One of the top 10 global port operators, the firm is owned by the French-Lebanese Saadé family, whose founder Jacques Saadé was born in Beirut and emigrated to France in 1978. No matter which proposal is selected, CMA CGM will play a central role.
#World port map full#
Reflecting the urgency to return Beirut's port to full capacity, France's shipping giant CMA CGM made a $400-$600 million proposal back in September 2020 for reconstructing the damaged port infrastructure within a three-year timeframe, including some capacity expansion and a digitalization upgrade. Lebanon is in discussion with four countries about the Beirut port's reconstruction - China, France, Germany, and Turkey - although other contenders like the UAE's DP World have also expressed an interest in the project. While reflecting Lebanon's overall strategic importance for Paris, Berlin, and Washington, the pledges also advance France and Germany's respective bids to rebuild Beirut's port and by extension the United States' desire to ensure that China does not rebuild it. The conference succeeded in raising $370 million France, with a pledge of €100 million ($118 million), and Germany, with €40 million ($47 million), were the leading contributions, along with the United States, with $100 million. The conference was held on the one-year anniversary of the massive explosion that devastated the port of Beirut, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and affecting 300,000 Beirut residents. 4, 2021, France, in conjunction with the United Nations, convened “The Conference in Support of the Population of Lebanon,” a video donors’ conference of 33 nations to raise emergency funds for an economically embattled Lebanon on the brink of financial collapse. The most effective way to offset China's ambition may be to facilitate Mediterranean rivals France and Turkey to jointly rebuild Beirut's port. Re-orienting global commercial flows between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia according to Beijing's priorities would make China's Belt and Road Initiative a dominant organizing principle in the international relations of the Middle East.
Increased Chinese involvement in Lebanon's port operations could consolidate Beijing's hold over the commercial connectivity architecture of the Levant. The possibility that the Lebanese government could opt for China to reconstruct Beirut's port has raised alarm in Washington and European capitals given China's already outsized commercial port presence in Egypt, Israel, and Greece. The international competition to rebuild Beirut's port is one key puzzle piece in this larger process that is reconfiguring the Levant's maritime commercial architecture and, as a consequence, the geopolitical contours of the Middle East. Along the entire eastern rim of the Mediterranean basin, global and regional actors are engaging in a spate of port capacity expansions, new private port construction, and the sell-off of major state-owned ports that will determine who sits atop the region's global trade flows for decades to come.
One of the most consequential changes in the Middle East's geopolitical map is happening at the water's edge.
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