China picks Philippine port to extend BRI into South Seas

Chinese shippers could use Davao as an import-export base and call there along the way to countries further south.

China is exploring ways to build new infrastructure in Davao.  It is a second-tier Philippine port city which can be an important link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.  Davao has the potential to help expand Chinese trade in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
A rehab of Davao’s deep-water but otherwise small, ramshackle port would increase business.  Certainly, this is beneficial for the 1.6 million-person city that anchors a resource-rich but largely impoverished southern island. Chinese shippers could use Davao as an import-export base and call there along the way to countries further south.
Davao City, which is on a gulf near the Philippines’ Pacific coast, would make sense as a place for Chinese to use for shipping minerals, said Christian de Guzman.  He is a vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s in Singapore.
“Mindanao itself I think has been a recipient of I wouldn’t say significant but a number of Chinese investments over the years related to the extraction of mineral resources, mining basically,” de Guzman said.
“China is increasingly active globally in trying to secure some of these mineral resources,” he said. Davao port development, he added, “could be tied to the fact that Mindanao has been a recipient of these investments in the past.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Davao City recently to meet with President Rodrigo Duterte for an hour.
Source: Voice of America

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