HUGE GLOBAL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS MEGA PROJECTS...

Alibaba and the 40 spies? Belgium frets over Chinese mega project

Press play to listen to this article

Belgian politicians are beginning to worry a massive Chinese project at Liège airport in the south of the country is more about spycraft than aircraft.

Members of the country's parliament are debating whether China is looking to give its spies a firmer foothold in Europe through a landmark logistics hub being built by the e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Alibaba's €100 million investment has long been welcomed in Belgium as a way to help revive the struggling economy of the French-speaking region of Wallonia. The freight and parcels hub, on 220,000 square meters leased at the airport, is expected to become operational this year.

The mood on China is souring in the EU, however, amid tit-for-tat sanctions and boycotts against European products by Chinese consumers.

"We should realize that Alibaba is not just a simple private operator, but an agent of the Chinese Communist Party, under the orders of the regime, for instance in the repression of the Uyghur minority through its facial recognition software," said Samuel Cogolati, a member of the Green Ecolo party in the Belgian parliament, who is leading the charge on the file.

"We must reappropriate ... control over these digital giants and screen these Chinese investments, without naivety. We must open our eyes, guarantee our security, basic freedoms and protect the personal data of Belgian citizens," he told POLITICO.

At a meeting of the parliamentary justice committee last week, Cogolati pressed Belgium's Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne on the issue. And the minister sounded pretty worried too.

“Chinese intelligence officers could have access to sensitive and secure areas of the airport … The future economic importance of Liège airport to China can't be underestimated,” the Flemish liberal said, according to Belgian press reports of the meeting. “Alibaba will also have to obey the Chinese security apparatus in the event that it wishes to have access to the potentially sensitive commercial and personal data held by Alibaba in connection with its activities in Liège.”

Neither Van Quickenborne nor Alibaba responded to requests for comment from POLITICO.

The Chinese embassy in Belgium firmly rejected the accusations.

“Some Belgian parliamentarians, institutions and the media … baselessly suspected that Alibaba’s Liège Airport logistics project cooperates with the Chinese government’s espionage activities and poses a threat to citizens’ privacy and national security,” it said in a statement. Requirements under China’s national intelligence law, it added, “respect and protect human rights.”

Beijing and Brussels now seem to be trying to smooth over relations at the ministerial level. Earlier this week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi talked to his Belgian counterpart, Sophie Wilmès, and called on Belgium to “play a constructive role in the EU” and “promote the long-term and steady development of China-EU relations.”

“Belgium is the heart of Europe, and has long been a bridge for China-Europe exchanges,” Wang added, according to the Chinese readout.

And Wallonia knows full well the value of that bridge because Liège has already benefited enormously from Alibaba’s presence. According to a spokesman for the city’s airport, freight soared from 9 million parcels in 2018 to 362 million parcels in 2019, and 548 million last year mainly thanks to Alibaba and its subsidiary Cainiao Smart Logistics Network.

Laurens Cerulus contributed reporting.

Want more analysis from POLITICO? POLITICO Pro is our premium intelligence service for professionals. From financial services to trade, technology, cybersecurity and more, Pro delivers real time intelligence, deep insight and breaking scoops you need to keep one step ahead. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary trial.

Logan International Airport ranks low in passenger satisfaction, study finds

Brookline, MA - June 17: Planes take off and land at Logan Int. Airport on June 17, 2022 in , Brookline, MA.

Only three “mega airports” in North America rank lower than Logan International Airport in passenger satisfaction, a new study has found.

Michael Taylor, travel intelligence lead at J.D. Power, the consumer research firm that commissioned the study, said the Boston airport’s ranking was negatively impacted by ongoing construction and how difficult it is for people to get there.

“There’s quite a bit of construction happening at that airport,” Taylor said. “That has a big impact on everything that happens there. You can’t get to the airport quickly.”

According to J.D. Power airport satisfaction rankings, Logan International ranks 15 points below average, based on American and Canadian passengers surveyed at 20 “mega airports” between August 2021 and July 2022.

Only three airports, Los Angeles International, O’Hare International in Chicago, and Newark Liberty in New Jersey, ranked lower than Boston.

Passengers surveyed had the lowest satisfaction at Newark and were happiest with Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport.

The results were based on six major factors: terminal facilities, airport arrival and departure, baggage claim, security check, check-in/baggage check, and food, beverage and retail.

Airport satisfaction in North America reached an all-time high in 2021, when passenger volumes were down during the pandemic, but a return to crowded terminals and flight cancellations brought on by labor shortages have caused happiness scores to take a nose-dive.

