ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Chinese investments in the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) largest container port, Felixstowe, on the east coast of England. The multinational ports group now known as Hutchison Ports Holdings (HPH), which is privately owned and based in Hong Kong, bought the port in 1991 and expanded it thereafter in line with its pan-European and global network approach to port operations. Chinese investment has been crucial to the expansion of Felixstowe. This chapter argues that HPH, as part of a privately owned diversified conglomerate, has faced no regulatory or strategic concerns over Chinese port ownership in the UK. This has allowed relatively uncontroversial and profitable expansion of the port. HPH’s success reflects both its parent company’s extensive and long-standing presence in other areas of Britain’s privatized infrastructure as well as its origins in Hong Kong. This contrasts with investments by the state-owned China Merchants Group or COSCO in ports elsewhere, examined in other chapters in this volume. The chapter further demonstrates that Hutchison’s expansion of Felixstowe over three decades has accentuated both the port’s dominance of the UK container trade and Britain’s shipping ties with China, both reflecting and reinforcing the group’s global strategy.
