Over the last two decades, China has managed to gain a monopoly on almost every aspect of world trade. From buying the world's largest ports to supplying nearly 30% of all the world's goods, Beijing has become the king of almost all trade.
And we write almost because there is one exception: transportation.
Despite having invested hundreds of billions in the transport industry, China lags behind much smaller countries in terms of its transport capabilities.
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"Αερομαχίες" στην Στρατόσφαιρα! Ρωσικό αναχαιτιστικό MiG-31 "κατέρριψε" νατοϊκό τζετ στα 36.000 πόδια
For example, Japan is the second strongest country in the transport sector, with a population 91 times smaller than China. South Korea has topped this list for several decades.
The role of Greece
According to foreign reports, analyses and experts, and according to the numbers that speak for themselves, the real superpower in the world of transport is none other than Greece, a small country in the Mediterranean that has been impressing maritime for centuries and millennia.
Although we have a population 140 times smaller than China, our country has been a superpower in the maritime transport sector for about 50 years.
What does this mean? How if a foreign country imports resources such as oil, metals, coal or grain, or has simply ordered items from a foreign country, then there is a huge possibility that the maritime transport of these goods will be undertaken by a Greek ship.
How did we get here?
With a quick glance at the map it is easy to see the geographical advantage of our country, which is one of the reasons why we have dominated world maritime trade for at least 2,000 years (in fact much longer).
We are a nation with more than 5 thousand islands, and the fact that the vast majority of mainland Greece is made up of mountainous areas forced the ancient Greeks to develop their naval capabilities.
In the early 1900's Greece was in the top 10 countries in the field of maritime transport, of course in the whole world. After our country's contribution to World War II and Aristotle Onassis' fantastic investments in huge ships, many Greek investors were interested in becoming shipowners and succeeded, raising our ranking even higher.
By the 1960s, the leading Greek shipowners owned the largest shipping fleet on the planet. These powerful personalities went down in history as the "Golden Greeks".
To give you an idea, during the 20th century the Golden Greek businessmen had a larger transport fleet than the rest of the European Union combined.
