China's Dangerous Secrets

It is well - known that China has the largest navy and coast guard in the world - the result of a tenfold increase in military spending since 1995 - which it uses to advance its harsh revisionism. But there are also many less-known policies, projects and activities that are really very dark that are supporting Chinese expansionism and putting the whole world at risk.

China has a long record of expanding its strategic trace through secret maneuvers it shamelessly denies. For example, in 2017, it established its first military base abroad in Djibuti a small country, which also happens to be deeply indebted to China while insisting there was no such plan.

Today, China is building a naval base in Cambodia, which has rented a fifth of its coastline and several islands to China. China-funded Marine Ream Base's nearly complete skela looks markedly similar in size and design with a scaffold at China's base in Djiibuti. China admits it invested in the base, but claims only Cambodian Navy will have access to it.

In reality, though, it seems possible that China's navy will use the object at least for military logistics. This would further strengthen China's position on the South China Sea, where it has already built seven artificial islands as military bases, giving it effective control of this critical corridor between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

China also has a very secret approach to its dam projects in international rivers flowing in other countries from China's Tibetan Plateau. While the world knows that the National Population Congress approved the construction of the largest dam in the world near China's highly militarized border with India in 2021, there has been no public update on the project since.

The dam is supposed to produce three times as much electricity as the three Grica Dam, currently the largest hydro power plant in the world, and China has built a new railway and highway to transport heavy equipment, materials and workers to the remote location of the project. We'll learn more only when the construction is as far away as the dam can no longer be hidden from available satellite images. At that point, it will already be a fact done.

China has used this strategy to build 11 giant dams at Macong, not only by gaining geopolitical mechanisms on its neighbours, but also by causing an environmental slaughter. China is now the world's largest dam-filled country, with more major dams in operation than the rest of the world together, and it's building or planning to build at least eight other dams just at the Macong.

Inaccuracy has also been a defining feature of lending, making China the world's largest sovereign lender for developing countries. Almost every Chinese loan issued in the last decade has included a comprehensive clause that forces the borrower country to fail to disclose credit conditions. Many African, Asian, and Latin American countries have been trapped in debt, leaving them very vulnerable to Chinese pressure to pursue policies that advance China's economic and geopolitical interests. According to one study, loan contracts give China “broad electricity to cancel loans or accelerate atonement if it disagrees with the policies of a borrower”.

But there can be no better illustration of the global cost of the Chinese secret than the pandemic of COVIDD-19. If the government of China were quick to respond to evidence that a new deadly coronavirus had appeared in Huhan, warning the public and implementing the measures of control, the damage could have been contained.

Instead, China's Communist Party (CPC) rushed to print and discredit information about the outbreak of the virus, paving the way for a fierce worldwide pandemic that killed almost seven million people and cut off lives and livelihoods. To date, China's uncertainty has prevented scientists from confirming the true origin of COVID-19, which, in order not to forget, appeared in China's central super-virus research centre.

China's willingness to violate international laws, regulations and norms exacerbates the problem of uncertainty. The Chinese government has repeatedly rejected its international commitments, including promises to protect Hong Kong's autonomy and not militarize the South China Sea. It was China's secret violation of its commitment not to unilaterally change the status quo of its controversial Himalayan border with India that caused a three-year military impasse between the two countries.

There is no reason to expect China to give up breaking rules, debts under conditions or other malicious activities soon. Chinese President Xi Jinping ) who has strengthened control of CPC on information, cutting off access to foreign analysts even in economic data now is on track to retain power for life and remains eager to reform international order in behalf of China.

Of course, Xi's appetite for danger seems to be growing. This partly reflects the time pressure: Xi seems to believe that China has a narrow window of opportunity to achieve global supremacy before unfavourable demographic, economic and geopolitical trends do not allow time in favour. But Xi has also been encouraged by the international community's total failure to impose significant consequences on China for its poor behaviour.

As Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China prefers innovation, enabled by theft and fraud, to advance its revisionist agenda. This, coupled with the tremendous economic impact, protects him from a decisive Western response. That's why, excluding a major strategic mistake from Xi, the expansionism of using a series of small actions to produce a much larger action on the part of China is likely to continue, Project Syndicate.