Last December, government sources were leaking with satisfaction that the ground is being prepared for an official visit by Xi Jinping to Athens within 2026. They were speaking about May, about a major European tour with key capitals, and characterized the possibility as being of the highest political, economic, and diplomatic significance.
May came, June passed, July, August. The Chinese President in the first half-year traveled only to North Korea. And when he finally came out towards the Mediterranean, in the first week of September, he went to Cairo and not to Athens.
Three-day official visit, 21 gun salutes at Ittihadiya, joint tour with Sisi at the Grand Egyptian Museum, joint statement on maritime security in Suez and the Red Sea. Xi’s first visit to Egypt after ten years, his first in the broader region since Saudi Arabia in 2022. And Egypt is not a random country for us. It is our “strategic partner”, the country with which we share an EEZ, the country with which we are building GREGY, the electrical interconnection cable that Athens sells as its major energy bet. Xi passed by the Piraeus of the Eastern Mediterranean and did not take the trouble to pass by Piraeus.
Why? The answer is not difficult.
Since November 2025, the US Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle has made it clear that the Chinese presence in Piraeus is a target. She characterized as unfortunate the fact that the port passed to Cosco. In February she became even clearer: “I am in Greece to develop actions that will counterbalance Chinese interests”. And the counterbalance has a name and address: Elefsina. The American development bank DFC has committed 125 million dollars for the shipyards, in a venture that Washington itself describes as a counterweight to Chinese influence. A few kilometers west of Piraeus, the Americans are building Cosco’s competitor, with the blessings of the Greek government.
Beijing does not need a translator to understand what this means. A government that accepts, without a word of objection, the ambassador of a third country publicly stating that she came to counterbalance the largest foreign investor in the country is not a government that welcomes the president of that country with a red carpet. Or rather, it is not a government in which that president wants to step on a red carpet.
The Greece of 2019 was Xi’s first stop in Europe. The Greece of 2026 is not even a stop. Cairo, which balances between Washington and Beijing, without asking permission from anyone, got the visit. Athens got Guilfoyle.
The question is not whether there is a rift. The question is who will pay the bill when Cosco decides that Piraeus is no longer worth the next investment.
TO PARON