In Boston, it’s already difficult to get to the airport to begin with, given the congestion seen in the Ted Williams Tunnel, but construction in and around Logan is further complicating matters.

“It’s hard to have good scores while you’re doing all that,” Taylor said.

A Massport spokesperson said the construction at Logan is aimed at “improving our aging facilities and infrastructure to meet the future needs of passengers.”

Projects have included upgrades to the Terminal C canopy and upper deck, additional travel lanes and curb space, weather protection for passengers, and a Terminal B-C connector, which allows passengers to travel from Terminal E to B post-security, the spokesperson said.

Massport said it is also working to modernize facilities at Terminal E and add four additional gates there to meet international passenger demand. Roadway improvements to streamline traffic flow and reduce emissions are also underway.

“The feedback is very useful to us as we continue to make investments to support economic growth, facilitate connections, increase efficiency, and create a smoother, more enjoyable travel experience for our passengers,” the spokesperson said.

The Artemis 1 mission is an American mega-project

The 100 meter-tall rocket on the launch pad for Artemis 1 is among the largest ever built, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg—the eye-catching evidence of much broader activity below the surface.

After missing the first launch window due to a problem with an engine temperature sensor, NASA is aiming to try again at 2:17pm Eastern time on Sept. 3. You can watch along with NASA’s live video feed.

This uncrewed test mission is designed to prove that the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule can safely carry future astronauts to the Moon. The ultimate goal is to put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface under the American flag, but the Artemis program, like the Apollo missions that came before, is so much more.

Scott Pace, the Trump administration’s former space policy point man, said that rockets like this one are “strategic national assets,” like nuclear aircraft carriers, or the transcontinental railroad. If it’s true of any rocket, it’s certainly true of the Artemis 1 vehicles: Their sheer size and complexity dwarf many other undertakings of the US government.

What it takes to send Artemis 1 to the Moon

The challenge at hand is accelerating a capsule that can survive far beyond earth’s atmosphere to the enormous speeds needed to get there, requiring some 8.8 million pounds of force. A few figures on what it takes to do that: $93 billion has been spent on the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion space capsule. (For a comparison, the cost of the entire Apollo program, including six crewed landings on the Moon, is roughly $270 billion in present-day dollars.) It takes just over $4 billion to put together the hardware and operations for a single launch of the paired vehicles. And each launch will burn through nearly 144 tons of liquid hydrogen and 844 tons of liquid oxygen in just eight minutes.

Like any good boondoggle, the SLS and Orion (built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively) survived in large part on the basis of the jobs and investment they brought to key Congressional districts. That factor supported a political coalition of scientists interested in lunar research, China hawks eager to match and exceed a geopolitical rival, and entrepreneurs who believe in a future lunar economy.

Story continues

Still, their ultimate purpose wavered: First the vehicles were part of the Constellation program to return to the Moon, then briefly assigned to visit an asteroid under the Obama administration, before becoming the vehicle of choice for Artemis, now the third and strongest attempt at sending people back to Earth’s nearest natural satellite.

During the decade-plus that the rocket has been in development, however, the aerospace industry has changed dramatically. Investments by venture capital-backed entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley have led to cheaper, more effective rockets. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, first flown in 2018, has about 60% of the SLS’ payload capacity—for about 4% of the cost. If SpaceX can successfully fly its next vehicle, Starship, to orbit, the SLS may be rendered immediately obsolete.

But it’s worth thinking about what infrastructure like the SLS does in the bigger picture. If Starship does fly, it will be in part because the SLS program gave NASA a freer hand to gamble on its original partnership with SpaceX, which led directly to that company’s success.

The economic implications of the Artemis Moon project

Lightning strikes a tower near the Artemis 1 launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

Behind the big rocket, there are hundreds of companies, and not just the contractors and subcontractors who actually built the thing.

A timely paper from economists Alex Whalley and Shawn Kantor used new methodology to measure gains from public spending during the Apollo program. They found a return on investment of greater than 20%, thanks to accelerated innovation in technologies from silicon chips to robotics, and the long-term gains in local areas where NASA set up research and manufacturing centers. While the Artemis program is unlikely to have an impact as large, in part because of its reliance on proven technology, its benefits will be more diffuse than just the gains from exploration.

Moreover, the investment in SLS has given momentum to private activity. The expense and challenge of deep space exploration has created openings for private companies to take on the comparatively safer environment in low-earth orbit. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised to build and service private space stations as the International Space Station approaches retirement at the end of the decade.

