world powers, America and China, in order to win the first place. After the extraordinary economic growth that has allowed China to change its “developing country” status and to present itself to the international scene as one of the main players, now we see the country establish itself as the leading trading power. In this global context the widely discussed and known Belt and Road Initiative, the great geopolitical and commercial project launched by Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan on September 2013, plays a significative role. The idea behind the BRI is to consolidate and strengthen a dense network of bilateral agreements within a multilateral scheme, anchored to the vast Chinese market. This paper gives particular attention to the Twenty first century maritime silk road, the route that connects the Chinese port hubs with the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, passing through the straits of Malacca and Suez. China through the New Marittime Silk Road is implementing a strategic penetration process within the most important Mediterranean ports, that through a deep requalification of infrastructures they try to effectively adapt to the new marine traffics standards. Recent phenomena such as the Megaships and the Big Alliances produce a substantial impact on the shipping market. There is a natural process of selection between ports that is gradually favoring those able to guarantee to the carriers lower costs, high productivity, and state-of-the-art logistics technologies. The redesign of the international routes and the doubling of the Suez Canal are consolidating the importance of the Mediterranean maritime traffic. With the doubling of the Canal, together with the increased volumes of traffic related to China, but also to the other countries involved in the Maritime Silk Road, a new opportunity is generated in order to give back to the Mediterranean his centrality in maritime traffics. The paper analyzes the different strategic methods of Chinese penetration in the Mediterranean ports, like the managing concession of the majority of Piraeus port by the chinese shipping company COSCO Shipping and the equity participations in Israel, Turkey, Spain and Egypt. Italian ports that, although there is no comparison with the Northern Europe ports like Rotterdam in terms of size and numbers of goods managed, could still play a role in the BRI project and really benefit from it, on condition that are fulfilled some requirements. In order to gain concrete result form the participation to the BRI project it is necessary to revolutionize and improve the connections between ports and hinterland, so as to be able to guarantee to the Chinese entities efficiency, good connectivity, short times and punctuality. Major investments are needed in order to develop connectivity and infrastructure quality, and China is playing a leading role in this context. Finally the paper focus on the city of Genoa, its port system, and its relation with China. Genoa has been able to understand the significance that the Chinese power is assuming at global level and how reciprocally positive can be to establish relations with it, it is of fundamental importance to take action in order to safeguard and develop the precious Chinese alliance.