The President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, arrives in Greece on Sunday to meet with Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and visit the port of Piraeus. 

The port is in Athens, the southern edge of Greece, and is a major part of China's belt and road initiative. In 2009, Chinese shipping giant COSCO invested in the port and in 2016 it took a controlling share.

Since then the amount of containers that have passed through the port of Piraeus have increased by 550%. Now, 5.7 million containers make there way into and out of Europe here every year. 

In an article published in the Greece newspaper Kathimerini, President Xi called the port 'the head of the dragon', referring to the belt and road initiative. This initiative was started in 2013 and was inspired by the Silk Road that connected different parts of the Eurasian continent 2,500 years ago. 

This initiative is broken up into two paths, an overland 'belt' and a maritime 'road', which connects China to 121 nations through infrastructure projects throughout the Eurasian continent, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Eight thousand jobs have been created since 2009 because of the port, and the Greek government has recently said that they will invest $670 million into it. 

Yu Zenggang, the man responsible for the port of Piraeus' expansion, told CGTN Europe: "We are the win-win success because we bring a lot of ships from China ... and we also pay a lot of taxes to the government since we are very successful for the transship of cargoes and transship of containers."

He added: "We will build up an additional two cruise terminals which can accommodate the biggest cruisers in the world." The port is three kilometers long and is also used as a port of entry for tourists. 

Greece receives around 30 million tourists a year, but only a small fraction, around 200 thousand, are from China. The investment in this port has the potential to boost the number of Chinese tourists to the country.