And like the ISS, which has become a locus for economic development, Artemis has led to contracts for privately-built robots to explore the Moon in advance of human landings and for rocket companies to deliver supplies there. NASA even decided to help fund SpaceX’s Starship to act as a landing vehicle for the next set of moonwalkers.

The politics of Artemis

The Apollo program was driven largely by the American belief in achieving symbolic technological victories during the Cold War. That impulse has lessened, but hasn’t ceased: A group of US military advisers recently warned in a report on the aerospace industrial base (pdf) that China could outpace the US in a matter of decades. You could read that as companies marketing their wares with politics, but there’s no doubting the seriousness of China’s intent to establish itself as a space power.

Artemis will be an answer to that question, but more as a downpayment on US credibility. The US is attempting to influence new norms for space activity by gathering countries around the Artemis Accords, which would facilitate peaceful scientific exploration and private business in orbit. The US is signing up allies to its plan on the strength of its commitment to going to the Moon. The European Space Agency has played a key role in building the Orion spacecraft, making this a more international mission than Apollo or other past deep space exploration.

Alongside efforts to push for common rules of the road for satellites in Earth’s orbit, and measures like the moratorium on destructive satellite weapons testing, Artemis is a concrete way for the US to outline a vision for humanity in space.

The science of Artemis

The Orion space capsule on top of the Space Launch System rocket.

While the focus for this mission is on the performance of the vehicles to prepare for future crewed missions, the ability to reach the Moon with four astronauts and significant cargo will create opportunities to learn more about the Moon, the Earth, and the solar system at large.

During the Apollo missions, astronauts landed in brightly lit areas near the Moon’s equator. This time around, the goal is to put astronauts close to the lunar poles, where remote-sensing spacecraft have detected decisive evidence of the presence of water ice. Learning more about this ice and its source will help researchers better understand the history of our neighborhood in space. The ability to extract this ice and use it—to make water, oxygen, and rocket propellant—could make long-duration stays on the Moon feasible, and enable potential missions to Mars.

The biggest difference between Apollo and Artemis is the buzzword “sustainability”—this program’s architects want it to be built to survive political storms and allow for consistent research time spent on the Moon. Ideas about radio telescopes on the far side, geology labs deep in craters, and infrastructure like lunar wifi and GPS could enable space science unlike anything we’ve seen before—outside of science fiction. After the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers buzzed not just about what they expected to see but about all the new questions that would be raised by this new tool. The same will be said about a new level of dedication to lunar science.

If, that is, we can get there. That starts Saturday morning, with the shakedown cruise of the latest (and maybe last) US government mega-project in space. The countdown has begun...

Alibaba and the 40 spies? Belgium frets over Chinese mega project

Press play to listen to this article

Belgian politicians are beginning to worry a massive Chinese project at Liège airport in the south of the country is more about spycraft than aircraft.

Members of the country's parliament are debating whether China is looking to give its spies a firmer foothold in Europe through a landmark logistics hub being built by the e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The mood on China is souring in the EU, however, amid tit-for-tat sanctions and boycotts against European products by Chinese consumers.

At a meeting of the parliamentary justice committee last week, Cogolati pressed Belgium's Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne on the issue. And the minister sounded pretty worried too.

Neither Van Quickenborne nor Alibaba responded to requests for comment from POLITICO.

The Chinese embassy in Belgium firmly rejected the accusations.

“Belgium is the heart of Europe, and has long been a bridge for China-Europe exchanges,” Wang added, according to the Chinese readout.

Laurens Cerulus contributed reporting.

Gateway Cargo Airport: Abandoned project turning to gold

By Oladipo Oseni

An airport is a honeypot. It is the port of entry for people, products and can also serve as a pot of finance through the profits it generates for the country. The air cargo is another arm of the aviation industry that contributes to global economic development and creates millions of jobs. The global economy depends on the ability to deliver high-quality products at competitive prices to consumers worldwide. A report in August 2020 said: “Air cargo transports over US $6 trillion worth of goods, accounting for approximately 35 per cent of world trade by value.” That is huge!

Visibly, air cargo contributes to the economy by transporting essential shipments all over the world and facilitates the supply chain of agricultural produce, automotive parts, electronics, vaccines, medical supplies, high-value shipments like jewelry, and many other important shipments that support businesses and keep jobs around the globe. Probably it is against this important backdrop that the administration of Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD) as the Governor of Ogun State moved to establish an agro-cargo airport in 2007. The site was sited but the project could not be sighted till the expiration of the Administration in 2011.

