“Greece and China are major powers in global shipping and should cooperate in all areas to successfully address the challenges.”
Deputy Minister of Shipping Stefanos Gikas, who participated as a keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of the “Shanghai Shipping Week”, as well as at a special event for Shipping Day co-organized by the Association of Banking and Financial Executives of the Hellenic Shipping Industry, referred to the challenges facing Greek and global shipping.
Gikas outlined the challenges of Greek shipping related to the new environmental goals and the decarbonization of the shipping sector within the framework of IMO rules, the lack of trained seafarers and the need for continuous training of crews, the technological development of ships in combination with the digitalization of shipping and the use of artificial intelligence, as well as the issue of attacks on merchant ships that global shipping is facing in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
As part of the visit, the Deputy Minister of Shipping had a series of meetings, including with the China Shipowners Association, as well as the Executive Vice President of COSCO Shipping Group Yangfan Chen.
He also had meetings with executives of the Shanghai Shipping Exchange, the Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute (SDARI) and the China Classification Society, where he developed the permanent Greek positions, including the possibility of further collaborations and investments, e.g. in the energy sector, the need for cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the IMO for the decarbonization of shipping, while he also raised the permanent request of the Association of Greek Marine Equipment Manufacturers, namely to be able to export their products to China and develop collaborations with the shipyards there that build massively ships for Greek shipowners (345 ships recently alone). In addition, the Deputy Minister visited two university institutions. Initially, the Shanghai International Studies University, where he had a meeting with the rector and then with Chinese students who are taught the Greek language and their professors. He also toured one of the world’s leading maritime universities, Shanghai Maritime University (SMU), where in a meeting with the rector he raised the issue of the lack of qualified seafarers for global shipping. The prospect of cooperation with corresponding Greek educational institutions was also discussed.
