RIJEKA, Croatia—On Rijeka’s waterfront, vast piles of scrap metal stretch for hundreds of yards, the byproduct of an ongoing construction project to renovate the port in the northern Adriatic Sea.
When a deal to remake the port emerged three years ago, it set off alarm bells in Washington: Three Chinese state-owned companies had won a bid for a 50-year deal to build and operate a modern new ship-container terminal at Rijeka, a deep-water port with easy access to central Europe’s markets.
That news, according to U.S. and Croatian officials, sparked an intense, behind-the-scenes campaign by Washington that used diplomacy, declassified intelligence and other tools to persuade North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally Croatia to keep China out. U.S. officials also quietly backed an alternate offer led by Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S.
U.S. diplomacy, coupled with pressure from the European Union, ultimately helped block Chinese ambitions, people familiar with the events said. The Croatian government canceled the tender without explanation in January 2021, rebid it, and awarded the 2.7 billion euro (about $3 billion) concession to APM Terminals, a unit of Maersk, and ENNA Logic, a Croatian logistics company.
“There was no direct intervention, but certain signals did exist,” Oleg Butkovic, Croatia’s transportation minister, said in an interview in the capital, Zagreb. “It’s a very sensitive issue.”
Oleg Butkovic, Croatia’s transportation minister, acknowledged Western concerns on the Chinese bid for a Rijeka port job, but also said new EU regulations would have led to extra scrutiny for the bid.
Photo:
Warren Strobel/The Wall Street Journal
The effort to block China from the port in Rijeka, whose details haven’t previously been reported, provides a window into how U.S. officials are working under a broader strategy to counter Beijing’s influence in Europe, one of the few foreign-policy initiatives to span both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Under both presidents, U.S. officials…
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