This Was Phase I of China’s Global Military Expansion
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The Belt and Road Initiative is Xi Jinping's method to achieve China's political control over the entire world. Now, let's back up for a second. By political control, what I'm not saying is that the Chinese Communist Party wants to physically conquer every single square inch of the globe. It's not what they're trying to do. What they are trying to do

is have a sort of political influence and control that has no boundaries. I think for that, look no further than the malign influence they have inside of our own country in America. Like, TikTok is the best example of this. It's not like the Chinese Communist Party is trying to buy out ABC, CBS, New York Times. They aren't trying to actually own our news.

but they're trying to influence how Americans think, what Americans think. It's more insidious and less overt. And the Belt and Road Initiative is the geopolitical version of that. When Xi Jinping first launched the BRI in 2013,

It was understood to be an infrastructure economic development project. And there were a whole bunch of people that said, this is great. The global south needs more investment, needs more roads, bridges built. Not a lot of Western companies in that space. So China stepping in, being a responsible stakeholder and pushing the world forward in

into the 21st century. This is great news for everybody. This is win-win cooperation. If only that were true, because if you look at how the Belt and Road has played out, not only have there been a lot of debt traps and financial sustainability issues for a whole bunch of partner countries, and not only have a lot of these infrastructure projects gotten hopelessly delayed,

Some of these have proven to be not very sustainable, not very sturdy. That's on the economic side and that's on the construction side. But on the political side, what we have seen is

is that all of this money and investment from Beijing comes with strings attached to it. And in many cases, when a nation signs a memorandum to join the Belt and Road, bags of cash flow in from Beijing, and their political stability is now underpinned by the Chinese Communist Party.

That's great for them in the short term, but in the long term, they answer to Xi Jinping. And he has a whole bunch of political control over them that they didn't have that dynamic with before. And the final thing I'll say, and I wrote about this recently,

pervasively encountering China's great game, and this is not nearly as understood as it needs to be. The Belt and Road is phase one of China's military expansion beyond their near abroad across the entire world. You see this in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in the Pacific Island region, and everywhere in between. This is the first step

of China for greasing the skids for a military power projection. And it's really dangerous and it's something we need to take seriously. Well, I know something people are saying now is that with the U.S. pulling a lot of funding from USAID and other foreign aid, China is going to sweep in. This is giving the world to China. They're going to fill the vacuum. What do you what do you think about that? Is the Belt and Road capable of that?

several thoughts about what's happening with USAID. So number one,

I don't begrudge the Trump administration at all for assessing whether or not our foreign assistance is in alignment with America's national interests. I think that's a great question to be asking. I think President Trump has identified a whole bunch of projects that do not fit that category of strategic alignment. I have no problem with him axing programs that aren't advancing America's national interests.

Where the issue comes in, in his first administration, Donald Trump approved programs in USAID and the State Department and others that targeted the Belt and Road Initiative. If you go through a lot of the strategic programs that USAID started in Trump's first term and were continued in President Biden's term, these are projects that directly answer China's Belt and Road Initiative. In some cases,

We were helping African nations lessen their dependence on Xinhua and other Chinese media sources. In other cases, we were helping allies of Taiwan have more options for subsea telecommunications lines other than Chinese companies. We were trying to alleviate the dependence for a lot of countries on Huawei. And all of those are different components of the Belt and Road Initiative.

So the fact that USAID was attacked with an axe instead of a scalpel, I think is really unfortunate. And to your question about how China might respond to that, we've already seen a few early indicators in Cambodia. And I think we're seeing stuff in Africa as well in the public health sector about how China is moving into these spaces. Because keep in mind,

The Belt and Road Initiative started as hard infrastructure, roads, bridges, stadiums, but it didn't stay that way. The Belt and Road is this ever-expanding concept. Like, Xi Jinping announced the Health Silk Road, I think around maybe 2015, 2016 or so.

And there's a digital Silk Road, there's a polar Silk Road. I even saw this one post one time about a Bible Silk Road where the CCP approved... Yes. Of course, the CCP persecutes many, if not all, religions inside of China, Christianity being one of the primary ones. But they also have state-approved churches.

And I saw this one event about the Bible Silk Road and how the Belt and Road somehow connects to Christianity. So like the Belt and Road is this massive event.

concept and it keeps growing and growing and growing because it's not really about infrastructure. It's about the political and strategic ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party. So is there going to be space for the BRI to move into the vacuum that we're leaving behind? I expect so. It's not going to look exactly the same in every single case, but yes, I do expect that as we pull out of public health programs in Africa,

they're going to find ways to exploit that and it's not going to be good.

Thank you for watching. A link to Michael's book is below. And this was just one short highlight from our hour-long podcast. The full interview is available exclusively on our website, ChinaUncensored.tv. And when you subscribe to our website, you'll also get premium China Uncensored episodes, live streams, and a community chat with me, Shelley, Matt, and hundreds of subscribers. And most importantly, you'll be supporting content you love. Check it out. The link is below.