Chinese Water Torture

Timothy Birdnow

China's plan to rule the seas.

China has a plan to overtake the USA with a fused effort that combines trade with military expansion, as described in a new Pentagon report. It shows how China’s vaunted "One Belt, One Road” plan to build infrastructure worldwide is used for military advantage along with economic benefits.

China’s navy is now larger than America’s, reports our Department of Defense. And China’s fleet of merchant vessels is larger by far.

The Chinese economy has grown to become second only to the U.S.—and it’s gaining on us. Some reports say China has already passed us in productivity. Other studies show China conducts significantly more world trade than America.

A Financial Times survey found that"China rules the waves.” Forbes reports that the United States has become "ridiculously dependent” on goods from China. The American Enterprise Institute pronounces "We’re too dependent on China for too many critical goods.”

But China’s dominance comes not only from making the goods; it’s also delivering them.

A new report by the Center for International and Strategic Studies finds China "[dominates] the entire global maritime supply chain, [controls] the world’s second-largest shipping fleet . . . and [constructs] over a third of the world’s vessels” while also "producing 96% of the world’s shipping containers . . . and owns seven of the ten busiest ports in the world.”

China for years has been on what Forbes describes as a "seaport shopping spree . . . buying up the world’s ports” on every continent save Antarctica. The rationale is explained in the Pentagon’s brand-new paper, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” It paints a fascinating picture of how China’s worldwide "One Belt, One Road” initiative is being used not only to benefit China’s seagoing trade, but also to establish footholds with great military value.

The new Defense Department report explains the dual nature of One Belt, One Road, which seeks to "fuse” trade and military purposes: "cultivating talent and blending military and civilian expertise and knowledge; building military requirements into civilian infrastructure and leveraging civilian construction for military purposes; and leveraging civilian service and logistics capabilities for military purposes.”

Estimates are that China is spending at least $150-billion each year on acquiring civil-military footholds at major choke points of world trade. Then they can attempt to deny passage by other nations, much as they now seek to do in the South China Sea.

So why would anybody invite China to expand its control into the domestic waters of the United States? Just as other nations have been paid handsomely to let China take over their shipping facilities, some American businesses believe they can save money by letting other countries (including government-subsidized Chinese entities) to transport goods between destinations within the United States.

Current U.S. law, known as the Jones Act, prohibits shipping goods or passengers between American ports (or along our rivers and canals) unless the vessel is built, owned and crewed by Americans. Those pushing to repeal the Jones Act would allow China to expand its power grab to extend into America’s borders.

And the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, recently pronounced China as a greater national security threat to the United States than any other nation, including working to influence and interfere in our elections.

Anyone remember the Dubai Ports Act, where we were going to let Islamic Dubai run American ports? A public outcry (which shocked, SHOCKED President Bush, the stupid internationalist that he is) forced the government to relent. But now we're talking about letting China do something similar.

We live in an insane world.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 649 words, total size 10 kb.