Newsom administration officials have courted executives from COSCO, the Chinese shipping giant that’s been blacklisted by the federal government.
During a conference with CCP officials this week, California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin doubled down on the Newsom administration’s efforts to advance a climate-friendly shipping partnership with Shanghai.
Omishakin spoke Monday at the opening ceremony of the China California Business Forum, a gathering of California officials, Chinese provincial leaders, representatives of Chinese government trade promotion agencies, and business and nonprofit leaders. The Chinese consulate general in Los Angeles organizes the annual event.
The California official also gave an exclusive interview to CGTN, a Chinese propaganda broadcaster focused on international audiences, during which he talked about an effort to set up a “green shipping corridor” between California and Shanghai.
“It’s important that the busiest wet port in the Western hemisphere, the ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, the San Pedro Bay ports, it’s important that that port complex engages in a climate friendly agreement with the busiest port in the entire world, the port of Shanghai,” he told the outlet.
Omishakin traveled to China in 2024 to discuss battery technology projects and the green shipping corridor. Newsom had signed a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai’s government establishing the shipping initiative during his trip to the country in 2023.
Then, in March, Omishakin participated in talks with a Chinese delegation that had traveled to Long Beach, California for a “high-level forum” on the project.
In addition to leaders from Shanghai’s transportation commission, members of the Chinese group included executives from COSCO, the Chinese shipping giant, and two of its subsidiaries.
National security experts are concerned that COSCO forms the backbone of the Chinese military’s global logistics network and that Beijing will leverage the company’s vast global networks during a future war.
The Pentagon added COSCO and its North American subsidiary, which was present at the Long Beach forum, to its blacklist of Chinese military companies in January 2025.
Governor Gavin Newsom has overseen significant diplomatic outreach to China’s regime during his tenure, holding meetings with a known Chinese Communist Party influence front group in China and California, and dispatching his officials to Beijing for talks on deepening collaboration between his office and Chinese provinces.
During the conference Monday, Omishakin also praised China’s “pioneering” battery technologies and touted his office’s ongoing talks with the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission to establish “green shipping corridors,” according to the China Daily propaganda outlet.
“Linking the two sides through this green shipping concept will continue to be a game changer,” he said.
Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute said that anyone who believes the CCP will help America develop indigenous green technology “has lost the plot.”
“Beijing has cornered the market on EV batteries to control global supply chains in next-gen technologies, and they aren’t about to give up that leverage. Working with a genocidal regime that uses slave labor for renewable energy might make sense to Gavin Newsom and this team in Sacramento, but the rest of America recognizes that we need to kick China out of our critical supply chains,” he told National Review.
Select attendees of the business forum were slated to take part in a “closed-door” bilateral meeting on trade cooperation, under a longstanding arrangement between the California governor’s office and the Chinese ministry of commerce, according to documents obtained by National Review.
A spokesman for the California governor’s business development office said that the state government’s only engagement at the forum was a speech that Omishakin delivered at the opening of the event. But the agreement between California and the Chinese ministry of commerce establishes the governor’s office as the California party to the working group that met in the closed door session.
The Chinese delegation at the forum included officials from Fujian and Heilongjiang provinces. Deputy Los Angeles mayor Dilpreet Sidhu also spoke at the event.