China’s LOGINK shipping data platform has lost its foreign partners, dropped out of an international port association and is facing lawsuits over unpaid bills, according to a Reuters investigation based on more than 20 interviews and a review of court filings. A reporter who visited its operations hub in Wenzhou in September found the offices apparently abandoned.
Four years ago, the United States warned that LOGINK would spread across the world and give Beijing a view into the movement of international cargo. The reverse has happened. Shipping carries 80% of world trade, and the platform meant to sit at the centre of its data is now short of money, members and staff.
Empty offices in Wenzhou
Reuters visited the Wenzhou building, on the edge of the city beside a river, in September. The lights were off, the reception area was bare and the computer cabling had been stripped out. Desks and chairs were collecting dust.
Calls and emails to LOGINK went unanswered. China’s transport ministry declined to answer questions. In June, though, it issued a policy document calling for the system to be connected to more domestic data streams.
A large Communist Party slogan still covers a wall next to the empty desks. It announces China’s plans for global supply chains by 2035.
Reuters could not establish why a platform that China’s cabinet had championed as a major project went quiet so abruptly. The timing matches a period of US pressure on allies and organisations that had taken early steps to work with it.
What LOGINK was built to do
LOGINK’s formal name is the National Transportation and Logistics Public Information Platform. It began about 20 years ago as a project of the Zhejiang provincial government. The aim was to pull data from ports, trucks and vendors into one searchable system and improve how cargo moves.
Policymakers in Beijing backed it and soon moved control to the transport ministry. Expanding abroad became a priority.
In 2010, China signed a cargo data-sharing deal with the Japanese and South Korean governments that linked LOGINK to their national logistics platforms. A few years later it signed an agreement with a Hong Kong-based logistics platform. A press release from the Chinese side said the deal would give it access to ‘more than 90% of global ship tracking data.’
A 2015 transport ministry presentation to a United Nations commission described LOGINK as a ‘one-stop portal connected with global logistics information systems.’ By the late 2010s it was exploring ties with European ports.
Why Washington objected
US officials and security analysts feared that Beijing could use LOGINK to collect non-public details on traded goods, volumes and prices. They said that information could help Chinese firms undercut Western rivals.
Some also worried that the platform could track sensitive military shipments, including US arms deliveries to Ukraine and Taiwan, many of which travel through commercial freight networks.
LOGINK has never publicly said what data it collects or how much. In a 2024 submission to the US Trade Representative’s Office, LOGINK official Li Zhao said the platform lacked ‘the capacity to collect sensitive commercial information or to continuously monitor global cargo movements.’
US policymakers began pushing back in public in 2022. In April of that year, LOGINK joined an international data-sharing project that links the operators of digital platforms handling cargo and customs information at ports. A US congressional commission report said that move would double LOGINK’s cooperation with international ports.
A few months later, a group of Republican lawmakers wrote an open letter urging then-President Joe Biden to act. Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State under President Donald Trump, was among the signers. They warned that unchecked growth could let the Chinese Communist Party ‘gain a stranglehold on the arteries of global trade.’
In late 2023, then-Representative Michelle Steel asked the International Port Community Systems Association (IPCSA), which led the data-sharing project, to cut its ties with LOGINK at once. Around the same time, Congress passed a law that bars the Pentagon from contracting with LOGINK-connected entities and tells officials to discourage allies and partners from using the platform.
Officials in Seoul and Tokyo told Reuters that the data shared with LOGINK was narrower than some in Washington feared. South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and Japan’s transport ministry said they provided only vessel arrival and departure times and details of cargo loading and unloading, not what the cargo contained.
Partners fall away
LOGINK’s membership in the IPCSA ended in 2024 after it stopped paying dues, according to a person familiar with the matter. Its website went dark around the same time. The latest copy on the Wayback Machine archive dates from June 2024.
IPCSA General Manager Inga Morton confirmed that LOGINK is no longer a member. She said the international data-sharing project is ‘on hold and inactive.’
The trilateral service with South Korea and Japan, LOGINK’s main international initiative, has also stopped. Participants from the three countries met regularly after it launched. China then cancelled a March 2024 event, citing ‘internal circumstances,’ according to South Korea’s oceans ministry. No meetings have taken place since.
Japan’s access to LOGINK data later ended without notice. A transport ministry official told Reuters in August that Tokyo lost access more than a year earlier and has been unable to reach its Chinese counterparts.
European efforts went nowhere. Ana Rita Rosa, a spokesperson for the authority that runs Sines, Portugal’s largest port, said a 2017 memorandum of understanding with LOGINK to explore data-sharing produced no notable results.
Portbase, the digital system behind Europe’s largest port at Rotterdam, said a 2019 memorandum never moved past exploratory talks. A person familiar with the matter said Dutch government questions about the relationship in early 2022 contributed to Portbase’s decision not to pursue it.
Rosa and Portbase declined to say whether US diplomatic pressure played a part. The Dutch foreign ministry also declined to comment.
Court claims and a possible eviction
At home, LOGINK is facing legal trouble. The commercial entity behind the Wenzhou hub has faced at least 39 court claims since January 2024, totalling about $1.3 million, according to filings on Qichacha, a corporate data provider. Some of the complaints are listed as labour disputes. Others appear to involve unpaid utilities.
A local subsidiary of China Mobile sued LOGINK in October 2025 over a ‘contract dispute over service provision.’ A court later ordered LOGINK to pay the telecoms company, though the filings do not show whether it did.
LOGINK may also be facing eviction. In May, a judge heard a ‘property lease dispute’ brought against it by the state-backed developer that runs the industrial park where it is based, the records show. China Mobile and the developer did not respond to requests for comment.
Washington’s view
Randall Schriver, chair of the US congressional commission that published a 2022 report on LOGINK, said the US helped cause the reversal by ‘naming and shaming’ those who used the system. He said the platform’s decline will be welcomed in Washington.
A US State Department spokesperson gave no details of its diplomatic work to limit LOGINK’s use. The spokesperson said Washington would not allow a Beijing-controlled platform to ‘gain a chokehold over global maritime data.’
‘We have prohibited its use across our own government and critical port infrastructure, and we urge allies and industry to take this threat with the same seriousness,’ the spokesperson added.
What happens next
LOGINK’s overseas network has shrunk to almost nothing, but its domestic plans have not been dropped. The transport ministry’s June policy document shows Beijing still wants it linked to more Chinese data sources.
The open questions are who pays for it and whether the Wenzhou hub survives its lease dispute. China’s transport ministry and LOGINK have not answered. Court records and any future filings will show whether the platform can pay its debts.
