On Friday, the US House of Representatives approved a defense spending bill which contained a provision which will limit the ability of China to track shipping containers flowing into and out of the United States.
Backed by Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., the amendment will prevent any port which accepts any federal grant money from making use of the Chinese state-supported National Public Information Platform for Transportation and Logistics, also called LOGINK.
The amendment was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which was passed on a party line vote.
Following his attachment of the amendment to the NDAA last month, Johnson said, “More [than] 90% of traded goods are carried through ocean shipping.”
He went on, “LOGINK provides massive amounts of monitoring, data, and logistics infrastructure to the [Chinese Communist Party] – it’s imperative we keep LOGINK out of American ports. China already competes unfairly in the global shipping arena. Blocking their access to American port data is one small step to keep this advantage to a minimum.”
Researchers at Rice University have noted that LOGINK has supplied China with “unrivaled visibility” into global shipping container flows, estimating the the system gave China awareness of flows at about half of the world’s container trade lanes as of 2020.
The university’s Baker Institute for Public Policy has noted, “Beijing can quietly feed insights from LOGINK to preferred PRC [People’s Republic of China] logistics firms at preferential prices, a key competitive advantage in a third-party logistics market that a recent study by the U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission estimates to be worth $1 trillion annually.”
It added, “Giving PRC firms such an information edge would help them to systematically underbid foreign competitors and would drive even more data flow over LOGINK at the expense of other systems, further cementing Beijing’s informational advantage.”
Political analysts note that the NDAA, as it has been passed through the Republican controlled House, will have difficulty when it hits the Democrat-controlled Senate, largely due to a suite of social policy amendments attached to the legislation by conservative Republicans.
