China’s foreign port takeovers a front for global military expansion, say experts, politicians
For two decades, China’s communist regime has poured tens of billions of dollars into low- and middle-income nations, funding massive port projects in the name of global development.
However, experts and lawmakers are warning that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, seeks to expand its global military presence by creating new overseas naval bases out of the commercial ports it has funded and built abroad.
According to a new report by AidData, a think tank that analyzes government aid expenditures on international development projects, the regime has spent nearly $30 billion on overseas port infrastructure since 2001.
For those in Congress who are tasked with countering the threat from a newly expansionist CCP, the regime’s pursuit of new basing opportunities is an alarming development that requires immediate action.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP, believes that the only means of countering such an expansion is through increased military and diplomatic investments by the United States. Such investments in partner nations, he hopes, will counter the creeping influence of the CCP.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s expansion of its overseas naval presence is a blaring alarm, and we keep hitting snooze,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times.
“To counter the CCP’s malign influence and military aggression, the United States needs to both boost its own military-industrial capacity and be more present in the Indo-Pacific, expanding development and diplomacy with key partners to ensure they don’t succumb to debt-trap diplomacy.”
China Seeks Global Military Expansion
AidData’s report, “Harboring Global Ambitions,” analyzes more than 20 years of official investments by China’s state-owned entities into overseas seaport projects that might form the groundwork for a new naval base.
From 2000 to 2023, Beijing spent a staggering $29.9 billion through loans and grants for 123 different projects at 78 ports in 46 low- and middle-income nations, according to the report.
Each of these projects was funded directly by Beijing or state-owned companies.
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