The mistakes the Chinese making are largely due to the fact the Chinese dictatorship class, themselves have been brainwashed since birth and will underestimate how easily it will be seen through this kind of vial Mao stuff.
https://www.change.org/p/minister-h...lightning_2primary_share_options_more.control
Also the
untenable costs of China's new soft invasions as shown in the port map above are likely turn back on them just as it did on the British when they tried to run India.
I don't follow China's politics closely so have noticed a few setbacks/mistakes they've made past few years. But they're quite quick to learn from it though.
There's that time they thought it's no biggie to anchor an offshore oil rig inside Vietnam's territorial waters. The Comrades in Hanoi let the plebs loose for a bit and they burnt down a few Chinese industrial parks, killing three Chinese nationals I think.
Beijing stationed its troops near Hanoi, things calm down real quick... But since then they've only ramp any and all puny VNese fishing boats found fishing in "Chinese waters", so less public outcry.
Those projects and debt might be all lost but they'd still be less than what the US is currently spending each year just to maintain the status quo.
I think the official figures is about $100B a year for some 1,000+ (known) bases around the world. The Pentagon/Defence budget is about $1Trillion a year.
So China could comfortably fund a few of its corporations, sending them to some far flung African or S/American country to do deals and the US/West will either have to send some presence over to keep an eye out or watch as the Chinese flip or prop up dictators and friendly pollies .
I heard that that's why the US is getting back down into South America in a real hurry lately.
Looking at the domestic infrastructures China's been building... it's incredible. Roads, bridges, rail linking the entire country. From zero to the world's longest high speed tracks and fleet in less than 10 years, soon to be the longest of all the world's combined.
With the new ($1 trillion?) Belt/Road infrastructure plan... the last time the East was linked with the Middle East and into Europe was Genghis Khan's. The last time the Chinese mapped the world's sea lanes on this scale was by Admiral Zheng He under order by a guy whose ambition was nothing less than global hegemony.
You'd think Western planners would be hard at work doing something serious about not losing this one... but for some reason they decided it's best to upset Russia, isolating it rather than bringing it in from the cold and keep China a bit busy at half of its frontiers.
Then getting itself into about 7 wars in the Middle East, spending loads of cash and plenty of military brainpower fighting idiots like ISIS, the Taliban, impoverished tribes in Yemen, Somalia pirates.... and not really winning it at that.
But I suppose giving $250M to ASEAN countries, or $25M a piece... that'll win the Asians over.
6 more years of Trump is going to see China getting to a point where S/E Asia will just have to be "lost", again... or have a couple proxy wars starting, giving S/Korea and Japan an excuse to militarise and have their own liberation from US control.