A December 2020 report by the U.S. Department of the Navy divulged the following on China's methods for projecting its "true maritime power":

China's aggressive actions are undermining the international rules-based order, while its growing military capacity and capabilities are eroding U.S. military advantages at an alarming rate.

China has implemented a strategy and revisionist approach that aims at the heart of the United States' maritime power. It seeks to corrode international maritime governance, deny access to traditional logistical hubs, inhibit freedom of the seas, control use of key choke-points, deter our engagement in regional disputes, and displace the United States as the preferred partner in countries around the world.

China's aggressive fishing policies coincide with its aggression in other areas as well:

• Reuters reports China's aggressive building of dams, dikes, and levees controlling the water flowing from Tibet has choked the Mekong River, which provides water to tens of millions of people, basically weaponizing water.

• According to Breitbart, China is violating its treaties with India by building at least 20 military camps along their border, called the Line of Actual Control. The added military personnel escalated tensions between the two Asian nations to levels not seen since the mid-'70s.

• China and India are considering building competing dams along the Brahmaputra river — called the Yarlung Tsangpo river in China — further heightening tensions. The Express U.K. quoted Brahma Chellaney, a reporter on India and China's relationship: "India is facing China's terrestrial aggression in the Himalayas, maritime encroachments on its backyard and, as the latest news is a reminder, even water wars."

China is using its Belt and Road Initiative to invest in infrastructure in dozens of countries. It then uses that debt to pressure those countries into cooperating or face a debt trap in which they owe China more money than they can pay back, expanding China's global influence. The University of Pennsylvania posted a podcast in which Marshall W. Meyer, Wharton emeritus professor of management and a China expert, said of the Belt and Road Initiative,

While U.S. foreign aid or the Marshall Plan to rebuild economies following World War II is not expected to be repaid, the BRI is a "Chinese investment that expects a return." Its banking institutions loan money to the partner countries for BRI projects and use Chinese companies to do the work, resulting in a Chinese company benefitting from the loan. The host nation got the debt.

Pearl Risberg of the Center for Strategic International Studies explains what happens when the host nation is unable to repay the loan:

The BRI is often critiqued as so-called "debt-trap diplomacy." According to this narrative, China provides infrastructure funding to developing economies under opaque loan terms, only to strategically leverage the recipient country's indebtedness to China for economic, military, or political favor. The debt-for-equity swap of Sri Lanka's Hambantota port is an oft-used example, where China excused Sri Lanka's $8 billion debt in exchange for a 99-year lease of the Sri Lankan port in 2017.

Yet even with all of the above taking place, the West has consented to and even encouraged Chinese expansion, ceding to China her path to a dominant role in world governance, allowing and even promoting more significant Chinese influence in the U.N. other world organizations.

As of April 2020, Chinese nationals now head four of the 15 U.N. specialized agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and the International Civil Aviation Organization. According to the Diplomat, China's U.N. monetary contribution has risen to 12 percent. But, as the World Health Organization's handling of China's role in the COVID-19 pandemic — essentially deflecting blame for the pandemic from China — clearly shows, money covers a multitude of sins.

Under the guise of environmentalism and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, China openly uses its control over the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs to further its Belt and Road Initiative. In 2018, Chinese communist Liu Zhenmin, the incumbent head of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, wrote:

In this regard, the Belt and Road Initiative has provided a new open and inclusive platform for international development cooperation, which can make a great contribution to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's)….

While the Belt and Road Initiative and the 2030 Agenda are different in their nature and scope, they share a similar vision and a set of basic principles in many respects.

Both of them serve the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

The U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs is even endorsing China's Belt and Road plan, saying that China would strengthen "the effects of international development cooperation under the Belt and Road on the achievement of the 17 SDGs in the participating countries, with positive spill-overs to the achievement of the SDGs in the rest of the world."

And as Beijing pushes globalism with a Chinese twist — through its investments in capital improvements overseas — the American ideals of freedom and human rights are losing influence. China is exploiting most of the poorest nations and peoples on Earth and removing them from the American sphere of power with the blessings of global elites.

Though the dangers to the world of China becoming a global powerhouse are evident, a few frilly words from China seem to be all that is needed for Western elites to disbelieve their eyes. On January 25, 2021, President Xi gave a virtual speech that, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, "wows" the "global luminaries" at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In his speech, Xi stated:

The right choice is for countries to pursue peaceful coexistence based on mutual respect and only finding common ground while shelving differences, and to promote exchanges and mutual learning. This is the way to add impetus to the progress of human civilization….

China will get more actively engaged in global economic governance and the push for an economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced, and beneficial to all.

It is said that some things are so crazy that only an academic would believe them. Maybe it should read "only a globalist would believe them." Imagine, if you will, a leader of a country whose warplanes are even now threatening Taiwan, Japan, and even Pearl Harbor and is responsible for numerous acts of global bullying, preaching the perks of "mutual respect" and "finding common ground" and promising to become even more involved in "global economic governance," for the benefit of "all."

Photo: Pixabay license

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