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Simon See's's avatar

This point you made here is interesting David,

"It does hinge on the Belt and Road, need to have the road to invade, and that road into and through Afghanistan is not completed. The government was overthrown, and now China is playing paddy-cake with the Taliban, actually more than paddy-cake. China has a new weapon in their arsenal for the time being and they are developing it; it is a case of “because we can”.

Do you think it's possible that Biden was told to leave the billions of dollars of equipment in Afghanistan for this reason? To weaponize them against Chinese advancement?

Just thinking out loud here.

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Justin Marchand's avatar

Fascinating analysis. China / de-Islamification. Makes absolute sense. Just export the Uyghurs giant prison camps and the use of arbitrary mass detentions.

Question, Announced in 2013, we are 10 years into the Belt and Road initiative. Is the steam running out?

I wonder if Foreign Policy ( https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/13/china-belt-and-road-initiative-infrastructure-development-geopolitics/ )is accurate in stating it's running out of steam:

Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.”

After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative. In 2022, 60 percent of China’s overseas lending went to borrowers in financial distress, compared to just 5 percent in 2010, said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at the College of William and Mary.

And China's frustrations with regional countries:

https://thediplomat.com/2023/08/chinas-problem-with-nepal/

Thoughts?

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