The Red Sea is a narrow strip of ocean located between northeastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and the Suez Canal is the waterway that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. In mid-December 2023, due to a number of ships traveling to the Red Sea waters were attacked by Yemeni Houthi forces, since December 15, Mediterranean Shipping, Maersk and other top ten global container shipping companies, one after another to suspend the Red Sea shipping.

The Red Sea crisis is a ripple triggered by two sets of geopolitical issues in the Middle East, Yemen's civil war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the Houthi organization launching attacks on merchant ships sailing in the Red Sea since October. The aftermath of this attack means that cargo will be detoured around the Cape of Good Hope, which has greatly increased the sailing time from the Far East to Northwest Europe and reduced the efficiency of ship turnaround by about 19%. The large-scale detour of container ships has also led to a reduction of 1.45-1.7 million TEUs in effective global container capacity, posing a huge challenge to the stability of the Asia-Europe supply chain.

Some studies have shown that for every 10% increase in the cost of international trade logistics, the trade flow will drop by 20%, the Red Sea crisis will seriously affect the global industrial chain, the security and normal operation of the supply chain, for producers, transportation costs increase, profits decline, for consumers can only accept the price of goods increase, which further depresses the consumer demand in the global market, and negatively affects the world's economic development and trade exchanges.

"If the Red Sea suspension continues to ferment, by the large area of the suspension of the impact of capacity constraints, as well as detours brought about by the prolongation of the logistics time, the supply chain resilience of Zhejiang's foreign trade exports are facing great challenges, there may be a series of chain reactions such as lag in the delivery cycle, inventory backlogs, demand contraction, and so on, and affects the recovery of foreign trade exports and the growth trend. " A researcher pointed out that the factors behind the Red Sea shutdown event is extremely complex, its duration by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other wars and political factors, such as the impact of great uncertainty, difficult to predict, "but due to the importance of the Red Sea shipping in the global shipping and trade system, especially affected by the European Union, the United States, and even China, and other external forces are likely to be the first time to intervene in coordination , it is expected that the temporary calm is not long, but the follow-up is very likely to be affected by the regional conflict to form a repeated situation."