US Suspects Chinese Ships and Cranes of Espionage
American concerns about Chinese intelligence activity are now shifting from the cyber world and satellites to something far closer to the beating heart of trade: cargo ships and giant cranes at ports.
Two senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration alleged that China’s state-owned shipping company, COSCO Shipping, uses hidden devices aboard its vessels to collect military communication signals near the coastlines of several countries, including the United States.
Reuters reported on 1 September 2026 that the two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said COSCO has maintained an intelligence-gathering relationship with Beijing spanning decades. The ships are alleged to be capable of collecting communications from vessels and aircraft operating in Europe, North America and Asia.
COSCO swiftly denied the allegations. On Friday (4 September 2026), the company described claims that its fleet was used to spy on other countries as baseless and untrue. COSCO insisted that all communication, navigation, safety and operational equipment on its ships is used solely for commercial purposes, including navigation, ship-to-shore communications and emergency response.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington also stated that Beijing has never asked companies or individuals to gather intelligence abroad in violation of local laws.
However, the Reuters revelation has reopened a long-standing debate in Washington: to what extent can Chinese commercial infrastructure be exploited for the interests of the Chinese state and its military?
Author and China critic Gordon Chang went further, saying the allegations against COSCO ships did not surprise him at all.
“I’m not at all surprised by this, because we know that for decades China has waged a relentless campaign to gather information against the United States,” Chang said on the “American Agenda” programme on Newsmax on Monday.
According to Chang, the problem does not end with cargo ships approaching the American coast. “It’s not just COSCO ships in our waters,” he said.
“It’s also the giant cranes in all our ports. We know that the Shanghai company, ZPMC, which builds those cranes, has installed communication modules in the cranes that were not part of the original specifications,” Chang said.
At this point, some of Chang’s claims are indeed grounded in the findings of an official American investigation.
Mysterious Modems in Port Cranes
Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, or ZPMC, is a Chinese state-owned port crane manufacturer that dominates the global market.
A joint report by the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in September 2024 found that nearly 80 per cent of ship-to-shore cranes used in US ports were made by ZPMC. Globally, the company’s market share is estimated at around 70 per cent. Ship-to-shore cranes are giant structures standing at the edge of the quay, used to move containers between ships and terminals.
This means that if the cranes were disrupted, container loading and unloading operations could also be disrupted. The congressional investigation found cellular modems installed on a number of ZPMC cranes operating in US ports, even though the devices were not listed in contracts between the ports and ZPMC.
According to the report, the modems were not required for the cranes to operate. Some ports understood the devices to be a remote diagnostics and monitoring facility. However, several operators had previously chosen not to purchase that additional feature, while the modems were found to be already installed when the cranes were inspected in China.