China Is Building the Biggest Commercial-Military Empire in History

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Steve Levine, Defense One/Quartz: How China Is Building the Biggest Commercial-Military Empire in History

China’s outsized latticework of global infrastructure is said to be rooted in a fierce competitiveness learned from 19th-century America.

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.

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WNU Editor: It is still too early to say if China will be successful in building this "commercial-military empire". They are many problems in China, and there are also many countries that are not that open to Chinese investment and influence. There is also the danger of trade wars, a financial crisis, and protectionism .... to name just a few of the many road-blocks that China may face as it builds this "empire".