The New Chinese Silk Road Is a Threat to the World Order

Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) presides over the first hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Commentary

New attention is finally being focused on communist China, thanks to the new House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and China, whose members have started using the rarely spoken “t” word (threat) in referring to the Chinese Communist Party. Rarely spoken because many in the U.S. political class support engagement with China, not confrontation, and thus have ignored increasing Chinese aggression and belligerence in the interest of commerce. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled House Financial Services Committee passed seven bills out of committee on Feb. 28 that deal directly with communist China and Taiwan. There will be more to follow from other House committees.

There is increasing bipartisan recognition that strategic competition—the phrase frequently used by the U.S. State Dept to characterize the U.S.-China relationship—is a euphemism that masks the reality that communist China is an existential threat to the United States. The newly energized House committees are reexamining Chinese strategic initiatives and activities worldwide with a jaundiced eye. If only that was the case with the Biden administration, where officials such as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin mumble about “tackling the pacing challenge from China” as reported by The Epoch Times here.

Pacing challenge, indeed! That the People’s Liberation Army-Navy now has more ships than the U.S. Navy and is using them to intimidate Taiwan and other neighbors with impunity is not a challenge; it’s a threat. China’s continuing testing of a fractional orbital bombardment system that uses a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) and is capable of delivering nuclear payloads is not a challenge; it’s a threat. That China’s nuclear breakout has resulted in them having more land-based intercontinental-range missile launchers than the United States (and still increasing) is not a challenge; it is a threat.

Three Chinese warships are seen docked at Garden Island naval base in Sydney on June 3, 2019. Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

And so, too, are the various Chinese strategic initiatives aimed at displacing the United States as the world’s superpower. The initiatives camouflage the economic threat they pose to the existing liberal world order, international commerce, and the United States in particular. Specifically, that includes the long-running New Chinese Silk Road initiative (also known as the One Belt One Road initiative, OBOR) that has tentacled out to dozens of countries over the past decade.

The initiative involves global expansion of an interconnected transportation network controlled from Beijing, including ports, railroads, roads, and telecommunications infrastructure. The objectives are to secure access to the natural resources needed to fuel Chinese industry, create overseas markets for Chinese finished goods and services, employ Chinese workers in overseas infrastructure development projects, and exert geopolitical influence in China’s favor among the countries that participate in the initiative.

Understand that the New Silk Road is not a single route but is planned and being built in some cases as a web, or a network, of land and maritime routes throughout the world. A Polar Route through the Russian Arctic is even a planned possibility, as noted here. A railroad from Port Sudan across Africa to Dakar, Senegal, will provide an anchor for a network to reap the natural resources that are relatively untapped throughout the African continent. A $3.3 billion Chinese investment in El Hamdania Port in Algeria will transform the port into one of the largest on the Mediterranean Sea, as reported here. That port will be connected with a rail net through the Sahel and Sahara, as well as the new $12 billion East-West Highway connecting Algeria with Morocco and Tunisia. Chinese eyes have been coveting Mediterranean ports in southern Europe, too, including in Piraeus, Greece, and ventures in Spain and Italy.

A video screen at the event "China-Africa Friendship 2019" in Beijing on Jan. 9, 2019. An error was made, with the word "exploitation" being used where "exploration" should have appeared. screenshot/Chinese internet

As of last March, the initiative has involved 151 countries that have officially signed memoranda of understanding with China as legal participants, including all 55 African nations and even 18 members of the European Union.

Chinese investments encourage governments to be sympathetic to China’s activities within the international community, as well as to endorse Chinese positions in various international legal, technology, standards, and economic organizations. Call the Chinese OBOR investments influence-peddling, in a sense. Or better yet, call them a combination of economic, psychological, and political warfare. After all, Chinese economic growth has fueled the rise of the People’s Liberation Army and the rapid modernization of its capabilities over the past several decades. As the Chinese economy has grown, so too have the capabilities of the PLA grown in every major military discipline, as well as the ability and propensity of the PLA to project power and intimidate countries.

China’s economic and military realms are tightly intertwined to include development and exploitation of dual-use technology to accelerate PLA modernization programs as part of an enduring strategy of “civil-military fusion.” Are the Chinese scientists participating in joint research with U.S. universities actually contributing to the improvement in PLA capabilities? Almost assuredly. And that is not a “pacing challenge” for the United States; that is a clear threat.

Pretend that it’s 2123 A.D. and contemplate what the geopolitical world might look like if the Chinese economic and military threat continues to be ignored (as one could argue has been the case for much of the past three decades). By then, the world’s population will be nearly 11 billion souls, according to the Pew Research Center. Without a clear course of action to counter the Chinese threat, America will be isolated from much international trade by the communist Chinese who will have completed their New Silk Road and dominating commerce on every major continent. The international world order will be dominated by the Chinese. U.S. geopolitical influence will have shrunk drastically as the communist Chinese will be able to exert maximum political influence through economic coercion and influence peddling. Will there be the political willpower in the United States to resist the Chinese in that dystopian future?

Thank goodness the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is energized to reverse the current trajectory. Forget about keeping up with the “pacing challenge” of China; call it what it really is. There is a lot of work to do to deal with the China threat.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.