OGD conceptualised the agro-cargo airport project in the belief that it had lots of potential in the overall development of the state on the spine of the state’s rich soil for agriculture, the presence of industries in the state and its proximity to Lagos State and so on. The next administration led by Senator Ibikunle Amosun would neglect the project and allow it to rot in the book of forgetfulness.

And the aforementioned formed the reason I would always caution political commentators and the political boys of the senator and former governor that: If you want to celebrate Senator Ibikunle Amosun as the “best” person who “ruled” Ogun State, you should not forget that Ogun groaned under the man.

Like the agro-cargo airport, he would later play puerile politics by abandoning numerous other projects his predecessor had started. He forgot that governance is a continuum, no one finishes it in a single swipe and that is where Abiodun— who may have his shortcomings too— towers above him. Abiodun has not only completed some of the roads he left such as the Kuto—Oke Mosan road, Panseke—Adigbe roads and so on, the icing on the cake is that Prince Dapo Abiodun saw the gold Amosun abandoned in the bush— the agro-cargo airport. He has picked it up, he is shining it at the moment and it would soon, by December as promised by the governor, glitter and magnetize people, institution and funds to Ogun State.

The cargo airport is located within the agricultural belt in the state and strategically located at the intersection between the East and West highway (Benin-Sagamu) and the North-South highway (Lagos-Ibadan) which makes it a potential honeypot. It is the economic deal with the African Development Bank to site an agro testing firm at Sagamu as most of the agricultural products in Nigeria lack certification, which has made their exportation to other countries difficult. This will ease it and put more funds into the state government’s purse.

Any state’s problems cannot be solved by a single administration. And that validates the saying that “governance is a continuum”. The utmost concern should be that progress is recorded by each administration. No administration is flawless and that is the more reason I would not support the stance of those who paint Amosun as a saint and achiever even when his administration has numerous potholes that have gifted Ogun with woes. In the Ibara-Panseke axis stands a building, a white elephant project that is an attestation to most of our politicians’ lack of vision, their avarice and wastefulness.

Yet, some of his supporters are quick to attack Prince Dapo Abiodun. They have forgotten that the world will always be a battleground and you cannot win thereby turning everyone into your enemy and condemning each of their excellent and giant strides. Amosun has both covertly and openly fought Abiodun and condemned him.

Our forebears’ counsel that whatever faces us is turning its back on someone somewhere is of essence here. Two things are common with those in politics and their infantry: When they do not like a leader either on a personal or political level, they are quick to rubbish their achievement and refer to them as a failure. This affirms the saying of Yoruba that “Esin Ota eni kii’ga loju eni.” Also, there is the dispiriting dimension of labelling a leader a failure when they cannot meet our unrealistic or selfish expectations.

Importantly, aside from the fact that the airport will serve the twin function of transporting goods, it will also provide passenger service too which will certainly court the attention of the Lekki dwellers who has access to the Lekki-Ijebu expressway that is devoid of the traffic they may encounter trying to go to MMA. It will also interest the people of Ibadan, Osun and so on who are close to Ogun State. Lest I forget, while it provides formal employment, it will also create informal job opportunities as the people of Remo, Ijebu and Abeokuta who are close to the site can profitably trade.

Prince Dapo Abiodun has proved to be a good governor and businessman. He knew that, if there was an airport, there would be products and passengers and, if there were products and passengers, there would be aircraft to ply the route and profits would move into the government’s purse. Thus, credit goes to Daniel for the vision and Abiodun for bringing that vision to fruition as his Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Ade Akinsanya, said the airport is almost 80 per cent completed.

Overall, Prince Dapo Abiodun must be given a standing ovation for the courage he has displayed for embarking on the monumental airport project. He is working and walking on the path that no one had dared before him by elongating the vision of his predecessor with the improvement on his predecessor’s blueprint for the project and the establishment of a potential source of income for the state.

Chicago O’Hare Airport showcases its USD1 billion T5 investment; new 'Global Terminal' to come

This CAPA Premium Analysis Report is 2,242 words.

Become a CAPA Member

Our Analysis Reports are only available to CAPA Members. CAPA Membership provides exclusive access to in-depth insights on the latest developments in the aviation and travel industry, developed by our team of dedicated analysts located in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.

Each report offers a fresh perspective on the latest industry trends and is available online or via the CAPA mobile app, with customisable alerts to help you stay informed and identify new business opportunities.

CAPA Membership also provides access to our full suite of tools, including a tailored selection of more than 1,000 News Briefs every week and comprehensive data and analysis on thousands of companies around the world.

Search This Blog

SKYTRAX GROUP