China's new Silk Road into Europe

Golfis Yiannis stands on the dock of the Athenian port of Piraeus, unflinching among the dust clouds stirred by the thundering lorries and clattering forklift trucks unloading the vast container ships.

"That's Europe's new China Town over there," he says, pointing to the pier adjacent to where he is standing. "The only thing that is certain is that we've sold our soul to the Chinese."

Pier Two of the container port, where Mr Yiannis, 48, has worked for the last 22 years, may seem exactly the same as Pier One – certainly larger, but similarly flanked by gigantic ships and stacked with huge Lego brick-style containers.

But where as Pier One is Greek, Pier Two is now Chinese.

China's state-owned shipping giant Cosco last month took control of Pier Two in a £2.8 billion deal to lease the pier for the next 35 years, investing £470 million in upgrading the port facilities, building a new Pier Three and almost tripling the volume of cargo it can handle.

The container port, just next door to the Piraeus ferry harbour that is the tourist gateway to the Greek islands, can currently load and unload 1.8 million containers a year - meaning 5,000 come and go each day.

While many investors flee from the struggling European nation, which last month only avoided bankruptcy by accepting a 110 billion euro (£90 billion) bailout from the European Union and the IMF, China seen an opportunity to make strides into Europe, buying key assets at enticing prices and gaining access its valuable markets.

The Chinese envisage creating a network of ports, logistics centres and railways to distribute their products across Europe – in essence a modern Silk Road - hastening the speed of East-West trade and creating a valuable economic foothold on the continent. They aim to make the container port a hub to rival Rotterdam - Europe's largest port.

"The Chinese want a gateway into Europe," said Theodoros Pangalos, deputy prime minister. "They are not like these Wall St ****s, pushing financial investments on paper. The Chinese deal in real things, in merchandise. And they will help the real economy in Greece."

It is not the first time China has seen opportunity where others see adversity. With their economy booming and their currency strong, the Chinese have made a series of controversial investments in mining and infrastructure in Africa, which critics say allow them to remove valuable raw materials with little benefit to the local economy.

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