Is China Dreaming Of Becoming An Empire?

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The Silk Road economic belt and its maritime counterpart.(Reuters)

Steve LeVine, Quartz: China is building the most extensive global commercial-military empire in history

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the sun famously never set on the British empire. A commanding navy enforced its will, yet all would have been lost if it were not for ports, roads, and railroads. The infrastructure that the British built everywhere they went embedded and enabled their power like bones and veins in a body.

Great nations have done this since Rome paved 55,000 miles (89,000 km) of roads and aqueducts in Europe. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia and the United States established their own imprint, skewering and taming nearby territories with projects like the Trans-Siberian and the Trans-Continental railways.

Now it’s the turn of the Chinese. Much has been made of Beijing’s “resource grab” in Africa and elsewhere, its construction of militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea and, most recently, its new strategy to project naval power broadly in the open seas.

WNU Editor: Running an empire is a very expensive proposition .... and while it appears that their leaders may have have these ambitions, I have to wonder if the Chinese people really want that?