If you’re a regular consumer of shipping-related social media, you’ve probably recently seen a few maps showing the coast of China with a mass of small dots representing ships. Social media posters claim that the ships are stuck there because of the COVID lockdowns in China. They often also claim so that ships are being held up for more nefarious reasons. We won’t discuss these other reasons, they’re just nonsense as far as we can tell. We will focus on the shipping side of things.
Look, there...