{"id":81661,"date":"2023-08-11T15:15:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T05:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=81661"},"modified":"2023-08-11T15:12:32","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T05:12:32","slug":"chinas-dangerous-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinas-dangerous-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s dangerous secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

It\u2019s well known that China has the world\u2019s largest navy and coastguard\u2014the result of a tenfold<\/a> increase in military spending since 1995\u2014which it uses to advance its pugnacious revisionism. But there are also numerous lesser-known\u2014indeed, highly opaque\u2014policies, projects and activities that are supporting Chinese expansionism and placing the entire world at risk.<\/p>\n

China has a long record of expanding its strategic footprint through stealthy manoeuvres that it brazenly denies. For example, in 2017, it established its first overseas military base<\/a> in Djibouti\u2014a tiny country on the Horn of Africa, which also happens to be deeply in debt<\/a> to China\u2014while insisting<\/a> that it had no such plan.<\/p>\n

Today, China is building<\/a> a naval base in Cambodia, which has leased<\/a> a fifth of its coastline and some islets to China. The almost-complete pier at the Chinese-financed Ream Naval Base appears conspicuously similar in size and design<\/a> to a pier at China\u2019s Djibouti base. China admits to investing in the base, but claims that only Cambodia\u2019s navy will have access to it.<\/p>\n

Realistically, however, it seems likely that China\u2019s navy will use the facility at least for military logistics<\/a>. That would further strengthen China\u2019s position in the South China Sea, where it has already built seven artificial islands as forward military bases, giving it effective control<\/a> of this critical corridor between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.<\/p>\n

China also takes a highly secretive approach to its massive dam projects on international rivers flowing to other countries from the Chinese-annexed Tibetan plateau. While the world knows that the rubber-stamp National People\u2019s Congress approved the construction of the world\u2019s largest dam<\/a> near China\u2019s heavily militarised frontier with India in 2021, there have been no public updates<\/a> on the project since.<\/p>\n

The dam is supposed to generate three times as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world\u2019s largest hydropower plant, and China has built a new railroad<\/a> and highway<\/a> to transport heavy equipment, materials and workers to the remote project site. We will find out more only when construction is far enough along that the dam can no longer be hidden from commercially available satellite imagery. At that point, it will be a fait accompli<\/em>.<\/p>\n

China has used this strategy to build 11 giant dams on the Mekong, not only gaining geopolitical leverage over its neighbours, but also wreaking environmental havoc<\/a>. China is now the world\u2019s most dammed country<\/a>, with more large dams in operation than the rest of the world combined, and it is constructing or planning at least eight more dams<\/a> on the Mekong alone.<\/p>\n

Opacity has also been a defining feature of the lending binge that has made China the world\u2019s largest sovereign creditor<\/a> to developing countries. Almost every Chinese loan issued in the past decade has included a sweeping confidentiality clause<\/a> compelling the borrowing country not to disclose the loan\u2019s terms. Many African, Asian and Latin American countries have become ensnared<\/a> in a debt trap, leaving them highly vulnerable to Chinese pressure to pursue policies that advance China\u2019s economic and geopolitical interests. According to one study<\/a>, the loan contracts give China \u2018broad latitude to cancel loans or accelerate repayment if it disagrees with a borrower\u2019s policies\u2019.<\/p>\n

But there can be no better illustration of the global costs of Chinese secrecy than the Covid-19 pandemic. Had China\u2019s government responded quickly to evidence that a deadly new coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan, warning the public and implementing control measures, the damage could have been contained.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Chinese Communist Party rushed to suppress and discredit<\/a> information about the outbreak, paving the way for a raging worldwide pandemic that killed almost seven million<\/a> people and disrupted countless lives and livelihoods. To this day, Chinese obfuscation has prevented scientists from confirming the true origins of Covid-19, which, lest we forget, emerged in China\u2019s main hub<\/a> for research on superviruses.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s willingness to violate international laws, rules and norms compounds the opacity problem. The Chinese government has repeatedly reneged on its international commitments, including promises to safeguard the autonomy of Hong Kong and not to militarise features in the South China Sea. It was China\u2019s furtive violation<\/a> of its commitment<\/a> not to alter unilaterally the status quo<\/a> of its disputed Himalayan border with India that triggered a three-year (and counting) military standoff between the two countries.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reason to expect China to abandon its rule-breaking, its debt-based coercion or its other malign activities anytime soon. Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2014who has strengthened the CCP\u2019s control over information, cutting off outside analysts\u2019 access<\/a> even to economic data\u2014is now on track to hold power for life, and remains eager to reshape the international order to China\u2019s benefit.<\/p>\n

Ominously, Xi\u2019s appetite for risk appears to be growing. This partly reflects time pressure: Xi seems to believe that China has a narrow window of opportunity<\/a> to achieve global pre-eminence before unfavourable demographic<\/a>, economic and geopolitical trends catch up with it. But Xi has also been emboldened by the international community\u2019s utter failure to impose meaningful consequences on China for its bad behaviour.<\/p>\n

Whereas Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China prefers incrementalism, enabled by stealth and deception, to advance its revisionist agenda. That, together with tremendous economic clout, shields it from a decisive Western response. This is why, barring a major strategic blunder by Xi, China\u2019s salami-slicing<\/a> expansionism is likely to persist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s well known that China has the world\u2019s largest navy and coastguard\u2014the result of a tenfold increase in military spending since 1995\u2014which it uses to advance its pugnacious revisionism. But there are also numerous lesser-known\u2014indeed, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":482,"featured_media":81671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,2658,2616,2549,471,204],"class_list":["post-81661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-coronavirus","tag-dam","tag-debt-trap-diplomacy","tag-south-china-sea","tag-xi-jinping"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChina\u2019s dangerous secrets | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinas-dangerous-secrets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China\u2019s dangerous secrets | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s well known that China has the world\u2019s largest navy and coastguard\u2014the result of a tenfold increase in military spending since 1995\u2014which it uses to advance its pugnacious revisionism. 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