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i'd like to kind of talk about where the belton road is right now um because as we saw over the years that it became transparent that there was debt trap diplomacy going on a lot of these infrastructure projects were left uncompleted or crumbling falling apart uh currently china's economy is facing tremendous challenges is it even possible for the belton road to continue
If you were to ask that question to any think tanker in D.C. five years ago, four years ago, I think the conventional wisdom would have been the Belt and Road is just going to peter out over time as China's economy continues to face increasing challenges. And this gets to a fundamental debate about what the Belt and Road is and what it isn't. Is it
an actual economic plan, or is it public messaging? Where if the project is working, it gets the Belt and Road stamp, and if the project is failing, China holds back and doesn't brand it because they only want successful projects in the Belt and Road. I reject that dichotomy because both sides completely missed the point. China is happy to label
failing projects as Belt and Road projects. Look no further than the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. This was supposed to be the poster child of strategic success of the Belt and Road. And listen, on paper, it would be a huge strategic win for China and for Pakistan if this thing ever fully materializes, and it would be terrible for India. Um,
How is the Gwadar port doing? Not so great. How are the roads from southern Xinjiang into northern Pakistan? How are construction on those roads going? Not so great. And it's been that way, I would say at this point, nearly a decade. We've been talking about this thing for a long time. It still hasn't fully materialized. Eastern Europe, European countries have this exact same issue too. So...
Is the Belt and Road going to survive as China continues to face economic challenges? It absolutely will, for a political reason, but most importantly, for a strategic reason. Politically,
Xi Jinping cannot let this thing fail. He wrote it into the Constitution. Now, the Chinese Constitution is worth even less than the paper it's printed on because the Chinese Communist Party doesn't respect the idea of a constitution, but they have one. And Xi Jinping wrote it into the Constitution. This is his pet project. It's his foreign policy. Politically, he cannot allow it to die. But strategically...
it's really nimble and it's kind of useful because the Belt and Road is this kind of shape-shifting thing where when he started to get some blowback about debt traps in like 2021, Xi Jinping reframed the Belt and Road into this like cultural, civilizational project. And as the hard infrastructure began to run into funding issues,
It pivoted into green energy projects, a sector that had a ton of ripe investment inside of China. So strategically, the Belt and Road is really valuable because you can just kind of maneuver it in whichever direction you need to. But here's the real thing about why it's still useful. Phase one.
for China was getting the memoranda of understanding signed with hundreds of nations around the world to establish that beachhead of Belt and Road cooperation. That's phase one. Westerners, Western economists in particular, assume, okay, phase two is going to be successful projects. Maybe, but maybe not, because the Belt and Road is not primarily economic. It is primarily strategic.
China is happy if some of these projects are delayed, if some of them never fully see the light of day and it's very slow progress, because phase two is not economic. Phase two is military. In my book, Countering China's Great Game, I plot out the proliferation of China's overseas military bases.
And if you look at how it connects to Belt and Road partner nations, it's no accident that there's a lot of overlap. You see this really vividly in the Pacific Island region, where the BRI memorandum is signed, and in many cases, it's a former ally of Taiwan that is getting flipped diplomatically to become a partner with Beijing. The money flows in, and then a few years later,
a Chinese Coast Guard or naval ship shows up at the port of a BRI project port, and then you see the early indicators of where this is heading. Or you see China refitting a new runway to be able to service heavy bombers. Runways in the middle of the Pacific that have not serviced serious military aircraft since the Second World War. The intent of this is military in phase two.
So the Belt and Road has problems, but it will continue. It's interesting you talked about, because that is, we've been following the Solomon Islands for a long time. And that is basically what you just described, that they were a Taiwan, recognized Taiwan. They got flipped to recognizing the PRC, then signed Belt and Road deals, lots of investment. And then talking about having a port available for...
Chinese ships to come stop at. And the secret security deal. That too. I mean, training the police in the Solomons, things like that. It's a multi-staged strategic play. And I think we need to give them their due credit. It's pretty ingenuitive. It's very intelligent. It's very smart. And if you look at our response to what happened in the Solomons,
Our response hasn't been too impressive, I would wager to say, because when news broke of the agreement with Honi Aira, Washington collectively freaked out. Rightly so, because it was a big deal. And two senior administration officials from the Biden administration rushed to the Solomon Islands with the Australians.
And we did our best to try to talk them off the cliff, off the edge and reverse them. It was all too late. And then our public messaging could not have been worse. Like in response to it, I think it was, I forget if it was the Australians or the Americans, but at least one side said a Chinese base would be a red line for the United States and for Australia. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean if the PLA sets up shop, we're going to
move in and attack? Does it mean we're going to deny China's Chinese ships abilities to dock there? Maybe it is a red line and it would be an enormous problem for Australia in particular. But here's the problem. If all we're doing is swooping in at the 11th hour and rattling cages and saying, you can't do this, this is a red line. Where were we at the 10th hour, at the 9th hour, at the 8th hour? Like,
Swooping in at the very end and more or less threatening a nation is one of the most counterproductive things we can do. And it underscored how out of the game we are, how behind the eight ball we were. It is not a mystery where the People's Liberation Army is looking to establish overseas presence. And it's not a mystery that
Because the Pentagon publishes its China report every single year, and there is literally a list of countries that they have assessed that Beijing is targeting for this exact purpose.
We had a near miss with the UAE a few years ago. China was on the verge of establishing a port in UAE with military implications. And the Biden administration really had to shake these guys down hard to get them to back off.
That was a moment where at the 11th hour, we got lucky, but that's not going to happen every single time. This is why to your earlier question, this is why the long game of economic development projects matter because you have skin in the game and you telegraph way before the crisis comes. We're here to help you guys have options. We're here to help you guys have a choice.
And with the Solomons, that was a collective failure on our part, on Australia's part. And that is a failure we cannot repeat. We cannot continue.
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