The vast map of the world that hangs in Shanghai Pudong airport shows only four European cities. Three — Paris, London, Berlin — are marked with small dots. The biggest is reserved for Duisburg.
This might seem a strange choice. Stuck in Germany’s north-western rust belt, the city is hardly a throbbing metropolis and was long a byword for industrial decline and unemployment.
But Duisburg is the world’s largest inland port and one of Europe’s biggest transport and logistics hubs. It is also the western terminus of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s new Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative to finance and build infrastructure in more than 80 countries.
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