How does China’s heavy investment in Africa and Eastern Europe fit into the thesis that they only want to be local hegemons? I believe they’ve even setup naval bases in some of these nations.
It’s either that or keep building cities for no one.
Let me clarify one thing though, I don’t believe they want to assert a global hegemony, but under US pressure they might feel they have no choice but to try to counterbalance us. That would theoretically lead us back to a bipolar world where the PRC takes the place of the USSR.
Here’s the problem with that theory though. No one is taking Russia’s place, and Russia has more nukes and more domestic issues which is saying something. The PRC nuclear arsenal isn’t comparable to the USA’s nuclear arsenal, and the Japanese while not a declared nuclear power, have the capability to be a nuclear power in very short order. So no one is taking the USA’s place either, least of all China under any government when they’re flanked by: Russia, Japan, India, Pakistan, and for an extra dose of fun, an Afghanistan which will soon be back under the Taliban, officially.
At the end of the Cold War, the difference between the #1 and #2 economy was so great that it wasn’t even close. Right now our closest competitors have even more problems than we do, and we went ahead and exhausted a lot of strength and political will to act on the foreign stage fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now the President of the United States is making peace with the bloody Taliban! After 17 years of trying to replace them with a different government.
It doesn’t make sense for the PRC to build the New Silk Road of their primary policy objectives had anything to do with foreign policy. Any benefits at all to their foreign policy is the gravy to their meat and potatoes of what is the largest domestic jobs program in the world and the infrastructure to strip mine Africa and Central Asia of their natural resources.
Hegemony is what you get when you are the dominant power at the table by a country mile, several country miles really. What they’re doing with the Silk Road is some new form of colonialism we haven’t exactly seen before, but it still reeks of colonialism. It puts them in a nicer position than they might otherwise be, but those contracts with Kenya or Sri Lanka are only as good as the PRC’s ability to enforce them. Given they don’t have the airlift power or a Navy remotely close to the US, that’s a pretty remote possibility. They might as well invade Afghanistan for all the good that has even done anybody, but at least it’s a next door neighbor and not past Taiwan, Singapore and across the Indian Ocean.
No wonder they want US out of “their” neighborhood. In the mean time, it is a very nice jobs program, and it keeps the peoples happy, happy enough to not revolt, even provides a decent source of pride so they can say “we’re out their physically connecting the world while ya’ll are out there talking a good game on free trade and you know, enforcing clear shipping routes and whatnot.”
Maybe the market really is decent at figuring out where and what kinds of railroads should be built, because a railroad to nowhere still goes nowhere.
